I Was Just Thinking

Parade? Football? But it isn't New Year's Day anymore...

2012-01-02T09:57:00.001-08:00

Since I woke up early anyway, I've been watching the Tournament of Roses parade this morning, the first time I've watched the whole thing in quite a few years.

First of all, I have to say that as nice as the television coverage is, once you've actually been the parade (and I have been, three times during junior high and high school, so a long time ago), watching on TV just doesn't do the parade justice. It's pretty on TV and all. It's just not the same as being there.

Having said that, however, I loved the surfing dogs. And the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are always bonus.

Mostly, what watching the parade this morning did was make me homesick for Southern California. It's been 34 years since I've lived there, but it still is and will always be home. The fact that the sun was out, the sky was blue and it was apparently about 75 degrees F at parade time, all made me want to be there rather than here. Although, it's supposed to get about 65 degrees here today, way above normal for this time of year. I might have to get up and out later if it really does that.

Also, I have issues with the fact that the parade was today, the second, rather than yesterday, when it should have been. I know. It's tradition that the parade be held on Monday when New Year's Day falls on a Sunday. But it's a tradition I don't like. It would be like having the 4th of July on Saturday or Monday if it fell on a Sunday.

Oh, wait. They do that in Utah. Never mind.

Still, at least I'm not depressed after watching the parade. I expected that I might be. One of the reasons, besides it not being the same on TV after seeing the parade in person, that I quit watching the parade, was that I would watch it after I moved away from Southern California, sit there crying through the whole thing, wishing I was back there rather than where I was, and then be generally inconsolable for about a week afterward.

This time, I'm a bit homesick, yes. But I didn't weep through the whole thing, and I don't want to just go back to bed mope for the rest of the day.

It's an improvement.

Now, if all that football would Just. Go. Away.

It's the holidays, and I'm feeling just a little cranky, or, are the holidays over yet?

2011-12-30T23:57:00.000-08:00

Apparently, someone in the neighborhood thinks tonight is New Year's Eve, judging by the noise they were just making outside. They got the timing just about right; it's 11:58 p.m. local time as I write this, but they're off by a day.

Although, actually, I'd be just as happy if this was New Year's Eve. I'm ready for a new year to start. Of course, because New Year's Day is on a Sunday this year, they're dragging the whole thing out an extra day. Personally, I think it is lame to have the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl Game on Monday when the first is on Sunday, but then I guess I don't get a vote.

You may have gotten the impression, from the preceding two paragraphs, that I'm feeling a little cranky around the whole New Year's thing. That impression would be correct. Some of the crankiness has to do with just wanting 2011 to be over with, but most of it has to do with the fact that I hate the week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day with a a passion the temperature of molten rock.

I might have written about this issue here before, but just in case I haven't, the short version is this: The week between Christmas and the end of the year always seems like a week of wasted days, with one holiday just over and the other one hovering just over the horizon, waiting to happen. Also, to be completely frank, it's just an arbitrary date. A good excuse to have a party, some would say. Me? Not so much. We need a good party in, say, August, where there are no holidays. It's warmer then. A much better time for a party, in my opinion.

Let me be clear. I know the reasons why we in the Western World celebrate New Year's when we do. I know no one is going to change the date we celebrate the New Year. Except when in falls on a Sunday, and then only by one day. But two holidays seven days apart is just too much for me. It's bad enough that Halloween and Thanksgiving fall roughly a month apart, with Christmas following about a month after Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, if Samoa could jump the International Date Line, as it did this year, and lose December 30 altogether, and if my cousin's family could celebrate her birthday, which falls on Christmas Day, on the Fourth of July instead, couldn't we just move New Year's Day a little farther away from Christmas? Please?

One of "those" days...

2011-12-20T14:05:00.000-08:00

I think I'm working on a head cold. Yippee!

On the positive side, I'm on furlough from work this week and next, so I don't have to try to work through the lack of ambition that always comes along with any cold I get. It's really difficult to generate any enthusiasm for writing about the crappy economy (or even a good economy) when I don't even feel much like dragging my happy butt out of bed in the morning, but I don't get sick days from work. So, even though my bank account isn't happy about two unpaid weeks off work, if I'm going to get sick, this is probably the optimum time to do it.

Also, I don't have any real plans for the holidays, aside from watching the Doctor Who Christmas special on Christmas night and then having some kind of a DVD-watching marathon over New Year's Eve/New Year's Day - maybe Doctor Who, maybe not - so, getting a cold now isn't really going to interfere with anything social that I really wanted to do over the holidays.

But then there's the negative side of the equation.

I'm working on a couple of writing projects - one the completion of the first draft of my novel that I started last month for NaNoWriMo and the other a short guide for beginning anthropology students (or maybe three short guides, one for cultural anthropology, one for physical anthropology, and one for archaeology) that I aim to e-publish. I had planned to get a lot of work done on these while I'm off work. I'm having fun working on them. But, even if it's something I'm really having fun doing, it's not nearly as much fun in the middle of sneezing fits, headaches, and achy ears from my backed-up sinuses. Oops! Maybe should have put in a TMI warning there. Sorry.

The point is, I'm not getting nearly as much done so far as I'd hoped. Maybe it's just because my brain has decided that furlough from work = no work at all. A significant part of me would be perfectly happy to sit down in front of the television and watch movies all day. In fact, I was getting a good start on that while I ate lunch, watching Marley and Me while I ate the leftovers from last night's mac'n'cheese dinner. But I couldn't even enjoy that because I knew I was wasting time that I could be writing on a day that I didn't have to write anything for work. So, I came in and turned on the computer (again, for the third time today), determined to get something productive done.

I don't know if I can rationalize writing this post as "something productive" or not. Probably not. So, I'm going to post this and try to get some work done.

It was 39 years ago today...

2011-12-19T11:15:00.000-08:00

December 19 - On this day in 1972 the last Apollo mission to the Moon ended as the Apollo 17 command module and its three astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.

This makes me kind of sad. There were just six successful flights in the Apollo that resulted in landings on the Moon. Only 12 human beings, thus far, have walked on another world, and none have done that in 39 years.

Apollo 17 wasn't the last flight in the program, of course. In July 1975, an Apollo module rendezvoused with a Soviet Soyuz craft in orbit around the Earth. And of course, there were many flights in the US Space Shuttle program and construction of the International Space Station, which is so far still staffed despite the recent end of the shuttle program.

There is talk about going to Mars in twenty years or so - the target date seems to shift depending on the day and on who is talking. But there is also a faction of the scientific community that believes we should only explore space remotely, sending out probes but no people.

My feeling is that we need to send people out into space. Sure, it's dangerous. The two space shuttles that were lost along with their crews showed that. Sure, it's expensive. But I believe it is also essential. We are a species that needs to have somewhere to explore. We have been doing that for as long as we have existed, and we miss something important if we don't have somewhere new to go, something new to see and, perhaps most important, something new to learn.

There is also, in this time of economic chaos, the reality that a vibrant space program creates jobs. Not all of those jobs are for engineers and technicians. There are also jobs for secretaries and constructions workers and food service workers, just to name a few of the job categories that would get a boost from a ramped-up space program.

There is a whole universe of stuff out there to learn, and we will miss a lot of it if we tie ourselves to the Earth, which is what we are doing by not going any farther than orbiting our own planet. That's like only stepping out onto the front porch, like never even going all the way out to the sidewalk..

I'm a NaNo winner...

2011-11-25T17:31:00.000-08:00

Yeah. That's me. I won NaNoWriMo. Several days early.

I have to admit that I'm quite proud of myself. When I started out the month, I wasn't sure that I could do this, that I could stick with it, and that I could find enough words to reach the NaNo goal.

But I did do it. I validated my entry today, at an official 53,681 words, although the word count tool I've been using claims that I've written 53,722 words in the month. I'm not going to quibble; everyone knows that every word count tool counts a little differently.

So, I'm taking a little time to bask in the glow of reaching my goal, the NaNo goal. It feels good.

But, really, the NaNo win is just an interim goal. The draft isn't finished yet. I think it might be about half finished. So, maybe a month's more work? A month and a half, since it's the holiday season and I don't know that I'll be able to write very single day. And then there will be a second draft, and probably a third. Maybe even a fourth, if that's what it takes to get this novel in shape.

I don't have any illusions. A lot of what I've written this month will change. There are time-line problems. Dialogue will have to be re-written and cut, and perhaps added to in some cases. Events will likely not remain in the order I've written them in the first draft.

None of this is a problem. This is how a novel gets written. There might be that rare writer who can produce a publishable novel. I'm clearly not one of them, and I have my doubts about anyone who would claim to be able to do that.

So, I'll continue to update the process here from time to time. Because I still need to be accountable for getting the work done. And who knows, maybe as I get this thing in shape, I might even post a preview now and then.

Nearly-the-end-of-the-week NaNo update...

2011-11-18T09:58:00.000-08:00

So, yeah. It's been a few days since I updated here on how my NaNo is going.

Well, I've been writing every day, although word counts have not been as high every day as they have been being. Still, I've managed to write more than 1,000 words every day. Since I'm ahead of the curve as far as where I need to be to finish my 50,000 words by the end of the month, that's okay.

So, the daily word-counts:

Day 13: 2,428 words
Day 14: 2,089 words
Day 15: 1,963 words
Day 16: 2,053 words
Day 17: 1,320 words

I think yesterday (Day 17) was my lowest daily word count since the beginning of NaNo. It was a weird day, and a busy day, and I didn't write until evening. Still, it was a productive day, because while I was writing, I realized what needs to take place as far as a big reveal, and that it is nearly time for that to happen. This means that the work is on track and is generating the "and then..." that is necessary to keep the story moving. And, I hope, the reader turning the pages when this thing is finished.

As of the end of Day 17, my total word count stands at 36,640, which means that there are 13,360 word to go to win NaNo. More or less; different word count apps give different results. I'll have to see where I stand on the 25th, when NaNo's official word counter is supposed to go live. At any rate, I expect that I will be over the 50,000 minimum by the end of the month, god willing and the creek don't rise.

That doesn't mean, by the way, that I expect to be finished with this first draft by the end of the month. Most novels are more than 50,000 words long, and this novel will be no exception. When you think about it, 50,000 words really isn't a lot. Not if you expect to tell a story with any sort of complexity to it, anyway. But the end of NaNo won't mean the end of the project.

This is the novel that I intend to finish, after starting a few over the years. With any luck, it won't be the only one I complete. That's one of the interesting things about this experience. Even though I've been focusing on this project this month, I keep getting all these other ideas of things, both fiction and non-fiction, that I want to write.

NaNoWriMo, it turns out, is valuable in a lot of ways.

NaNo update, through Day Twelve

2011-11-13T14:24:00.000-08:00

NOTE: Because I'm an idiot sometimes, I posted this to my other blog instead of posting it here. So, technically, this is a repost. Full disclosure, and all that.
Since I'm procrastinating on starting the day's NaNo writing, I thought maybe this would be a good time to post an update on my progress since my last report, on Day Eight.

Day Nine saw me write 2,705 words, bringing my total word count to 20,597 words, but I took Day Ten off and recorded no word count. I felt kind of bad taking the day off, but I had an opportunity to spend a good part of the day at the library at Fresno State to do some research for a non-fiction project I'm working on (not much this month, but it's a long-term project, so the time off isn't a big handicap. I found some material that will be very valuable to the project, so I'm glad I went ahead and took the day to do that.

It was difficult getting back in the saddle, so to speak, on Day Eleven, but I managed to write 2,167 words, to bring my total to 22,764 words. I wasn't especially pleased with what I wrote on Day Eleven, but I was pleased that I wrote, and that the story moved forward just a bit, even if there will be major revisions in the next draft. That's a given, so not a problem at all. As one of my Facebook friends said about giving hints ("Spoilers, sweetie!) about what you write in a first draft, everything will change anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

Yesterday, Day Twelve, I wrote 4,023 words, by far my biggest one-day output, and my total now stands at 26,787 words. That means I'm halfway to the NaNoWriMo goal. It's a good feeling, especially considering that it isn't quite halfway through the month. I can see now that my first draft won't be finished by the end of the competition, but that doesn't really matter. The goal is to write 50,000 words in the month, not finish the draft in the month. So, since I wrapped up writing for the day late yesterday afternoon, I've been basking in the glow of being Halfway Done.

But, now it's time to cut out the back-slapping and get back to work. I'm not going to try to equal yesterday's output. I'll be happy if I can do what seems to be my usual output of around 2,000 words today. Heck, I'll be happy if I make the daily average of 1,666 words that it takes to win NaNo if one writes every single day.

One thing I do think is interesting is that I'm seeing, as I write, exactly where some of the changes will have to be made in the next draft. I'm starting to adjust my work as i write, so that the new work will be more in line with what I want the next draft to look like, especially in terms of the story's timeline. But I'm being very good, so far, and not trying to go back and fix things I've already written now. They'll still be there when I finish this draft and go back to do revisions. It's enough, right now, that I know the direction I want to go with the story and can see what I'll need to do in the next draft to point the beginning of the story more squarely in that direction. And, that I can see more clearly every day exactly what I'm going to need to do as this draft goes forward to get to where I want to be at the end of the story.

The bad thing is (and I don't think it's really bad, just more ambitious than I had really planned in the beginning), I'm pretty sure that there is going to be more than one book before the whole story gets told. Which means lots more work ahead. Good thing I love the process as much as I do.

Day Eight...

2011-11-09T09:32:00.000-08:00

After an unpromising start yesterday, I managed to write 2,083 words, bringing my total through Day 8 to 17,892, which means that if I'm good and keep to my goals, I should top 20,000 words today.

When I signed up for NaNo, I was hesitant. I'm not good with the completion thing when it comes to my writing. Now, if there is a reward at the end - a paycheck or a grade - I'm good. I don't believe I ever missed a deadline for a writing assignment when I was in college, and the only times I've missed deadlines for work, something out of my control has been going on - family emergencies, electricity outages, computer issues. But if I'm working on a project "just because" - just because it sounded like fun, or just because it might pay off someday - very often the work just slows down to a trickle and then stops altogether when something new and shiny comes along.

This is not something I'm proud of, and I'm getting better about it. But NaNo is one of those things that doesn't have enough of a carrot to it to keep me interested just on that basis. I'm finding, however, that it isn't as difficult as I thought it would be to motivate myself to sit and write every day, and to sit long enough to make my word-count goal each day.

Yesterday was a case in point. After I finished work, I had to go do laundry. Because we don't have a washer and dryer here, that means a trip to the laundromat. And laundromats, I've found, are like a box of chocolates. You never know exactly what you're going to get. Well, yesterday what I got was disobedient children and a mother who couldn't control them. They were there when I arrived, and they were still there when I left. I left with a splitting headache. I was so proud of myself that I hadn't yelled at anyone while I was there that I bought myself McDonald's for lunch as a reward.

But, being in a crappy mood after that adventure, and still having a headache by the time I'd gotten home, brought the clean laundry in, and eaten lunch, I really wasn't in any mood to write. I contemplated vegging in front of the television until it was time to go pick my roommate up from work, but there was nothing on TV worth sitting there for. So, I turned the computer on and started to write. With little success. I wrote about 700 words in a little over an hour, but I wasn't especially happy with what I'd written, and thought I'd probably call it a day. I had to leave to pick Pamela up anyway.

The funniest thing happened, though. After I got back home again, I had a couple of hours before time to go to Knit Night, so I thought I'd come back in and at least try to write a little more. I wasn't expecting much. An hour and a half later I had written probably what I like best of all the writing I've done on my NaNo project. I still had the headache. I was still in a crappy mood. But I overcame, and wrote something that might even be good. Goodish. Whatever. I went ahead and I wrote.

So, I'm beginning to think that maybe this is what I'm doing NaNo for: just to prove to myself that I can persevere, can get over the completion issue, and don't have to be "in the mood" to write. I've conquered that in my work writing. Now is the time to conquer it in my writing generally.

A week in...

2011-11-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

I'm seven days into NaNoWriMo now, and I'm feeling good about my work and where it's going. New things are happening, and I've introduced a subplot that is meant to merge with the main plot later on. These are good things.

I wrote 2,598 words on Monday, Day 7 of NaNo, and my total is now 15,809 words.

I think one of the best indications that things are going fairly well is that I sat down to write at about 2 p.m. yesterday and came up for air at right around 5 p.m. I had completely lost track of time and had no idea that I had been writing for three hours. It has been my experience that this happens when the writing is going well. If it isn't, I end up glancing at the clock about every five or ten minutes.

I'm not sure when I'm going to find time to write today. I've got some errands to run in awhile, and I should go do the laundry, and then tonight is Knit Night. I could take the laptop with me to Knit Night if I don't get to write before then, but I'd rather knit. One way or another, though, I will get some writing done sometime today.

Sunday writing...

2011-11-07T10:13:00.001-08:00

Sunday was Day 6 of NaNoWriMo. I was afraid that by Sunday, I'd be running out of steam/story to tell, or that I'd start to get bored, or that I just wouldn't want to write because Sunday is, well, Sunday, and I take the whole "day of rest" thing very seriously in a secular sort of way.

Turned out I was worried about nothing. I wrote 2,761 words on Sunday, and my total word-count is up to 13,211 so far. I introduced my villain, which was lots of fun. Although it was strange. I found myself writing in a slightly different style in that scene. Oh, well. That's what rewrites are for. But, it will be interesting to see if that continues when I write the villain's scenes.

I'm happy with how Sunday's writing sessions went (I wrote twice, with a sanity break in between scenes). I think I've advanced the story, and that is good. The writing is still probably a little dialogue-heavy, but I like reading dialogue-heavy novels, so I'm not seeing that as a particularly bad thing at the moment. There will be more action to come, however.

I'm on track with NaNo, but not so much with my updates here...

2011-11-05T19:18:00.001-07:00

I didn't get to post yesterday's progress with NaNo here yesterday. When I tried to get on the computer to do that last night, my internet was down. Should have known, I suppose. The cable had just gone down, too, near the end of a movie we were watching OnDemand. Anyway...

I wrote 1,792 words yesterday and was not especially pleased with what I turned out. Today, I wrote 2,173 words in two sessions, and I'm much happier. I've got the plot moving along, with little hints in what I wrote today of things to come that will move the action along more, and will put a little more action into the thing, rather than mostly having people sitting around talking to each other. Which will likely change in later drafts, too. But that's what editing is for, to fix what isn't working and what I don't like about what landed on the paper (or, on the hard drive) in the first draft.

My total for five days is at 10,450 words.

Some days, I feel like a real writer...

2011-11-03T23:54:00.000-07:00

It's day three. Things are starting to move, story-wise. My characters haven't tried to do anything too out of character yet. And I can still think of the next thing that has to happen without too much trouble. So, I think I'm doing okay so far.

My word-count for the first three days is 6,485. I've exceeded my target every day, which is a good thing. I'm not really happy with some of the dialogue I'm writing, but I'm still managing to resist going back and editing. I can edit as much as I want after this draft is done. Right now it's all about getting words on the paper. Or on the hard drive. (And yes, I'm backing up. And I'm thinking of e-mailing every day's work to myself, as another backup, just in case.) Just throwing words and seeing what sticks (as Stephen R. Donaldson once wrote about novel writing). Probably some of what I've written so far won't stick. But I think some of it will, too, so I'm making progress.

But, it's midnight now, and I've got to sleep sometime. More updates to come.

Just a quick update...

2011-11-02T10:33:00.001-07:00

NaNoWriMo started yesterday, and I wrote 2305 words in two separate writing sessions.

I'm trying very hard not to edit as I write, and so far I've been successful at that, but I can already see things that I want to change in what I've writen. But that's for after the first draft is done, after NaNo is over.

The first local writing meet-up is tonight, and I think I might go over there for awhile. I'm not sure how much writing will get done, but I've been finding that I get more work done if I'm not at home. I went to the library yesterday afternoon and got over a thousand words written in just over an hour. I suspect that if I'd been at home, I would have been staring at my laptop monitor most of that time, or playing Bejewled instead, or something else other than writing.

More updates later.

NaNoWriMo, or I commit to the insanity of writing 50,000 words in a month

2011-10-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

Call me insane, but I've signed up to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.

I think I signed up once a few years ago, but if I did, I didn't end up participating. I definitely plan to change that this year and go for the 50,000-word goal. I know I can write that many words in a month. I think it's just a matter of having the will to do it.

I'll be reporting back here periodically on my progress, perhaps not word counts, but more on my adventures as the month, and my novel, progress.

I don't have any illusions about producing a finished, publishable novel in a month. I do hope that I will be well on my way to a first draft that can be molded into something publishable. I say "on my way" because 50,000 words is really kind of short for a novel these days. And because I tend to write long; I can make a novel out of a note. This is not necessarily a good thing. But I'm getting better, thanks to blog posts, posting on forums, and the occasional Tweet.

Well, wish me luck. NaNo officially srarts Tuesday, and I plan to do a lot of writing between then and the deadline on the 30th.

Maybe I'm just homesick?

2011-10-14T14:27:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here at my desk, in Central California, on a warmish-to-hot(ish) day in mid-October. It's midafternoon, and according to the local weather channel, it's 84 degress F with 43 percent humidity.

And the weird thing is, it completely feels like a Southern California day to me. The look of it (there are high, thin clouds in the sky). The feel of it. Even ths sound of it (the windows are open, as I refuse to turn the air conditioner on for mid-80-degree temperatures). The sound of the traffic on the street outside. It just feels like an average afternoon when I was growing up in Simi Valley, and then in Norwalk. Even the quality of the light looks more like Southern than Central California.

I can't explain it any more than that. There is a definite difference between the "feel" (and even that seems a strange term to use in this context) of Southern California and where I live now, in the inland center part of the state. It's partly a state of mind and partly how the air feels on my skin, but it's just different here than there. Except not today, apparently.

The even weirder thing is that this has been happening fairly frequently lately, where I will be sitting reading or watching television or writing or something, and I'll suddenly be overwhelmed by the sensation that it feels like "home" (which is what I consider Southern California to be, despite the fact that I've lived in Central California a decade and a half longer than I lived in Southern California), rather than like Fresno.

This is probably not making a bit of sense. I didn't really expect it to. It's just that I'm wondering if anyone else ever gets this sensation, with the very air around them feeling like it is someplace other than where they are at that moment. It's an odd feeling, comforting in a way, but sometimes kind of creepy, like having an episode of deja vu.

Perhaps it's just sense memory, and something is reminding me of something from when I was growing up, but it's buried so deep in my memory that I only get the sensation and not the specific reference.

Or maybe I'm just homesick for Southern California.

I don't know. It just seemed like something I ought to mention.

Go read a (banned) book today...

2011-09-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder...it's Banned Books Week.

I'm going to give you all an assignment. Go to your local library. Get a library card if you don't already have one (and shame on you if you don't). Check out a book that some person or group has tried, at one time or another, to ban from school or public libraries. This is, after all, where most challenges to books come from.

It doesn't have to be a work of great literature, although people have tried to ban many of those. It can be a children's novel or series of novels...In some years in the recent past, the Harry Potter series, by J. K. Rowling, was one of the most challenged books, collectively in the year. It can be a fantasy book or series...J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series has not only been banned, according to information on the American Library Association's website, but was actually burned here in the United States in the not-so-distant past.

Speaking of burning books, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, about a future culture where firemen don't put out fires, they go into people's homes and collect all the books they find and burn them. Good book, and one well worth reading or re-reading.

Anyway, go read a book. Go read a banned or challenged book. And talk about it. Let people know that you will not stand for disappearing a book from library or bookstore shelves just because someone else doesn't like what that books says. It's a First Amendment issue.

Utah gets mooned...well, almost

2011-09-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

I see on Yahoo! News that about 3,000 people in Salt Lake City stripped down to their underwear on Saturday and ran from downtown to the state Capitol, where they circled the Capitol building, protesting what they characterized as the "uptight" laws of Utah.

Apparently, the organizers of the run said people couldn't run in the nude, but panties and bras, nightgowns, and boxer shorts were perfectly acceptable garb for the protest as the runners showed their frustration over and disapproval of conservative policies in the state.

I like this as a form of protest. It's non-violent. It grabs attention. And, maybe best of all, it was a creative way of making the protesters' point. And, yes, it was underwear, and some people might have been offended, but from the photos I saw no one was wearing anything more revealing that might be worn at a public swimming pool. In other words, nothing any more revealing than might be seen on a typical broadcast of "Dancing With the Stars"

The only thing that would have made it better, as far as I'm concerned, would have been if they'd also run a circuit around Temple Square. Oh, I know. Church security would have had a fit and started detaining people. Still, considering the influence that the Mormons have on Utah politics, it would have been relevant. And with the numbers the protesters had, some might have gotten away with it.

And those WTF moments just keep on coming...

2011-09-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting on this for nearly a week.

Can't do it any longer, because I'm still angry about it.

I'm ~~talking~~ writing, of course, about the idiots who cheered and laughed and yelled out "Yes!" when the question of possibily letting an uninsured coma patient die for the lack of health insurance came up at a Republican presidential candidates' debate at the beginning of the week. I'm also writing about the huge, yawning, nearly universal silence regarding the incident from the candidates participating in the debate, the rest of the Republican party, politicians otherwise affiliated, and the media.

Oh, there were a few who mildly criticized the audience members who apparently believe that anyone who lacks health insurance should just die, but as far as I was able to find, there really wasn't much comment at all about the incident. If there was any, I'd love it if you all, dear readers, would point me to the coverage of those comments.

Mostly, the reaction of those people in the debate audience made me sick. But it also brought up some questions.

Aren't those the same Tea Party types who were incensed about so-called "death panels" they said would be instituted if President Obama's health care legislation passed? And how many of the people appearing to think that people without insurance being left to die is something to be celebrated are the same ones who characterize themselves as "pro-life" and would outlaw abortion, even in the case of rape or incest? My question for them is, do they really mean to say that the right to life ends at birth?

Oh, well. I suppose they're just being consistent. They are probably the same people who congregate outside of prisons where executions are being carried out, laughing and celebrating. Certainly, there were also cheers that night when the number of executions presided over by candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry was mentioned.

Except for one problem. The only "crime" committed by the ininsured is being too poor to afford insurance. And that isn't even always the case. Some follks are without insurance because their employers have dropped their coverage to save the business money. And many people are denied insurance coverage that they are able and willing to pay for simply becuase they have a "preexisting condition". So, I guess, what those cheering people in that audience were really saying is that if you're poor, or if you work for a cheap company (or a company that simply can no longer afford to pay outrageous insurance premiums), or even if you've just been sick before, you deserve to die. It isn't a simple case of people not "taking responsibility", as candidate Ron Paul seemed to imply in his comments during the debate.

I thought writing about this would help diffuse my anger about this. Get it out of my system.

Yeah. Not so much.

What?...Just, What???

2011-08-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

I'm having one of those seriously WTF moments, so please bear with me.

Today on my Facebook, one of my acquaintances there posted that they had become aware of a bumper sticker that asked those who read it to "pray for Obama" and then offered the Old Testament verse, Psalms 109:8, which reads,

Let his days be few, And let another take his office.

Some might find that innocuous, just asking for prayer that the president be out of office after not being there very much longer.

However, I wonder how many would still be comfortable with that sentiment if they saw that verse in its context. The verse starts out with the Psalmist, traditionally David according to the dedication at the beginning of the chapter, complaining that the "wicked" and the "deceitful" had spoken against him, have "rewarded me evil for good, And hatred for my love", and then launches into quite the tirade:

6 Set a wicked man over him,
And let an accuser stand at his right hand.
7 When he is judged, let him be found guilty,
And let his prayer become sin.
8 Let his days be few,
And let another take his office.
9 Let his children be fatherless,
And his wife a widow.
10 Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg;
Let them seek their bread also from their desolate places.
11 Let the creditor seize all that he has,
And let strangers plunder his labor.
12 Let there be none to extend mercy to him,
Nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
13 Let his posterity be cut off,
And in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

Clearly, the implication...no, not even implication, but overt call...is for the death of the "wicked" and "deceitful" person he is complaining about. By implication, that bumper sticker is calling for the death of the president, and for the ruin of his entire family, both now and in the future.

Aside from the violence called down on his family, which seems a bit like overkill to me; isn't it considered treason to call for the death of the president? Certainly, there were those during the time of Bush.2 who considered it treason to even criticize the president, let alone threaten him.

But the Psalmist doesn't stop there; he continues on:

14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD,
And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15 Let them be continually before the LORD,
That He may cut off the memory of them from the earth;
16 Because he did not remember to show mercy,
But persecuted the poor and needy man,
That he might even slay the broken in heart.
17 As he loved cursing, so let it come to him;
As he did not delight in blessing, so let it be far from him.
18 As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment,
So let it enter his body like water,
And like oil into his bones.
19 Let it be to him like the garment which covers him,
And for a belt with which he girds himself continually.
20 Let this be the LORD’s reward to my accusers,
And to those who speak evil against my person.*

Um.

I did not vote for George W. Bush as president, and I did not support the majority of his policies. However, I never, ever prayed for his death. I hoped that he would have a nice, long, happy retirement as soon as he could legally be removed from office, and wasn't as hesitant as some to consider that he might have committed an impeachable offense. But I did not wish him harm, nor did I wish harm or unhappiness to his family, to his ancestors or to his descendants.

I find it incredibly disrespectful for people who portray themselves as Christians to call, even in this passive-aggressive way, for the death of the sitting president. I would find it incredibly disrespectful for anyone of any faith, or of no faith at all, to do so. But I was raised to believe that Christians are better than that. I don't believe that most Christians would do that.

So, I guess my question here is, What the hell is wrong with this (hopefully) small subset of people, that they feel entitled to wish for...no, advocate that people actively pray for...the death of someone who they don't agree with? I don't agree with a lot of people, but I don't wish any of them dead.

However, that post is going to be removed from my Facebook feed, because I cannot let such a sentiment remain on my Facebook page. I suppose that, arguably, under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the person who posted that has a right to do so. I, however, do not violate that person's speech rights by not facilitating dissemination of her speech.

Additionally, I'm going to have to seriously consider whether I can keep the individual who posted it on as a Facebook friend.

*This translation, by the way, is the New King James Version, which I found at biblegateway.com.

Proving once again that I am, indeed, a geek...

2011-08-24T12:10:00.001-07:00

As part of a continuing effort to get a blog centered on history and related topics started, I've been writing some sample posts to try to figure out exactly how I want to approach the new blog.

I started out with the idea that it would be a simple "On this day..." sort of exercise, but I've pretty much decided that the approach is a) too limiting of what I'm aiming to do and b) way too overdone. I'd like to remain open to doing that sort of entry on a regular but not constant basis, but I want it to be more, as well. So, the blog is not ready to go live yet. On the other hand, I've had some interesting experiences in reading and writing the sample posts.

For example, I that today is the fifth anniversary of the demotion of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet. I thought that would be an interesting event to note, and decided to take a quick look to see if I could find out about the story behind the event. What ensued was two-and-a-half or three hours really interesting (to me, anyway) research and the writing of a blog post summarizing what I'd learned.

I had fun with it. I don't want it to go to waste, but since the new blog is not ready to unleash on the world just yet, I thought I'd share it here.

And so, this is what I learned about Pluto, dwarf planets and the International Astronomical Union:

One of the things I most love about history, and about historical events, is that it is possible to start with one event and end up roaming around in any subject area imaginable.

Take the redefinition of the term "planet". On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is the internationally recognized body given the authority to assign designations to astronomical bodies, redefined - or rather, created an official definition of - the term. Apparently, there hadn't been an official definition previous to this time. By codifing a definion, they read Pluto out of the nine planets of our solar system and into the newly designated classification of "dwarf planet".

I intended to take a quick look to see exactly what that definition was, how a planet differs from a dwarf planet, and why they (perhaps that should be "they") decided that Pluto was not one but the other. It should have taken fifteen or twenty minutes, tops, not least because the Internet is a wonderful thing.

Right? Well, not really. I learned in the course of a couple of hours of research that the redefinition is not as universally accepted as the IAU would have the world think. I also found out some things about the outer reaches of the solar system that are just amazing, and that the picture of that part of our galactic neighborhood is much different from that I learned about as a child entranced by the very idea of outer space.

To begin with, while it seems at first glance as if the category of dwarf planet was engineered mostly to have something to call Pluto once it was removed from the list of planets, it turns out that there are other objects in the category, and that Pluto isn't even the most massive of the four largest of its new kind. It turns out that there are a lot of things and a lot more complexity than was thought to the region beyond Neptune, now the outermost planet since the demotion of Pluto, and that small planet-like objects in that region are called Trans-Neptunian objects. There are, according to some sources, up to 1,200 of these objects. I also discovered that this region beyond Neptune is made up of three areas, which overlap to at least a certain degree.

There is the Kuiper belt, which is similar to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter but twenty times as wide and twenty to two hundred times as massive as the asteroid belt. It extends from the orbit of Neptune to about 55 astronomical units (AU). An astronomical unit, in case you missed science class that day, is the rough distance between the Earth and the Sun, more or less 93 million miles. Then there is the scattered disc, which overlaps and lies beyond the Kuiper belt, which stretches from around 30 to 35 AU from the Sun to well beyond 100 AU from the Sun and reaches well above and well below the plane of the ecliptic, the plane on which the planets orbit around the Sun.

Beyond the scattered disc is the Oort Cloud, which is still a hypothetical construct since there have been no confirmed direct observations of it. The Oort cloud probably reaches out to around 50,000 AU from the Sun, nearly a light year out and almost a quarter of the way to Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, although some estimates put its outer edge as far as 100,000 to 200,000 AU out. That's a very long way. The objects in the Oort cloud are only loosely bound to the solar system and can be affected by the gravitational influence of passing stars and of the galaxy itself. The objects in this region are mostly icy and likely came into being much nearer the Sun but were scattered by gravitational interaction with the outer, giant planets. It is believed that most long-period comets originate in either the scattered disc or the Oort Cloud.

All of which is very interesting, but I set out to find out about Pluto and why it is no longer considered a planet. Pluto was discovered, officially speaking, on February 18, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, from images taken on January 23 and January 29, 1930 at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, although it had been seen in other astronomical images at least sixteen times previously, beginning in 1909 at Yerkes Observatory. It was named for the Greek god of the underworld on March 24, 1930.

Because Pluto is so far away, coming as close as just less than 30 AU but going as far away as just less than 49 AU from the Sun, it is difficult to study. It is known that Pluto has four satellites that orbit very near the planet. In fact, its largest moon, Charon, is so large and close (the two are only 12,200 miles apart, less than the distance between London, in the UK, and Sydney, Australia), that the two have been described as a dwarf double planet. Pluto's diameter is about 66 percent that of Earth's Moon and it has a thin atmosphere of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. Some fuzzy photos of Pluto have been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, but astronomers will have to wait for a clearer view when NASA's New Horzons mission, which was launched on January 19, 2006, makes its closest approach on July 14, 2015. As an intereting aside, some of discoverer Clyde Tombaugh's ashes are aboard the New Horizon probe.

Again, all very interesting. Still, the point, spurred by the notation of the IAU's new definition of "planet" on this day five years ago, was to find out why Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Well, here's the thing. A resolution by the IAU said that in order to be a planet, an astronomical body must be in orbit around the Sun (or, I assume, a sun). It must be massive enough to be a sphere by its own gravitational force. And, it must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit of other interplanetary debris. The third item in the definition is the sticking point where Pluto is concerned. It is slightly more complicated than that, but this is a history blog, not a science blog, all appearences to the contrary today.

As I mentioned up-post, at the same time that the IAU created its new definition of a planet, it also created a definition of dwarf planets, which is essentially the same thing as a planet, except that a dwarf planet has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit of debris. And so that is what Pluto is considered to be now, a dwarf planet. This despite the fact that another of the four largest dwarf planets in the solar system, Haumea, which was named for the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth, is not spherical (item number one of the definition of a planet or a dwarf planet), but is shapred more like an American football. Which leads me to believe, if I might be allowed an opinion, that there is something wrong with the definitions.

Apparently, not even everyone in the astronomical community agrees that Pluto is not a planet. After a conference at Johns Hopkins University on August 14 - 16, 2008, a report was released stating that scientists could not come to a consensus regarding the definition of a planet. Well, they get to have an opinion, even if you and I don't, but there was also a certain amount of controversy among the public when Pluto was read out of the list of planets. I know, when I heard about it, my reaction was something like, "Hey, wait a minute..." And if asked how many planets there are, I still automatically answer, "Nine."

So, you see, you can attempt to find out about one particular event in history and end up learning about astronomy. Or geology, or mathematics, or biology, or politics, or construction, or business. Or, really, anything. And that is a good thing, I think. Certainly, I learned a few things I didn't know as I researched today's post.

I promise, this blog won't turn into Your Daily Science Lesson. But some things are just too interesting not to follow up on.

When Dinosarus Walked the Earth (or something)...

2011-08-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

Well, that's it. Another birthday come and nearly gone (I've still got an hour and eight minutes until it's over, as I write this).

I suppose I'm of an age when I should really stop celebrating my birthdays, or even acknowledging them. After all, as of today, I can officially order from the Senior menu at Denny's. And some people would probably tell me that I really need to start being secretive about my age, so better not to mention birthdays at all.

Rubbish.

I like birthdays, my own and other people's. Any excuse for a party is fine with me. Not that I had a party this year. Which is also fine. I did get a free lunch (again, at Denny's; did you know that if you go in on your birthday and show your ID to prove that it really is your birthday, you can get a free Grand Slam breakfast?). And I knitted with friends. And I got lots of birthday greetings on Facebook, greetings from at least three continents.

And I don't have a problem with admitting my age. (I'm 55 now, for those of you who don't know the Denny's menu.) I got here honestly, and it would be fairly stupid not to admit to it. It also means that I've seen a few things, and that I remember some things that are only history (maybe even ancient history) to younger generations.

So, you know, I don't mind saying that when I was born, Dwight Eisenhower was president, no one had been into outer space, and there were only 48 states. I saw Nikita Khrushchev's train when he visited the United States in the late 1950s. I heard tests of the rocket engines that took astronauts to the moon (the test facility was on a mountain across the valley from where I grew up). I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and where I was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

And, damn it, I've earned every gray hair in my head.

So what if I'm now the age my grandmother was when I was born? I'm having much more fun, on the whole, that I ever did when I was in my 20s.

Getting older? Yes. Growing up? Not if I can help it...

2011-08-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

I hate those, "Oh, my God, I'm old" moments. Like the one I just had over on Facebook.

Although I suppose it's appropriate, since tomorrow is my birthday.

One of my friends posted on Facebook, talking about a co-worker of hers who made a comment to the effect that Enya shouldn't be called a "New Age" artist becuase she had records come out in the 90s, and that's old.

My response was:

Your co-worker makes the 90s sound like so long ago. Sheesh, I remember the first time the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show. I was only 7 years old. Closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had. No, really.

And it's the truth. I was 7 years old in February, 1964, when the Beatles first came to the United States and appeared on the Sullivan show. I had already gone to bed. There was school the next day, and my bedtime at that age was 7:30 p.m. on school nights. But my parents were watching the show, and suddenly I heard this wonderful noise coming from the living room. I had to get up and see what it was.

It was amazing, was what it was. I'd never heard anything like it, and I liked what I heard and what I saw. A lot. Changed my life. I was not kidding when I said it was the closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had. Starting the next day, when my friends were running home after school to watch cartoons, I was running home to watch to local versions of American Bandstand. There were a couple of them in the Los Angeles area that came on every afternoon.

What can I say. I was a precocious kid, anyway, and that music was infectious. That Sunday evening and the days following gave me a love of music that I retain to this day.

So, anyway. Now I feel old. Just because someone on Facebook knowns someone who thinks that something from the 90s is old. Ah, well. You're only as old as you feel, and if its too loud, you're too old. Honestly, I have days where it is too loud, and I am too old.

But there are those other days, the ones where there's no such thing as loud enough if the right song is playing. I may be getting older, but I refuse...simply refuse...to grow up.

It's that time of year...

2011-08-21T10:08:00.001-07:00

I've finally figured out one of the things that has had me in a bad mood recently. Besides the dismal work situation, that is.

It's time for school to start. My roommate goes back to teaching tomorrow; the local CSU campus also goes back tomorrow, the local community college has been in session for a week already, and a good friend starts her first semester of upper division work at Cal on Thursday. And I'm jealous.

I always loved school. Well, I didn't like the homework sometimes, and the tests, and junior high and high school were a rocky time for me (isn't it for everyone?). But the whole school thing? I love it.

Of course, when I was in school, we never started this early. The first day of school was always the Monday closest to the 15th of September, and the last day of school was the Wednesday closest to the 15th of June. But still, every year I get nostalgic about the ritual that surrounds going back to school for another year.

I never liked going shopping for school clothes; I've never been into the fashion thing, not then and not now. But shopping for school supplies? Heaven. Organizing those supplies for classes? In other areas, I've never been that organized a person, but for school, I was always the most organized student in the room.

And the best part? Going down to the school the weekend before classes started was always a highlight. In elementary school, the class lists would be posted on the front doors of the main building on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, and especially when I went to the school just around the corner from my house, I'd start checking at about noon on Friday to see if they were up yet. I just couldn't wait to see who my teacher would be and which of my friends would be in my class that year.

In junior high and high school, it was a little different. Some years we had to wait until the first morning of school to see what our schedules would be; other years, first-period classes would be posted over the weekend, and then we would get our schedules once we got to that class on Monday morning.

Yes. I know. We've established here before that I am a geek. Why would I be any different about school?

So, anyway...it seems like nearly everyone I know is going back to school but me, and this makes me sad. I'll get over it once the year has progressed far enough that people are complaining about homework and exams...either taking them or making them up...but for now, I miss the excitement of going back to school.

Various and sundry on a Friday afternoon...

2011-08-19T12:56:00.000-07:00

Yikes. It's been a month again since I've posted.

After that spate of posts in the middle of July, I thought I was back to writing on a regular basis (or at least on as regular a basis as I've ever posted here). But not so much, apparently.

And, it isn't as if I haven't had the time to post something. I was without transportation except for my feet and the bus for the entire month of July, and then a couple of weeks ago, my work hours were cut back drastically. This is not good news, considering that fact that the unemployment rate in my area is over 16 percent. So, I've been trying to figure out how to get some new revenue streams going, with not much success so far. At least, with school starting, I can get out there in the next couple of weeks and try to drum up some tutoring business.

I think that might be part of why I haven't been posting much. My paying gig involves writing news on the finance markets...stocks, oil, and metals, mostly...and it's just all so depressing that I just haven't felt like doing much of anything much of the time. I don't care what the politicians have been trying to sell, the economy is not getting any better, nor is it likely to for the forseeable future.

I did see, in relation to this, that Michelle Bachmann is out on the campaign trail claiming that if she is elected president, she'll make sure that the price of gasoline goes back down to $2 per gallon. Yeah, right. Anyone who believes that she - or any president - has the power to do that, deserveds her as president. And Rick Perry called Ben Bernanke (he's the head of the Federal Reserve) a traitor for his monetary policy.

Come on, kids. It's over a year until the general election. Can we at least save the character assassination and pie-in-the-sky promises until after Christmas?

This is probably another reason I haven't been writing here much. I tend to get snarky at the least provocation these days. Maybe it's the weather, although we've actually had a milder-than-normal summer here in Central California. It hasn't been cool by any means, but we also haven't had nearly as many as 100-degree plus days as we usually do (something I hope continues for the rest of the summer). So, you know, if this is climate change, it's at least changing for the slightly better around here.

At least I've been doing something productive this summer, hatching plans for some writing ventures that I think might have potential and knitting some things for donation to a local shelter once the weather gets cooler. It might not get as cold here as it does in some parts for the country and the world during the winter, but there are people who will need scarves and stuff to keep them warm. And, when a good friend's yarn shop closed last year (has it been that long?), I took home a lot of the donation yarn people had given her to make things for a local charity. I'd been wondering what to do with it all until I decided one day that scarves are quick and easy to knit, and giving them away would uphold the purpose the people who had donated the yarn had in mind for it.

So. That's my summer so far. Snark and knitting (and you don't know just how well those two things get along until you've spend some time on Ravelry - go Google it if you don't know what it is) and trying not to get to depressed by work and the things I write about there. How's yours been so far?

Borders: all but gone...

2011-07-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

Borders is going to bankruptcy court Thursday to ask permission to liquidate and close its stores. If this permission is granted, the liquidation sales could start as early as Friday and all its stores will likely be closed by the end of September. It has already closed a third of its stores and was working to get out of bankruptcy, but that isn't going to happen now.

It's sad to see any bookstore close, ever. I love the Internet, but I still prefer my books physical and in my hands. I'm old-fashioned, I guess. And I don't really like even buying actual books on-line, because I don't really like buying anything online. I like to be able to see what I'm buying before I pay for it. Again, old-fashioned. What do you want? I was born in 1956. You know, back when dinosaurs walked the earth.

That said, however, I'm not as sad to see Borders going. I never liked Borders much. The stores I've been in have never been organized very well, have not always had what I was looking for, and often had uninformed and unhelpful employees.

This was not universally the case, I have to say. I was in one Borders store in Southern California a couple of years ago and was looking for a particular book that was just out in paperback. After looking in all the sections where the book, which was Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi, could have been and not finding, I asked an employee about it. He looked in all the places I had looked, just to see if I had missed it, but it wasn't there. And then he said he thought he might have seen the boxes still in back and unpacked. He disappeared and then returned a few minutes later with a copy of the book for me.

Still, I had more bad than good experiences in Borders, including one time asking an employee in my local store here in Fresno where the anthropology section was, and being asked in return, "What's anthropology?" I finally found the section on my own, but it would have been helpful to have a magnifying glass. The section was that small.

So, I guess it's goodbye to Borders. I'll continue to shop across the street at Barnes and Noble, where the selection is better and the employees much more knowledgeable and helpful. And where the sales are much much better. Now, if they'd just get their comfy chairs back.

I'll be cross-posting this over at my poor, neglected books and reading blog Reading With [an] Attitude at some point this evening.

The disaster that didn't happen...

2011-07-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

Carmageddon...catchy name. And, it turns out, a non-event.

Reports out of Los Angeles say that officials started re-opening the 405 freeway around noon on Sunday, long before the Monday morning goal, with the possibility that it will be fully open by 3 p.m.

I wondered what that noise coming from the south was awhile ago; it was clearly the collective sigh of millions of commuters who have to take the L.A. freeways to work tomorrow morning.

I have to say that I'm proud of my home region. This weekend was a huge opportunity for the inhabitants of the Los Angeles area to live down to the stereotypes they are so often pinned with: selfish, self-absorbed, pursuing their own pleasure and comfort without thought for anyone else.

Instead, they proved what I've known all along, having grown up in Southern California: people there are just like everyone else. They pitch in and help when the need arises, as it did this weekend.

I really don't understand some people...

2011-07-16T22:24:00.000-07:00

I need someone to explain this to me, because I just don't get it.

In the wake of the Casey Anthony verdict, from what I've been reading, people have been sending death threats to the jurors who found her not guilty of killing her daughter.

Death threats.

Really? For doing their job?

I get not agreeing with the verdict. It was unexpected, to say the least. Much of the evidence that made it into the media seemed to indicate that she was culpable in some way for her daughter's death, even if the actual death of the child had been accidental. Certainly, she had already long since been convicted in the media, by the media. And, goodness knows, the sudden and appaarently violent death of a child is upsetting.

So, yeah. I get disagreeing with the verdict. I even sort of get being upset about it, especially in light of the frenzy whipped up about the case by certain members of the punditry. I won't mention any names, since some of those people seem to take exception to being criticized for their broadcasts, but most of you probably know who I'm talking about.

But, really.

The jury was simply doing its job, which was to weigh the evidence and decide whether or not the prosecution had proved its case against Casey Anthony beyond a reasonable doubt. Because that's how it works in the United States judicial system. The prosecution has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant commited whatever crime he or she is accused of.

I understand that there is a sizeable portion of the population that has a problem with this system. Nevertheless, that is the way the legal system in the United States works. I think this is a good thing. The government has many resources to assemble evidence that a person is guilty. Many times, the defendant has no resources at all, excpet an overworked and over-tired public defender. That is not an equal playing field. And sometimes people are not guilty. Not saying that is the case in the Anthony trial; I don't have a clue. I didn't hear all the evidence presented in court. The jury did.

Anyway...the jury's job in a criminal case is to listen to the evidence presented by both sides and decide whether or not the prosecution has proved that the accused committed the crime he or she is charged with. The level of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt", not "without a doubt". But not, "well it seems like he or she might have done it", either.

From all the accounts I've heard and read, the jurors in the Anthony case felt that the prosecutors did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that she killed her daughter. I saw a couple of interviews with jurors in which it really sounded like they wanted to convict her, at least of manslaughter. But under the rules they had to operate under, they could not.

Which brings us to the question I want answered: What makes someone threaten to kill someone for doing his or her job while following rules that they did not have any hand in making? I mean, really...threaten to kill them?

Yeah. I don't get that at all. I disagree with a lot of things people do and say, a lot of the time. But I've never threatened anyone of any of those disagreements. I've never even thought about it.

I'm really hoping right now that this does not make me the abnormal one.

Carmageddon?

2011-07-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

Cue the jokes about popping some popcorn and sitting back to see what happens.

No, seriously. Am I the only one who thinks that the hysteria over the closing this weekend of the stretch of the 405 freeway between the 101 and the 10 through Sepulveda Pass is just a little overblown?

Now, before you tell me that I don't understand because I'm not in Southern California, let me say this: I grew up in Southern California. I learned to drive on the freeways in L.A. I know how much Southern Californians love their cars and depend on them. Really. I know all that. And I know how common it is to hop in the car and drive across the county to go to dinner or to Disneyland or just to take a drive. I'm sure that still goes on, even with the soaring price of gasoline.

I'm not sure, however, why it seems so difficult for people who don't have to work to just stay in their neighborhoods for the weekend. Shop in a local store. Eat in a local restaurant. Play in a local park. It's not that hard.

Or is it all the media? Are the people fine with this, calm about it, ready to have a relaxing weekend at home? I suspect that's a lot of it, but i worry about the lookyloos, people who are hearing all this hype and will feel compelled to go out looking for the traffic jams and end up creating them. I know people like that, and I know that there are people like that in Southern California. Maybe more than the usual number. Goodness knows, it's kind of a regional passtime to be Where It's Happening

There are some people I feel sorry for. At the top of the list is people who planned their vacation in L.A. before carmageddon started getting so much time in the media and who couldn't cancel either because they coudn't get another time off from work or they'd already paid for tickets and lodging and couldn't get their money back. Especially the ones who have never been to Southern California.

The other folks I feel sorry for are the ones who have to get to LAX during the weekend, either because they are traveling themselves or because they are picking up or dropping someone off at the airport. Offhand, I can't think of a way to get to LAX without driving on the 405 or intersecting it. Getting into the airport isn't always horrible, but it can be and I suspect it will be this weekend.

I hope it all turns out well. It isn't as if there haven't been freeway closures in Los Angeles before. Parts of the 5 at the 14, the 10 and the 118 were all closed for various periods of time (but definitely longer than a weekend) in the aftermath of the Northridge Earthquake in 1994. That wasn't the first closure of the interchange of the 5 and the 14; it collapsed first in the 1971 Sylmar quake.

All in all, as much as I love Southern California, I'm glad I'll be watching this one from a safe distance. Fresno is a safe distance, right? But I'll be honest. I'll be checking the news from time to time, just to check on the number of Sig Alerts issued during the weekend.

Don't know what a Sig Alert is? Go look it up.

And yes, I deliberately didn't leave a link. Do you want me to do all your work for you?

In which I demonstrate one of the reasons for the name of this blog...

2011-07-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to write a book. It's non-fiction, so there is a certain amount of research involved. The conventional wisdom is that at some point you need to stop researching and start writing. I'm getting better at that. Well, I'm getting better at writing as I research, which is a start, I suppose.

Anyway, I had to run some errands day before yesterday, and while I was out I needed to have lunch. I had suspected that this might end up being the case, so I took a book along, one that I'm reading, or re-reading, actually, as research. And so as I ate (a pizza, Canadian bacon and pineapple; it was very good), I read.

Well, I tried to read. You see, when I'm reading something really interesting, I tend to read a little and then think a lot about what I've read. I often make marginal notes, and make notes in my current writer's notebook besides. And sometimes, I indulge in a bit of Tangents 101. Which means I read three or four pages and ended up with four pages of my notebook filled with notes that really have very little to do with what I'm writing about. Or, at least, they demonstrate the John Muir saying about how everything in the universe is connected to everything else.

Sometimes the connection is very tenuous. Other times it is clearly identifiable but no especially relevant to what I'm supposed to be doing.

The book in question is Kenneth Miller's Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution (Perennial, 1999). It's a really good book which, as I indicated above, I've read before. A couple of times. I'm reading it this time because I'm writing about anthropology, and evolution is a key concept within the field, especially within biological anthropology. So, it is on-topic in a number of ways. In other ways, not so much.

Today's problem was that I got to page 38, and Miller was writing about the origins and early evolution of life. Specifically, he was discussing the long period of time between the time of the first, prokaryotic cells (cells without nuclei), and the appearance of eukaryotic cells (those are cells that have nuclei), and the long period thereafter between those cells and the appearance of the first multi-celled organisms. Now, all of this is a subject of infinite fascination for me. And so I made some notes about how much I'm interested in this, in beginnings of all kinds. Who knows, I might want to write about it at some point.

Somehow, from the beginnings of life I ended up at the beginning of the universe, and how difficult a subject that is for me for various philosophical reasons. Difficult, but also fascinating. I also ended up at how questions of the beginning of the universe and of life are subjects that tread all over both science and religion.

But that isn't all.

Miller also gets into, on the same page, the questions science has concerning whether or not the earliest multi-cellular organisms there is evidence of (from Australia, in the Ediacaran Hills, he says, although there has probably been further research since he wrote in 1999) are or are not directly related to organisms alive today, or whether all life on earth today is descended from other organisms that came into being separately, somewhere else. This is another idea that really tickles my imagination, and I spent some time on that as well.

Yeah. I was in the restaurant for a full hour after I had finished eating, playing around with these ideas. Didn't really make any progress in the research toward what I'm trying to write. Made myself want to go off and read about the origin of life and the origin of the universe and the geological history of the Earth

All of which also goes to explain why it takes me so long to read a book sometimes.

I'm so confused...or, That's a really stupid attitude

2011-05-19T16:52:00.001-07:00

Question for you all: When you're listening to the radio in the car, do you ever get so angry and what you are hearing that you nearly have to pull over and stop?

Happened to me today, on the way to the grocery store and on the way home as well. I was listening to a local "classic rock" (in quotations, because some of what they play isn't especially classic in my opinion, but whatever), and the DJ was on about The (former) Governator (that would be Arnold Schwarzneggar for all of you non-Californians) and his recently-revealed behavior. Was the DJ criticizing Ah-nold for having an affair? No. Was he congratulating him in that way some males have sometimes, for "getting some"? Not that, either.

No. He was raking the former governor over the coals for having had an affair with a woman who was uglier than his wife.

Yeah. You read that correctly. This guy was getting lots of jaw mileage over the fact that Arnold Schwarzneggar had sex, and even conceived a child with, a woman who was not sufficiently beautiful. And, by extension, criticizing the woman for being ugly, and implying that only those who are movie-star beautiful should expect to get to have sex. Or anyway, that sure sounded to me like the subtext of his remarks.

This isn't the only place I've heard comment of one sort or another about the looks of the woman in question. I was half-watching The View yesterday while I was working, and when they showed a photo of this woman, half the audience gasped, as if to say, "He had sex with her?" Whoopi Goldberg offered a critique of that attitude, but the fact remains that a certain (probably fairly high) percentage of the American people have the attitude that a woman who is less than young and beautiful has no business having sex, and that anyone who would have sex with such a woman has something wrong with them, and a big movie star like Arnold S. (because he does have a long-ass last name, and I'm tired of typing it out) has even something more wrong with him if he does so.

This isn't new. We heard the same thing when Bill Clinton's affair, or whatever it was, with Monica Lewinsky was revealed. There were lot of comments such as, "But she's fat" and "She's not very pretty". Clinton was a powerful man; why would he stoop to having sex with a non-beautiful woman?

What it all goes back to is how women are marginalized, and how women who are not-young, not-pretty and not-thin are marginalized even more. I suppose what surprised me was that this guy on the radio was trying to marginalize Arnold for being with an already marginalized woman. And, in the question he was asking his audience, and soliciting comment about, was "Why would a man have an affair with a woman who was uglier than his wife?" Which, of course, was also a comment on Maria Shriver's looks.

I don't know. I guess the question that I'm really trying to get to is, Why does it even matter what a person looks like? I'm not saying that I don't notice good-looking me, and don't trade comments about who's hot and who's not. But, as a practical matter, in interpersonal relationships, why does it even matter to people outside the relationship, what the parties to the relationship look like? It is vastly more important to me what a person is like. Are they nice, are they funny, are they smart? If they're good-looking as well, well, that's bonus. But looks are not the starting point and the stopping point in deciding whether I want to be friends, or lovers, for that matter, with a man.

Ah, well. This has turned into a rant. Sorry. But it is just one of those situations that occasionally makes me wonder if I was sent to the wrong planet when I was born.

Because I just don't understand.

The tirade I've been trying to protect you from, dear readers...

2011-04-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

I'm still here.

I've thought to post several times recently, but each time I was so riled up about something or other that I decided I'd spare you all the tirade.

I think I'm going to have to stop watching and reading the news entirely. "Hell in a handbasket" comes to mind whenever I do pay attention, and I find it just all so depressing, whether it's politics or the world situation or the things that the media chooses to focus on.

The idea of not paying attention to the news goes very much against my grain; I'm a news junkie from way, way back. But the more I pay attention, the more cynical I become. News isn't news anymore; it's more like "let's see who can shout the loudest and get the most attention". Facts don't seem to matter any more as politicians (from every part of the spectrum, sad to say) seem to beleive that saying something makes it so, no matter if what they are saying has any basis in reality or not.

There is one example in particular that I'm thinking of right now. I can't recall the politician's name at the moment, but he made a statement recently that government funding to Planned Parenthood because "90 percent" of their money is made through providing abortions. Or somthing like that. Which is, as far as I know, not really the case at all. I'm not taking issue so much with the fact that he said this, but with his staff's behavior afterward. When he was called on his statistic by others, his staff put out a statement that he did not intend for his statement to be factual.

Huh? Did they really come right out and say that he lied deliberately, and that it was really okay that he lied? I'm really not sure what to do with that, other than to suggest that this sort of thing is exactly why people answer the question, "How do you know when a politician is lying?" with, "When his or her lips are moving."

But...it's a nice day, so I really don't want to dwell on this sort of negative. So, I'm going to go read a book or something, and look forward to going out with friends tonight.

Have a nice Easter weekend, everyone.

Time flies (and it's also wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey)...

2011-03-07T20:23:00.001-08:00

Okay. Where did the time go?

Oh. That's right. There's work, and knitting, and reading, and SCA and the real world (which keeps interfering with all the fun stuff). You know how it goes.

Also, there's the very real issue that I've just been in a cranky mood, and I really don't want to make this the "LMA only blogs when she's pissed off about something" blog. That just doesn't make for good reading. Once in awhile, yes. Not as a steady thing.

I've also been dealing with the books and reading blog I started just before the beginning of the year. I have been posting over there, so I haven't been completely absent from the blogosphere. You should come over there and visit, and see what a reading geek I am.

I've been knitting...

2011-01-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

I've been busy knitting recently. This is one of the projects I completed earlier this month. Just thought I'd share something colorful on this gray Sunday morning.

Violent political rhetoric and the First Amendment

2011-01-09T10:50:00.001-08:00

I keep thinking that I need to write something about what happened in Tuscon yesterday, but I'm not sure exactly what to say, except that this sort of thing has to stop.

I think it was interesting that during a news conference late yesterday afternoon, the Sheriff of the county Tuscon is in (sorry, I'm winging this and I don't know the name of the county and I want to get this out before I forget what I want to say, so I'm not going to stop to look it up) called out the "vitriolic rhetoric" of some radio and television broadcasters as contributing to a climate which can inflame those with "mental issues" (which is how he described the young man in custody for the shootings), that they are "more susceptible" to the influence of such things Nevada candidate Sharron Angle's statements about "Second Amendment solutions" and a map posted around the Internet that marked with firearm crosshairs the districts of congressmen and women that some on the right want to see defeated.

Well, this morning on some of the Sunday morning political talk shows, some were taking issue with the Sheriff's comments and suggetion that the nation needs to do some soul-searching about the character of some recent political rhetoric. There were complaints that since we don't know the shooting suspect's motivations, the comments by the Sheriff were premature and inappropriate. They also seemed to be trying to say that to complain about what some candidates and pundits have said that could be construed as promoting violence against some other candidates is tantamount to violating the First Amendment.

First of all, I don't think that what ends up being identified as the shooter's motive has anything to do with the question. Even if he was just a "lone nut" (something the Sheriff said yesterday afternoon that his department was not at all convinced was the case) whose motivation was not so much political as pathological, his obvious target was a member of Congress, one who had been threatened by those on the right before and who had been targeted on the list that accompanied that map with the crosshairs on it. That alone, regardless of motivation, makes the discussion of recent political rhetoric appropriate.

Second, but no less important, I beleive it is settled law that the First Amendment does not cover speech and actions that can be interpreted as incitements to riot or violence. You can't get up in front of a crowd and urge them to run amok. And you can't say things about using "Second Amendment remedies" with a wink and a nod. In saying that, you might well be speaking metaphorically (although sometimes, I don't think those who say those things are being metaphorical at all). The problem is, some of the people who are hearing you say it might believe you mean what you say literally, and take it upon themselves to act on it. What you say might not even be actionable, in terms of being charged as an accomplice in an act like the shootings in Tuscon. But my position is that those who say such things don't have entirely clean hands when such events do occur.

This does not mean that I'm advocating that there should not be discussions in which political differences are aired. Not at all. Those disucssions are fully covered by the First Amendment. You can't stop someone saying that they don't agree with another person or with a government policy. You can't stop someone speculating about events, even about dire conspiracies that are mostly in the minds of those who believe in them. They are protected by the First Amendment. But threatening harm to someone who does not agree with you, or who you think is doing something politically nefarious, is most assuredly not covered by the amendment, just like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not covered by free speech guarantees.

I think the bottom line in all of this is that our society (and I mean that globally) needs to get over the idea of some people that just because they are angry about something, they have the right to go out and kill who they are angry at and maybe a bunch more people, just because they are angry. Because it isn't just political. We see it all the time these days, sadly, in workplace shootings, in school rampages, and in personal relationships gone bad.

It's madness (but not, in most cases, clinical insanity). And it has to stop.

Resolutions, anyone?

2011-01-01T12:37:00.001-08:00

I don't usually do New Year's Resolutions.

Having said that, however, here are my resolutions for 2011:

1. Read more. I have always been a reader, ever since I learned to read right about the time I turned three years old. Yes. That's very early. But I was an only child and there were no nearby neighbors to play with, so I had to do something with my time. Anyway, for the past few years, first with taking care of my mother, and then after she died, trying to keep my head above water both emotionally and economically, I just didn't have the time or feel the inclination to read as much. Part of it was that I often just couldn't find books I wanted to read that badly. I probably picked up ten or fifteen books and then didn't finish them for every book I read all the way through. Well, my intention with this resolution is to read more, to finish more of what I start to read, and to tell everyone all about it over on my new reading blog, Reading With (an) Attitude.

2. Write more. I write for a living. I like my job a lot, but I want to do much more with my talent, such as it is, than write about the financial markets. Last year, I got a good start on a novel, but then between running into some issues with how I wanted to frame the story and just plain getting too busy with other things so that writing the novel got lost in the shuffle of daily events, my work on it dwindled down to practically nothing. The goal here is to resume work on the novel, with a more specific goal of having a decent first draft finished by the end of the year. That goal should really probably be to have the draft done by the middle of the year, but I do have other obligations, so I'm attempting to not burn myself out by pushing too hard.

3. Walk more. I've got arthritis. It hurts to walk sometimes. But, since I'm now without car, I've got to get over it and get moving. This is not an effort to lose weight, although that would be good too. It is simply an effort to be able to get around and get the things I need to do, done.

4. Knit more. And learn to crochet. I already knit quite a bit. I should actually be working on finishing a project now, since it needs to be done in the next couple of days. But, it's New Year's Day, it's raining outside and I feel lazy. And, it will get done. But, I need to advance in my knitting this year, so that I can make more, and more complicated projects. Specifically, I need to master enough lace knitting to make a shawl this year, and I need to make a sweater this year, just to prove that I can do it. As for the crochet...I can crochet enough to edge a blanket. I need to be able to do more than that, well, just because I need to.

5. Spend more time on the internet forum where I am a moderator. I've been woefully inadequate in that recently, and I need to get back there for that reason, and just because I miss my friends there. If this involves setting up a time management schedule and specifically scheduling time to be there during the week, I'll do that.

And now, my question to you is, what are your resolutions for the New Year? Or, if you didn't make any, why do you choose not to make resolutions?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T16:46:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone.

In some parts of the world, it has already been 2011 for awhile. Here in California, we've still got a bit over seven hours until another year hits the history books for good.

I'm staying in and hiding from all the partiers myself. If you've yet to go out and greet the New Year at a party, have fun and be safe. And if you've already been out and the celebration is over, I hope you had fun and that the New Year holds only wonderful things for you.

I've been busy...

2010-12-30T16:54:00.000-08:00

I tend to get restless during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. It's a week that tends to make me feel like I'm sitting, holding my breath and waitin for something to happen. It is not my favorite week of the year.

Well, this year I put some of that restless energy to work and started a brand new blog. It isn't meant to take the place of this one, mind you. It's just that I've noticed that recently I've been posting a lot of book reviews here, and I've been reading a lot more again. So, the new blog, which is called Reading With (an) Attitude, is now up and running, which means that I can get back to the various and sundry things I write about over here from time to time.

If you've a mind to, click on the title of the new blog in the paragraph above or click here, and come over and see what I've been up to.

Merry, Happy, Joyful, Wonderful, Excellent Holidays...

2010-12-25T12:40:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, everyone.

The presents are open, dinner is in the oven, the (visitng) dog keeps coming by for tummy rubs, and I got to sleep in until 10:30 this morning. The latter is a good thing, since all of us adults in the house were up until 4 in the morning playing cards.

I hope all of your holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, have been and continue to be safe and jolly and full of love and laughter.

It isn't necessarily true that two heads are better than one...

2010-12-16T13:50:00.000-08:00

Do you remember when, a little while ago, I wrote about how an auction house in Los Angeles is in the process of selling Lee Harvey Oswald’s original casket and then asked why anyone would buy the thing?

Well, that seems positively normal compared to a Reuters report I read on Yahoo! News today.

It seems that researchers have found the embalmed head of King Henri IV of France. It was probably, says the article, lost during the French Revolution, when being dead was not a guarantee of being left alone by the revolutionaries if you were an aristocrat. It seem that the graves of French royalty were broken into in 1793, and the remains were desecrated and scattered, with few of the pieces ever recovered.

The head has been radiocarbon dated to around the time of Henri’s death by assassination, but its features also are said to match the known characteristics of his appearance as well as his appearance in portraits.

As someone interested in history, I find this fascinating. The article points out that the head will be reburied next year in the cathedral where it was presumably stolen from. This is as it should be.

However…

There is one thing in the story that really makes me wonder what some people are thinking. Regarding the whereabouts of the head for all these years, the article says, at one point, that the head had been “passed down over the centuries by private collectors”.

Really? Who collects heads? I can’t be the only one who can’t quite get my head (excuse the pun, it is entirely intended) around the idea that people kept a human head as a collector’s item.

Then again, there are persistent stories that someone has Napoleon’s penis out there somewhere. So, who knows.

Book Review: "Blowing My Cover", by Lindsay Moran

2010-12-09T20:15:00.000-08:00

Near the end of her memoir, Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005), Lindsay Moran describes what the CIA does as “A little boys’ game that men continue to play as adults”, and then writes: “The CIA was, and still is, made up of men who are loath to give up playing their game.”

These were her thoughts near the end of her CIA career, which lasted only a few years, in the wake of 9/11 and as she tried to figure out why the United States didn’t know that the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. were coming. They were somber reflections for a somber time, and were part of what led her to resign as a CIA case officer after working in Eastern Europe for several years.

They were appropriate thoughts assessing a career that she had never been completely convinced that she should enter. After filling out her first application to work at the spy agency, she decided not to sent it in and only actually submitted an application a few years later. Even as she was undergoing training to be a case officer - those are the folks who work in other countries and attempt to recruit the real “CIA agents”, what they call assets, who they then encourage to discover and sell their own nation’s secrets, sometimes for a lot of money. She questioned, she says, why she should ask someone else to do something, betray their own country, that she was not willing to do herself. She doubted what she would be doing seriously enough that she discussed with her agency mentor the possibility for working for the agency in another capacity.

But if you expect to find only deep, soul-searching contemplation in Moran’s book, you’ll be disappointed or surprised, depending on your disposition, to find that Moran’s memoir has its share of comic moments, especially as she describes the long course of training she and her cohorts endured on their way to being spies. She spends more than half the book on the training period, which lasted over a year. For example, did you know that CIA trainees hold practice cocktail parties, where they try to recruit their instructors as spies. They also learn extreme driving, how to know when they’re being followed, and cross-country path finding, among many other skills. All of which make more sense to me than cocktail party practice, to be honest.

There were also things in the book that, quite frankly bothered me. One was the confirmation of the idea I’ve had for a long time that at least a certain segment of the CIA community seem to see their activities as a game, something that makes me uncomfortable when you consider that this “game” of theirs sometimes costs real people their lives. And then there the story she told about one of the assets she tried to recruit near the end of her time in Eastern Europe, an individual who had previously been friends with some folks that most likely had ties to al Qaeda. After the 9/11 attacks, she thought it would be helpful to get information from people who knew terrorists and might be able to report on their activities.

In the instance, however, headquarters refused her request and ordered her to cut off contact with the individual she was trying to recruit because he “may at one time have had terrorist ties.” As she asked a colleague, “And how are we going to find anything out if we avoid all the people with terrorist ties?” Which was exactly what I was thinking as I read that her request had been denied. Perhaps if the CIA really didn’t have any intelligence pointing to the attacks, that was the problem. Certainly, she had a point considering some of the people her superiors at the CIA wanted her to keep a relationship with, who clearly didn’t know anything of value and stood little chance of learning such information.

To be honest, I picked Moran’s book up off the shelf at the library primarily because the title interested me. That is, in fact, the way I’ve found some of the best books I’ve ever read. I didn’t really expect much of it, but found that it is compulsively readable. Moran is a good writer and balances the serious and comic aspects of her experience well. It probably isn’t a book that I would be inclined to re-read, but I’m glad I read it.

*****************

You know, I haven't meant to turn this into a book review site, and I don't intend to now. But I've been reading some good books lately and feel like sharing. I hope you all don't mind. I'm just glad that I've finally started finding books again that I'm interested in reading. For several months, I went through a period in which I started more books than I can recall and couldn't think of a good reason to finish any of them. Fortunately, I don't feel the need to finish a book I don't like just because I've started reading it.

My question to you is, do you feel free to put a book that you aren't enjoying down? Or do you feel obligated to finish a book once you start it?

Book Review: "Laurel Canyon", by Michael Walker

2010-12-04T09:50:00.000-08:00

I’ve been trying for several days to write a review of Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood (Faber and Faber, 2006), by Michael Walker, but nothing I’ve written has been anything I’ve wanted to put out into cyberspace for all of you to read. I think I’ve finally figured out why this is so: I haven’t been able to decide whether I liked it or not.

I think I finally have the answer. I mostly liked it, but I think that Walker came to some conclusions about why the Laurel Canyon neighborhood went from singer/songwriter heaven to infamy of a sort that are glib but way too simplistic. Basically, he blames Charlie Manson and the switch in drugs of choice from marijuana and LSD to cocaine. And I’m sure that both those factors had something to do with why the area transformed from a hippie-nirvana party central that was essentially open to all comers to something else entirely. But there were other factors, as well, some of them sociopolitical, some cultural, and some personal, starting with the fact that many of the artists who lived in the area in the sixties and early seventies got ambitious, then got rich, and then moved out for higher-rent areas of Los Angeles, literally and figuratively.

This isn’t the first book I’ve read about Laurel Canyon and its central role in the Los Angeles music scene in the 1960s and early 1970s. It is a place that fascinates me, and not only because I’m a fan of so much of the music that came out of that time and place. I’m also interested in it because all that happened just 35 miles (less, after my family moved from Ventura County to L.A. County) from my doorstep, without my ever realizing it. I have always been attracted to the concept of how things of note can happen so close to a place I know and yet be completely unknown to me as they are happening. That is probably exacerbated by the fact that I grew up in Southern California, where lots of things of note, good and bad, seem to go on.

One of the things Walker does well in his book is to convey a sense of the geography of Laurel Canyon, probably because he lives there himself, and that it was, surprisingly, a neighborhood in the old-fashioned sense of the word, where pretty much everyone knew everyone and managed to remain on more or less friendly terms. In that place and at that time (late ‘60s/early ‘70s), the sometimes mythical idea that the creative and the famous know each other, hang out together, and are friends, wasn’t quite so much a myth. Walker tells stories such as the one about how David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills became Crosby, Stills and Nash because Cass Elliot brought them together because she knew them all from the Canyon.

That is the level at which I liked Walker’s book. He tells good, interesting stories that are reasonably accurate when compared with what I’ve read and heard elsewhere about the Canyon. I think my favorite story is the one about how Jim Morrison was horrible and rude (he was apparently already drunk) to a waitress at one of bars near the Canyon that was frequented by the area’s musical community. She had had enough, and came close to beating the crap out of him with her tray. She stopped herself from hitting him only because she saw what she described as “terror” in his eyes. He demanded that she be fired and she was. However, six months later she got a call from him at her new job. It turned out that he had been looking for her all that time to apologize to her for what he had done. She read him the riot act about the crap that he had been up to, and then, apparently, they became friends. Which makes a certain amount of sense in light of other things I’ve read about Morrison.

The thing that I don’t like so much about Walker’s book, though, is the way he tries to explain how those years of sex, peace, drugs, and rock and roll in Laurel Canyon fell apart. As I said, he blamed it - after a stop at a comparison between Woodstock and the Altamont Speedway free concert by the Rolling Stones and others (some of them residents of Laurel Canyon), and how those two events a few months and a continent apart symbolized the end of the sixties and the beginning of a more violent and cynical time - on the murders ordered by Charlie Manson and on the change in the drug of choice among those in the music industry, which introduced the cocaine trade into the Canyon, culminating in bloody and violent murder on Wonderland Avenue in the Canyon (which event itself has been chronicled on film).

I’m sure that those factors had an effect on the changes that came to Laurel Canyon. I know, for example, that the level of paranoia in the wake of the murders of Sharon Tate and others by Charlie Manson’s followers went way up in Southern California. It did in my neighborhood, only a few miles from the Spahn Ranch, where Charlie and his minions were living at the time of the murders. Considering the fact that Charlie was at some of those parties in Laurel Canyon as part of his efforts to secure a recording contract, I can imagine that the revelation of who had committed the murders ratcheted tensions up there, as well, as it became harder to know who to trust and who to be suspicious of.

I leave it to you to decide whether Laurel Canyon is worth a read. If you are at all interested in the Los Angeles music scene in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, I would recommend it as worth the time it took to read the book. If you are looking for a sociological analysis of that time and place, the book is probably not as valuable. While Walker makes a bit of a point of the fact that he lives in Laurel Canyon, he also admits that he didn’t move there until the early 1990s, long after most of the events in the book took place.

You said you're going to buy what?!?

2010-12-01T14:13:00.000-08:00

File this under, “People mystify me sometimes”.

I came across a brief news story on Yahoo!News today (which I won’t bother to link because their links are sometimes very transitory) which explains that Lee Harvey Oswald’s original coffin is about to be auctioned by an auction house in Los Angeles. Bids are already underway, and are now at $1000 for the plain pine casket.

The coffin became available when Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was exhumed in 1981 in order to put to rest a rumor that a look-alike was buried in his place after he was shot by Jack Ruby just two days after JFK’s killing. When Oswald was reburied after testing apparently showed that it really was his body, and not that of an imposter or a look-alike, a new coffin was used.

A representative of the auction house said that the coffin, which was underground for about 18 years, is in “worn condition” and not all in one piece, but that “it would be easy to restore.”

Cool. I guess.

But I really wish someone would explain to me just what kind of a person would buy a used coffin? I understand the historical significance and all. I really do. But the idea of buying a coffin in which a body…any body…had been in for nearly two decades is really beyond my comprehension.

I do understand that there are people who put great value on anything someone famous…or infamous, as in Oswald’s case…owned or had contact with. But a coffin. That someone was buried in. No. Just, no.

If you disagree, I’d really like to hear from you about why you think something like that would be on anyone’s to-buy list. What would you do with it? Turn it into a coffee table? Use it as a hope chest? Sleep in it? I suppose a museum might buy it and display it as an historical curiosity, but I tend to doubt that will happen.

As an afterward, and along these lines, if you’re interested in a meditation on the idea of items that have been possessed by famous people or that were involved in historical events gain extra value just by virtue of having those connections, you might be interested in reading The Man in the High Castle, a science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. There are some interesting thoughts about this idea that come up in the course of the story.

Tis the season...movies and more movies

2010-11-28T13:55:00.000-08:00

I apparently spent part of the past week contributing to the success of the two biggest money-making films of the weekend. Which means either that my tastes have gotten way more mainstream lately, or that my sometimes quirky taste in movies is spreading.

Although, it truth, I didn’t choose either movie, relying on friends to make the choices. As it turns out, both choices were very, very good.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we went to see the newest Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’ve seen the previous films in the series, but I’m not nearly as big a fan as the friends I went to the movie with, and this is the first of the films I’ve seen in a theater since the first one came out several years ago. I went in expecting to like the film, but not to like it as much as I did.

The main actors are growing into adults, and into really good performers. The effects were very nice, and the story was involving (with the exception of the first of J. Rowling’s novels, I have not yet read the books, so I did not go in knowing already what was going to happen). I think the franchise went in the right direction with this film after a couple of missteps with earlier episodes. While the subject matter in the films keeps getting darker and darker, for example, the photography in this most recent film is significantly lighter than in the previous one, which was so dark sometimes that there was nearly nothing visible on-screen. I don’t like films that I can’t actually see. There were also more outdoor scenes in this film, which (possible spoiler alert, but only for those who don‘t know much of anything about the films) has Harry, Ron and Hermione on the run from You-Know-Who, which helped with the lighting issue. And even in the indoor scenes, the film seemed considerably more open than the previous films, which took place largely at Hogwarts School.

Then, on Thanksgiving Day, some of us went to see Tangled. Tangled is a Disney animated film (according to a card at the beginning of the film, the 50th animated film from the studio), targeted squarely at a younger audience, that retells the story of Rapunzel with some significant twists. Those of us who went to see the film ranged in age from 30 to 54, much older than the intended audience. But you know what? We all liked the film a lot. For one thing, it continues the new tradition of Disney heroines who find their power rather than just being traditionally submissive women. That is all to the good. Yes, there is a love story, and a fairly syrupy ending that will not, in the end, leave the kiddies traumatized…although Mother Gothel, the character who has locked Rapunzel in her tower, is farily scary, and I expect her to take her place in the pantheon of Disney villains. Still in all, Rapunzel does not have to sell out her newfound power and confidence in order to get her happy ending.

A very good indication of how good Tangled is, is the fact that in an audience made up largely of kids below the age of ten, there was no talking, no running about. There were essentially none of the usual signs that there were a lot of children in the theater. The film held their attention for the entire 92 minute running time of the film, a significant achievement in a time when kids’ attention spans seem to get shorter and shorter with each passing year.

Just a word about the animation in Tangled: This is not traditional Disney animation. I expected that to bother me, because I love traditional animation. Instead, this animation is in a sort of 3-D, in that it rounds characters and landscape out rather than being a series of moving flat drawings. But it isn’t the kind of 3-D that throws things out of the screen at the audience, nor does it require any kind of glasses to view correctly. And it works quite nicely. Although I really wouldn’t like to see Disney abandon traditional animation completely.

Anyway, for those of you who are interested in such things, the preliminary reports for the weekend box office at US theatres reports that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came in in first place, earning an estimated $50.3 million dollars over the weekend, while Tangled came in a close second at $49.1 million. In third place, another animated film, Megamind, took in an estimated $12.9 million. Cher’s new film, Burlesque, came fourth with estimated earnings of $11.8 million, and Unstoppable (about which I know absolutely nothing), made around $11.75 million.

In sixth through tenth place, Love & Other Drugs made $9.9 million, Faster took in around $8.7 million, Due Date made $7.3 million, The Next Three Days took in $4.8 million, and Morning Glory made an estimated $4 million.

My weird week...holiday edition, including mishies and Christmas carols

2010-11-14T12:09:00.000-08:00

It’s been kind of a weird week around here.

First, I haven’t been feeling completely up to par. Nothing serious, I think, just a combination of lingering allergies, the change in the weather, and my internal clock trying to catch up to the time change.

Maybe the weirdest thing that happened during the week was having the Mormon missionaries come knocking on my door at 7:30 (pretty much on the dot) the other night. First of all, what are they doing knocking on people’s doors after dark? Where I come from, that’s kind of rude. And then they seemed to be bothered by the fact that I didn’t just open the door wide at their knock, but left it closed and asked who was there. I don’t live in the worst neighborhood in town, but it isn’t exactly the best, either.

When they answered that it was the missionaries. Not, I might add, what kind of missionaries, just “The Missionaries”. I don’t live in the Corridor (that would be the Mormon Corridor of Utah, Idaho and parts of Arizona, for my non-Mormon readers), and so I thought that more of an explanation might have been in order.

Of course, when I answered (still before opening the door) that I wasn’t interested, that didn’t stop them for even a second. The conversation through the door continued and I said I wasn’t interested several more time before they revealed that they had my name. Yes, folks, they had tracked me down. I moved house in February and didn’t let anyone Mormon know where I was going, hoping they’d just leave me alone. But I received a letter from Salt Lake City a couple of months ago asking me if I was who I am, so that they could direct my records accordingly.

I didn’t answer the letter, hoping they’d take that hint. But they apparently sent my records along to the ward (congregation) that goes along with the address they had for me. Because, you know, Mormons can’t just go to any Mormon church they’d like to. They must attend the one they are assigned based on their residence.

Anyway, when I heard that they had my name, I did open the door. Just a crack. Just so they could see my face when I told them, once again, that I wasn’t interested. I expanded that to explain that I had long ago asked for no contact from the church, that I was no longer a member. Not exactly true, from their point of view, since I haven’t ever sent a letter in asking for my name to be removed from the church’s membership rolls. But it’s close enough, since I don’t believe that I have to ask them for their permission to quit. I quit, I’m out, and they don’t have anything to say about it. That is the way most Christian religious organizations work, anyway.

Well, they explained, the bishop (leader of the ward) had sent them out to check to see if I really didn’t want to be contacted. Which made me roll my eyes, because by that time I was wondering what part of “no contact” they didn’t understand. I assured them that I did not want any contact from the church, at which point they asked me if I was “all right” and if there was anything they could do for me. I was very polite and didn’t scream “Yes. Leave me the hell alone.” I said, no, I was fine, that I didn’t need anything, and that I really, really, really mean by “no contact” that I don’t want any contact from the church.

I guess I kind of made the missionary closest to the door angry at me when I would not shake his hand as they were leaving. Which kind of almost made me feel bad for them. They were actually quite polite, and I don’t blame them, really, for coming to my door. They were just doing what they were told to do. But still, no contact means no contact. It doesn’t mean, keep asking every few months if I really mean it. If I were ever to change my mind, which will happen only when pigs grow wings and fly off into the sunset and when the sun rises in the west and sets in the north, I know how to find a church.

I guess I’m going to have to finish that letter and send it off to Salt Lake after all. Just to make the bean counters happy.

The good news about all of this is that, when the next weird thing happened, it didn’t seem so very weird at all. That was when my roommate and I were going out the door on Friday night to take some DVDs back to the Red Box and make a Taco Bell run, only to discover that the gentleman who lives in the front apartment, along with his son, were putting up their Christmas lights. The first hint I had, as I was out the door last, was hearing my roommate say something about, “…because Santa Claus hasn’t gone by Macy’s yet.” When I got out there, the lights were mostly up and already on, in all their glory.

They’re pretty lights, really. But it isn’t Thanksgiving yet. I don’t do Christmas until the Thanksgiving turkey is consumed and there is no more pumpkin pie and whipped topping left.

Which begs the question: Why, at our SCA Barony’s pre-Thanksgiving feast last night (which was very, very good, by the way, and did not involve turkey at all), I didn’t mind when the host and hostess’s little boy started asking for Christmas songs, and some of us sang a few.

Weird.

Review: "The First Human", by Ann Gibbons

2010-11-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

The First Human, by Ann Gibbons (Doubleday, 2006; 306 pages) is a well-written, interesting review of the race (and, make no mistake, that’s how some of the participants regard it) to find evidence of the last common ancestor between humans and apes.

Gibbons outlines the march forward in time and backward in history from early discoveries of fossils of various human ancestors by pioneers like Louis S.B. Leakey and his wife, Mary in Olduvai Gorge; Eugene Dubois in Indonesia; Davidson Black in China and Raymond Dart and Robert Broom in South Africa to more recent discoveries that go back further in time by Richard Leakey and his wife, Meave (Louis and Mary’s son and daughter-in-law); Donald Johanson, Tim White and many others.

But Gibbons doesn’t just talk about the fossils. She also explores the personalities of the (mostly) men who look for the fossils, the arguments they get into over the interpretations of their finds and, sometimes, even the tactics some of them have stooped to, to make sure they and not their competitors get access to the best sites and the oldest fossils. She also looks at the controversial subject of determining the pace and direction of human evolution using DNA markers instead of, or in concert with, the fossils.

For someone like myself, who is fascinated by the history of paleoanthropology as well as the information that the study of human and prehuman fossils reveals, this book is a must-read by the head writer on human evolution for the journal Science. She has access to the people who have participated in the search for and study of the fossils, and she interviewed pretty much every actor in the drama who is still living. She tells the story of the past few decades of research with frankness but without an overabundance of finger-pointing, in a manner that is readable for those who already know something about paleoanthropology and for those who don’t know anything about the subject.

Gibbons’ book proves that while the fossils that have been found and studied might be dry and dead, the information they carry and the people who search for and analyze them are anything but.

GO VOTE

2010-11-02T07:52:00.001-07:00

It's Election Day in the United States.

If you've voted already, congratulations. You have your license to complain until the next election.

If you haven't voted yet, go do it.

It doesn't matter who you vote for, or whether or not you support the same candidates and issues I do. What does matter, if you are eligible to vote, that you go out there and be a good citizen and exercise the franchise.

That is all. :D

In which I become delusional and expect the news to actually be news

2010-10-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

You know, I was brought up to believe that keeping up with the news is a person’s responsibility, because you can’t be a good citizen if you aren’t an informed citizen. And I do believe that.

However (bet you knew there was going to be a “however” coming up), it has gotten to the point where I can hardly stand to read or watch the news these days.

Part of that has to do with what passes for news in the 21st century. Half of it seems to consist of items about so-called celebrities, half of whom I’ve never heard of and all of which is none of my damn business, or the scare story of the day over either terrorism or how unhealthy this or that thing is for me. And another part of it has to do with the fact that most political “news” consists of partisan pundits (on all sides) trying to pass off their own beliefs as actual truth.

I must be getting old, because I remember when personal opinion used to be labeled as such in broadcast news. I used to hate George Putnam’s right wing commentaries on the old channel 11 news in Los Angeles when I was growing up. But at least he kept it out of hard news stories he was reading and called his op-ed pieces “One Reporter’s Opinion”.

It irritates the crap out of me that news readers, especially, seem to think their audience needs to be told how to feel about each story, and I’ve nearly given up on television news. I really don’t need to be told that every traffic accident and other mishap is “tragic”. I’m thinking we need to ban that word from hard news for awhile. That, and the chat between news stories, where the news readers share how they feel about a story. I don’t care that Nancy Newsgirl thinks that Paris Hilton (for example) is a slut or that Rob Reporter thinks that the husband did it or that Steve Sportscaster seems to need to share with me that he believes the reports of this or that athlete’s misbehavior.

What I want to know is, whatever happened to “who, what, when, where, why, and how”. Back when I was taking journalism classes and working on the student newspaper in college, we were taught that the lead of any news story, be it in print or broadcast media, needed to include what happened to whom, when and where, and why and how it happened. I hardly ever see that in broadcast news any more, and less and less often in written news stories. It seems like nearly every story, even hard news items, have been turned into feature stories that go through some long, supposedly artistic introduction before we find out what actually happened.

In my work now, writing finance news for several internet outlets, I really try to stick to the facts and to put the essential information in the lead. I probably don’t always succeed, but at least I make the attempt. It seems like fewer and fewer news writers even try any more.

I don’t suppose I will ever completely give up reading the news. It would be too much against my nature and upbringing. But I don’t have to like the state of reporting, and it is likely that I will continue to complain about how sloppy and unprofessional journalism has become in the twenty-first century.

Strange doings...and I don't just mean that I actually posted

2010-09-22T20:37:00.000-07:00

Weird things happen sometimes.

That doesn’t mean that they mean anything. It just means that we live in a universe where the odd sometimes occurs.

One of those odd things happened to me today. I assign it no special importance, other than the fact that the coincidences involved got my attention, probably because I’ve always been interested in coincidence. Part of that is probably that I am a writer, and constantly aware when working on anything fictional that readers will only accept so much coincidence. Beyond that, they’ll laugh at the novel or story, or maybe throw the book across the room. Certainly, I’ve done both in my many years as a reader.

Anyway, today’s coincidences happened because I was waiting for some information to become available so that I could do my work for the day. Because I work on the internet, when I have down time in the middle of my work day, I tend to sit and surf the ‘net. Today, specifically, the adventure started when I decided to go over and take a look at Paul Cornell’s blog. I recommend his blog highly, by the way. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cornell briefly earlier this year at Gallifrey One (that’s a Doctor Who convention, for the uninitiated). He seems a very nice man, and he is a very, very good writer.

One of the things I read on Mr. Cornell’s blog today was that he will be attending the Fortean Times Unconvention next month in London. This spurred what was to be a quick visit to the Fortean Times website, which I had not visited in years. The site is dedicated to the sorts of unusual things that Charles Fort studied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all sorts of mysteries and anomalous phenomenon and conspiracies. Things that I have had more than a passing interest in ever since I was a child; things I don’t necessarily believe or believe in, but that I am hesitant to always dismiss out of hand, either.

I looked through the site quickly, clicking on a couple of short items that were of minor interest before seeing a feature headline, “Hollywood Hitmen”, that piqued my interest mostly because I grew up in Southern California. I didn’t mean to spend much time with it; I had to get back to work.

It was a mildly interesting story about a screenwriter who disappeared while driving across the Southern California desert late one night in 1997. The authorities called it an accident, but his family and friends weren’t so sure, and the circumstances surrounding the discovery of his car and skeletal remains about a year later did nothing to contradict their feeling that he had been murdered.

None of the this, however, is really relevant to the experience I had with the story today. What is relevant is that as I scanned the story and the photos that accompanied it, two things jumped out at me. First, one of the photos, of a Denny’s restaurant, looked awfully familiar to me. This turned out to be because it is the Denny’s in Mojave, California, a regular stop when I’m taking the “back way” to and from Southern California rather than putting up with all the traffic on I-5.

The second thing that jumped out at me was a reference to Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, also in Southern California, and to the partial nuclear meltdown that occurred there in 1959. I grew up in sight of the field lab, where among other things tests were made on the rocket engines that took the Apollo rockets, and the astronauts, to the moon.. I was also at home, at the age of nearly three, the night in July of 1959, when an experimental nuclear reactor melted down and released many times more radiation than the meltdown at Three Mile Island a couple of decades later. My house was in the direct line of sight of the facility, and just a couple of miles away as the crow flies. I’ve written about that incident before in this blog, on October 5, 2006 to be precise.

Here is where the whole coincidence thing comes in. What are the odds that I would visit a website for the first time in several years, and find that the one headline story that I chose to click on to read, without there being any indication that there could possibly be anything that I could so directly relate to might be there, happened to contain two separate references to places and/or events that I have personal experience with?

As I said at the beginning of this post, I don’t assign any cosmic significance to any of this. I just find it curious that events unfolded as they did, and even more curious that the story that contained the two coincidental references appeared on a website devoted to the strange and the unusual. Certainly, curious enough to write about it after not having written anything here for months.

Like I said, no cosmic importance at all.

Except that I really wanted to tell someone about this, and maybe the universe was giving me a kick in the pants to get my butt over here and start posting again.

New species' skull could have remnant brain tissue inside...

2010-04-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am an anthropology geek. Why do you ask?

I found this story, and just had to pass it along.

EDITED TO ADD: The Yahoo link at the beginning of this post will take you to an index page, not the article in question, but it will get you to the article eventually so I'll leave it in the post. The Livescience link at the end of this post will get you directly to the original article.

A skull belonging to a newly-announced possible ancestor to humans, Australopithecus sediba, which was just revealed last week, could have a shrunken remnant of its brain inside, according to this story on Yahoo! News.

Still inside most if its stone matrix, the skull was X-rayed at a facility in France, using a machine called a synchroton that generates much more detailed images than those of conventional X-ray machines. The scans indicated that the skull might contain a remnant of its brain as well as something that could be fossilzed insect eggs. However, even if the object seen is a brain fragment, those studying the brain say they would not likely be able to determine its original structure.

Scientists studying the skull hope to also use its teeth to determine its chronological age. If they can do that, they can compare it to the remains' developmental level, which is about that of a modern 13-year-old, to tell whether the species was still developing like other australopithecines did, or if it had started to trend toward developmental rates of members of the genus Homo.

Besides the skull, fragments amounting to about 40 percent of a body were found, which will help determine how the species got around.

The skull containing the possible brain remains is a male, but another skull of the species has been identified as that of an adult female.

These kinds of finds fascinate me. Each skull or fragment of bone found by paleoanthropologists...or by the children of these scientists, which was the case with this skull, according to the article...presents the possibility of being able to learn just a little bit more about how we developed as a species and about who our ancestors really were. It is a complicated story, but every little piece of the puzzle adds more knowledge to build on to make it more complete.

You can find the original article on Livescience.

I'm writing...just not here that often right now...

2010-04-12T08:48:00.001-07:00

I just thought I'd drop by to say that, no, I haven't abandoned writing since John's creativity experiment wrapped up.

But I have been working on a novel that I'd been think about and playing around with for years but never actually got around to working on more than sporadically. I've hooked up with a writing group on Ravelry and this month there's a challenge going on. I committed to writing 25,000 words this month and am already at 16,765 words. Maybe I set my goal a little low, but I think it's more about getting in the habit of working every day, whether I feel like it or not. Whether I feel inspired or not. From that perspective, the whole thing is working out marvelously.

At any rate, I'm around, I'm writing regularly, and I'm feeling good about that.

Creativity Experiment, Day Seven: Haiku

2010-03-23T09:21:00.001-07:00

Today is the seventh and last day is the of John Remy's creativity experiment, which he has been hosting over at Mind on Fire.

The card of the day, this time chosen by John's daugheter, Catgirl, is the Six of Pentacles. I don't ususally write haiku; the form has driven me to distraction ever since I was introduced to it in elementary school. However, after considering the Six of Pentacles and its attributes, this came to mind almost immediately. Probably has something to do with some of the events in my own life over the past few years.

And so, my very small contribution on the final day of an amazing learning and creative experience:

Knowing when to give
or admit the need to take
is art of balance.

And finally, thanks to you, John, for imagining that we all could do this.

Creativity Experiment, Day Six: Commonalities

2010-03-22T20:40:00.001-07:00

Today is the next to the last day of John Remy's Creativity Experiment. If this is your first exposure to it, pop on over to Mind on Fire and see what's going on.

Today's Tarot card is the Two of Cups, and after thinking about some of the possible implications of this card, some lyrics from Sting's first solo recording, "The Dream of the Blue Turtles", drifted into my mind.

The result is this essay:

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is if the Russians love their children too
----Sting, “Russians” 1985

These lyrics from the song “Russians” might seem anachronistic listeners who were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.

On the contrary, the sentiment they carry are just as essential today as they were when they were written in 1985, back before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.

To someone like me, who remembers the Russian Missile Crisis, in 1962, who remembers the “duck and cover” drills in elementary school, and who lived with the fear that “the Russkies” could up and decide to drop the bomb at any time well into adolescence, and who now looks at today’s world from not-so-comfortable middle age, they couldn’t be more applicable today.

Oh, you’d have to change the lyrics a little. You’d want to sing about Moslems, or Christians. You’d want to mention Republicans, or Democrats. You might even name theists and atheists, evolutionists or creationists, pro-lifers or pro-choicers, depending on which political, religious or social issue is getting the most acrimonious press on any particular day.

But the point the song would make is the same, no matter who is named in the lyrics…we have to assume that our neighbors are more like us than different from us, or we are in deep, deep trouble.

On the face of it, I’m sure many people would say, “But we know that Christians love their children,” that Moslems do; that atheists love their children, that creationists do, that evolutionists do. But, truthfully, to hear some of the rhetoric that gets mainstream media time these days, I wonder if it really registers with the most vocal segments of many of those advocating on different sides of the arguments that those who oppose them really do love their children. That they really are human just like them.

There is no question, at least from where I’m sitting, that there is some major-league demonizing going on out there today, just as there was during the Cold War. I’ve heard, and not just on television or on the radio or the internet, suggest that saying Muslims and Christians, or Iranians and Americans, or atheists and Christians or Muslims have things in common and are not natural enemies is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorism. This is an incredibly dangerous position to take, just as it was incredibly dangerous during the cold war when the assumption of many was that the only thing in the minds of all Russians was the destruction the West.

If we could all just generally admit that our neighbors, locally and globally, no matter any of our differences, are much more like us than different from us, I would feel much more positive about the direction our global culture is going.

Creativity Experiment, Day Five: Anxiety

2010-03-21T22:02:00.001-07:00

Today's Tarot card in John Remy's creativity experiment is the Nine of Swords.

It isn't a happy card, in contrast to the nice day I've had. On the other hand, some of the less-than-positive aspects of the day's card have manifested themselves in my day precisely because I haven't been able to participate in today's installment of the experiment as fully as I would have liked.

And so, just a little reflection on how even a good day can hold anxiety and guilt:

It’s amazing, the things that make me anxious.

Today, it has been not having the time to get around to doing something really creative for today’s installment of John's creativity experiment.

It was a nice day, which I spent helping a friend move and and then, with my roommate, having guests for dinner. Still, all day long, chittering at the back of my mind was anxiety surrounding the possibility that I wouldn’t have the time or energy to properly fulfill the commitment I've made to participating in the experiment this week.

And sure enough, here I am at the end of the day, friend moved and guests on their way home, trying to think through some of the ideas that I thought about in considering the card of the day while I was guarding cars while they were being loaded to move Jen's belongings from her old place to her new apartment and while I was helping sort her yarn into storage bins once we got everything moved in at the new place.

I had some interesting thoughts and some interesting ideas about how to write about them, especially about the aspect of the Nine of Swords that touch on worrying and anxiety. Goodness knows, with my OCD, I've got plenty of first-hand expereience obsessing on things and working myself up into anxiety attacks over them. But none of the things I’ve tried to put together this evening around those ideas has worked out.

I probably shouldn’t feel badly about it at all. I fulfilled a commitment to a friend, I had fun during the day, and I’m tired enough that I’ll probably sleep very well tonight. But what I really feel, deep down, is that I’ve let myself down by not rising to the challenge of John’s experiment today, and that I’ve let the other participants down by not participating fully myself today.

I should feel relaxed after the nice day I’ve had, and instead I’m sitting here feeling that I could have and should have done better, and feeling guilty and anxious because I didn't.

Which is, perhaps appropriately enough, entirely in the spirit of the Nine of Swords.

Creativity Experiment, Day 4: "The Devil Drives at Night"

2010-03-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's day number four of John Remy's Creativity Experiment over at Mind on Fire, and today's Tarot card is The Devil.

I don't know why it seemed so difficult to come up with something for today's card. Maybe it was just that it was Saturday and I was out of my regular weekday routine. Anyway, I finally did find inspiration and wrote the short story that follows.

I'll call it "The Devil Drives at Night".

It was one of those weird late-night conversations you can only find when you’re twenty and living in a dorm and it’s Friday night and there’s been too much drinking going on.

We all thought we were being so deep and philosophical and daring, talking about how we didn’t believe in God and how nothing really means anything, and what would it matter if it did, since we were all destined to be tiny little cogs in the capitalist machine.

I suppose we all meant it, although I was more agnostic than atheist even then, and I was beginning to come to the realization that even if there was no God, that didn’t necessarily mean that there was no meaning. I figured that I could make up my own and that would be as good as meaning being imposed on me.

Regular little rebel, I was.

As the night wore on and more wine and beer were consumed, we seemed to become more serious and more somber, and the talk turned from the cosmic to the personal. One talked about seeing another girl walk out in front of a car and get thrown fifty feet in traffic when they were both eight years old. Another said he’d been abused by his mother all his life until he was taken away from her when he was ten.

Yet another told about being stranded with his family in the snow in Oregon for several days when they’d taken a wrong turn and gotten stuck by the side of a road. His dad had tried to walk for help, but come back with frostbitten feet and hands. The searchers finally found them, only about an hour before the authorities were planning on calling off the search. If they’d been left out there for another night, they all probably would have died, and as it was, his father had lost both feet and several fingers.

The stories went on like this for most of an hour, getting more and more elaborate, before one girl, slight, shy, with long brown hair and a slight lisp made worse by the beers she‘d had, cleared her throat and said: “You all make me feel so guilty. I’ve never seen anyone die, I was never abused when I was a kid, and my family all gets along really well.

“And I know all of you said you don’t believe in God. Truth is, I don’t think I do, either. But I do believe in the Devil.”

A couple of the others started giggling at that, but others hushed them. I might have been because they wanted to let the girl have her say, but it also might have been because they were sure that she was going to give them something better than just that statement to laugh at.

“I’m sorry, I do,” she continued.

“And you have evidence of this?” That was Randall, who earlier had been explaining that he didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, touch, feel and smell.”

“Well…Kind of,” the girl, whose name no one could remember, stammered. “I saw him once.”

That brought another laugh, but it was a little more nervous than the first one had been.

“All that is,” Randall said, becoming louder as he saw a chance to humiliate the girl, “is anecdotal evidence. Unless, of course, you have a photo of him, with the negative, so that it can be tested for tinkering in the lab.”

The girl’s voice became a little louder as well, and the expression on her face shifted from timidity to determination.

“I know it’s anecdotal. I know I can’t prove to you that I saw him. But Shelley can’t prove she saw her friend get hit by the car, either, but none of you have questioned that.”

“It hardly the same thing,” Randall said. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We know people get hit by cars sometimes; it isn’t out of the question that,” he hesitated as he tried to recall the name. “That Shelley might have seen one of those instances. But when you claim that you saw the Devil, which is a fictional construct, you have to produce concrete evidence or no one is going to believe you.”

The girl said, “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I’m just saying, I saw the devil, and I believe he exists because of that experience.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Sarah said. Sarah winked at Randall as she said it. “How did you happen to see the Devil, and where were you, and what was he doing?”

The girl sighed and shook her head. She looked like she knew she was walking into a trap but couldn’t quite help herself or bring herself to backpedal from her statements.

“It was on my twelfth birthday,” she said. “My parents had taken me to San Diego to the zoo, and we were headed back home. It was late, probably close to midnight, and we were on the freeway, the 405, northbound in Sepulveda Pass. My sister, who was in the back seat with me, and my mom in the front seat, were both asleep. My dad was driving. I was still wide awake, watching the cars around us.

“Traffic was heavy even though it was so late because there had been a huge wreck on the transition to the Ventura Freeway. Cars were backed up for miles. One lane would be able to go ahead a little, then it would stop and another lane would progress.

“At one point, a car pulled up beside us, and the driver’s window was right next to mine…”

“Did he have horns and a pointy goatee?” someone said.

“No, he was clean-shaven,” the girl said. “But his eyes glowed red. His whole face had a red cast to it. He turned and looked at me and I felt like he could see right through me. And he didn’t have horns, exactly, but where you might expect them to be, there were little scars.”

“And you could see this in the dark?” Another skeptical voice.

“Well, it wasn’t dark in his car. The interior kind of glowed red, like it had neon lights on inside or something. He had this look on his face, too, like he was thinking at me that I knew who he was and that I should be afraid of him.”

“And so what happened?” Sarah said. “Were there flames and car wrecks all around and general destruction?”

The girl telling the story rolled her eyes. “The lane he was in started moving again and he got ahead of us.”

“That’s all?” Randall said. “You have to come up with a better story than that.”

The girl shrugged. “That’s what happened. You don’t believe me, and that’s okay. But that’s exactly what happened.”

The conversation continued. There were more stories told, some of them pretty horrific.

I noticed that the girl who had claimed to have seen the devil got up and started to wander off a little while after she had told her story. I got up and followed her up the stairs.

When I caught up with her, I asked her, “Why did you do that?”

“What?” she said. “Talk about seeing the Devil?

I nodded.

“I don’t know. Nobody ever believes me. But it happened. I could take you out there right now and show you exactly where on the freeway it happened. If I ever saw him again, I could point him out. And I really believe he was the Devil. But I don’t know why I ever bother to say anything. Even my dad didn’t believe me when I told him, that night after we got home.”

She stopped and thought for a minute. “Maybe I just hope that someday I’ll find someone else who has seen him.”

“Oh,” I said. “Maybe. Well, good luck with that.”

And I walked away, feeling kind of sorry for her. Because I was fairly sure she wouldn’t ever find anyone willing to believe her.

Or at least willing to admit to anyone, even to her, that they’d seen him, too.

How did I know?

I knew because I knew her for the rest of college. Became good friends with her, in fact. But I never, ever told her that I’d seen the same man, also late one night and also in the car with my parents. Only I had been six years old, and it had been on the Hollywood Freeway, just as we were passing the Capital Records Building.

I have never told anyone. Not even my dad, who was also driving the night I saw the Devil.

Creativity Experiiment, Day 3: "The Multitasker"

2010-03-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

It's day three of John Remy's creativity experiment over at Mind on Fire.

Today's choice from the Tarot deck is the Two of Pentacles. An interesting prompt. I didn't flash on anything immediately from the image (which you can see at John's blog; I'm still a bit technology impaired when it comes to things like images), but when I clicked over to read the summary of meanings that can attach to the card, it hit me immediately.

And so, "The Multitasker":

Chaos abounds
Chores must be done
Challenges ruin a plan
Crises hit the fan
(with accompanying shit)

Hair is torn
Garments are rent
Lunches are lost
Cookies are tossed
(in panic and in fear)

A typical day in the office

But amid the maelstrom
A calm and steady hand
Fends off the boss
Sometimes with a cross
(and garlic…oh! the gossip)

Answers questions
Massages egos
Juggles tasks
Sometimes hides flasks
(so something gets accomplished)

Some hate her
Some love her
But she is called by all
In the boardroom and in the hall
(The Multitasker)

Creativity Experiment, Day 2: A Reflection

2010-03-18T11:50:00.001-07:00

Today's Tarot card is The Hermit. You can click over to Mind on Fire to see John picking the card of the day, and for an explanation of just what we're doing this week as part of his experiment in creativity.

This is my day's contribution to the experiment:

What’s so wrong with being alone?

I enjoyed being alone when I was a child. Was it a function of having been an only child? I don’t know.

Sometimes, with half the neighborhood kids playing on my front lawn, I would sneak off inside for the solitude of my room and a book.

No reflection on the kids I knew (or, maybe it is), I really preferred being alone. I spent a lot of time plotting and planning how I could manage to live my adult life without having anyone else around. Ever.

Some people thought I was a strange child. Maybe I was.

Then I became the adult I’d wondered about when I was growing up.

I still preferred being alone.

But, I found, it is a lot more difficult to be alone when you’re an adult. You’ve got to earn a living. You’re expected to have “relationships” (yes, the quotation marks indicate that I still find that concept rather fraught at times), intimate and otherwise.

Additionally, if you’re alone too much others start to be, well, suspicious.

How many people comment about the serial killer next door, “He was always so quiet. Kept himself to himself.”

I did grow to enjoy the company of others. I spent less and less time alone, and mostly didn’t regret it. There was school and work and nights out with friends. But there were still those times when I Just. Needed. To. Be. Alone.

When my mother’s health began to decline and I had to take care of her, there was no such thing as being alone anymore. Going to the mailbox or walking out to the laundry room for five minutes was as close as I got to solitude.

That went on for close to five years.

And then Mom was gone, first into care and then into wherever we go when this life is over.

I discovered that I had forgotten how to be alone.

For awhile, I spent most of my time trying to be with others. With friends. Knitting at the local shop. If nothing else, sitting in a restaurant, writing or reading a book. Just so there were other people around.

Slowly, I’m learning how to be alone again, rediscovering the joys of quiet. Solitude. Time to just sit and think.

To just be.

I still greatly enjoy time with my friends. But, on the other hand, what’s so wrong with being alone?

Creativity Experiment, Day 1: "The Knights in the Park"

2010-03-17T09:43:00.001-07:00

I'm participating in John Remy's latest experiment in creativity, over at his blog, Mind on Fire.

Every day for the next week, he will pick a Tarot card at random, and everyone who is participating will create something spurred by that card, and post it.

Today's card is the Knight of Swords, and this is what jumped out of my mind in response to that imagery, a short story, just a couple of scenes, really, that has nothing to do with Tarot at all, but was nevertheless the first thing I thought of on seeing the day's prompt. It is a first draft, but that seems appropriate for this sort of on-the-run experiment.

So, without further comment: "The Knights in the Park":

“Mom!” Katie came tearing through the house, yelling at the top of her lungs. “Mom! I just came by the park, and there’s a bunch of guys out there in armor.”

“Yes, dear,” Mom said as Katie flew by her and into the kitchen. She was used to Katie’s flights of fantasy, and had long since started ignoring them. “It’s probably those knuckleheads in the SCA, practicing. You know how they like to beat each other with sticks.”

“No, Mom,” Katie said, banging shut the refrigerator door, water bottle in hand. “They didn’t have sticks. They had real swords. And spears.”

Mom sighed. “The SCA doesn’t use real swords, Katherine Marie. You’ve seen Mr. Smith’s swords. They’re made out of rattan.”

Katie sighed back, much more dramatically than her mother had.

“I told you, they’re real swords. I know, ‘cause one of them had stabbed another one, and the one that was stabbed was bleeding all over the place. It was gross.”

Back in the living room, Katie paused to drink.

“I asked if they needed me to call an ambulance, but they acted like they didn’t understand me. They were speaking some other language.”

“You need to stay away from Mr. Smith and his friends when they’re practicing,” Mom said. “Those helmets they wear restrict their vision, and one of them might hit you accidentally.”

“But the guy was bleeding, Mom. And moaning, and cussing I think. I couldn’t understand him, but it sounded like Dad does when he cusses.”

Mom looked up at her daughter for the first time since she had come inside.

“You’re a mess, Katie. Go wash up and change clothes. I’ve got to go to the grocery store when I finish folding this laundry, and I want you to go with me.”

“I hate going to the store, Mom,” Katie whined.

“Katie….”, Mom said, a warning tone in her voice.

Katie turned to go, and as she went down the hall she called back, “And there were horses too, Mom. And the horses had armor on, too.”

Mom stopped folding for a minute. Horses? The group that practices in the park never had horses. She shook her head, then went back to her folding.

Twenty minutes later, Katie and her mom were in the car, backing out of the driveway.

“Go the other way,” Katie said when her mom started to turn the car left out of the driveway. “I want to drive by the park and see if they knights and the horses are still there.”

“There are no knights in the part. And there are no horses. Horses are not allowed in the park.”

Mom was about to say no, when she decided that showing Katie that there were no knights, and no horses, in the park might make her daughter think twice before making up these stories. So, she drove back into the driveway and then backed out the other direction and headed toward the park.

Just as Mom suspected, there was no one in the park except for a few kids in the skateboard park.

Except, as the turned the corner and could see past the concrete of the skateboard area, there was a glint of sunlight off metal. As she drove further and could see more, there was a group of men in armor, some with helmets on and some with helmets dangling from gloved hands.

And there were two horses, held by the reins by a boy in a tunic, just beyond the knot of men, who seemed to be gathered around something, or someone, on the ground.

Maybe I should go take a look, see if someone needs help, Mom thought as she pulled up to the curb. She shut off the car, told Katie to stay put, and started across the street.

But, as Katie’s mom stepped up onto the sidewalk on the park side of the street, the gathering of men and the younger man and horses seemed to just dissolve away. One moment they seemed as solid as the sidewalks she was standing on. The next moment they were all transparent; she could see them, but she could see the lawn and trees beyond them, as well. And then, in another moment, they were just…gone.

Katie’s mom stopped still, looked all around her, to see where the group had gone. But they were nowhere in sight.

After a moment, she turned and went back to the car.

“Did you see that, Mom?” Katie said. “They were there, and then they just vanished. That was so cool.”

“Things…people…do not just vanish, Katie,” Mom said. “That’s impossible. It violates every known law of physics.”

Mom paused, sighed yet again. “Yes. I saw that.”

And then she turned and looked at Kate. “And if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you will be grounded until you are ninety years old. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Katie said.

“And I mean no one. Not Dad, not your teachers. Nobody.”

Katie caught the slight edge of hysteria in her mother’s voice and knew that this was one thing she really shouldn’t talk about.

“Yes, ma’am,” Katie repeated. “But we really did see it, didn’t we?”

Mom nodded her head, started the car, and continued to the grocery store.

I really hate spring...

2010-03-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know. Spring isn't here yet. But Daylight Savings Time is, and that's enough for me.

In truth, I was glad to see DST come this year. Usually, I like it when it gets dark early, but for some reason it started bothering me this year. So, I'm okay with it getting dark an hour later all of a sudden. I probably won't still like it when it isn't full dark until nine o'clock at night, but this is now.

No, my problem with Spring is that there are plants and trees blossoming. For me, that means that allergy season has shifted into high gear. It means sinus pressure and post-nasal drip, sore throats and sneezing. It's bad enough that people look at me like I've got the plague; sometimes it gets so bad that I feel like I've got the plague.

Like today. My sinuses were bothering me before I ever went outside. Then, after I was finished working, I had to go out to the grocery store to get a few things. Now I'm back, and I feel very much like someone is dragging a piece of barbed wire back and forth inside my sinuses.

Which is probably too much information for most of you. Sorry. We tell the truth here.

Anyway, I'd love to just go back to bed and take a long nap. Like maybe through tomorrow morning. But I won't. It's knit night. I'll go commiserate with my knitting friends who have allergies even worse than I do. It won't make the allergies better. But sometimes, a little bitch and moan time is good for the psyche.

Which brings me to the key question: Why am I allergic to so many things now? I never had any allergies until I moved to this valley. None. Nada. I could eat anything I wanted. With the exception of maybe once a year, for a day or two, my sinuses never caused me any trouble.

Now...well, that's a different story. Here in the most productive agricultural county in the entire nation, I'm allergic to at least half the things grown here. I just don't understand how that works.

What qualified this man to say this?

2010-03-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

According to an article on Huffington Post yesterday, Tom Delay thinks that giving people unemployment benefits makes them lazy, no-accounts who just sit home and collect government money, not bothering to look for a job until just before their benefits run out.

Delay’s remarks came on one of the talking-heads Sunday shows on CNN, in defense of Senator Jim Bunning (Republican, of Kentucky) and his fillibuster blocking a vote on extended benefits for the jobless. Answering a question from the host of the show, Candy Crowley, in which she asked, “People are unemployed because they want to be?”, Delay said, “Well, it’s the truth, and people in the real world know it.”

Um. By what stretch of the imagination does Delay think he knows anything about the real world? Does he not know that most people who are unemployed do not qualify for benefits anyway. Those who were working part-time, in temporary jobs, or who are self-employed (that would include me) are not eligible. Additionally, you can’t just quit your job and receive jobless benefits; you have to be unemployed through no fault of your own.

Well, I guess you have to consider the source. Delay is, after all, under indictment on felony conspiracy charges involving campaign contributions, had to resign from his Senate seat due to the indictment, was tangled up with lobbyists for most of his political career, has promoted “birther” conspiracy beliefs which hold that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is thus not legally eligible to be president, and believes that evolution should not be taught in the nation’s public schools because doing so leads to events like the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado in 1999.

I don’t even know what else to say. Delay has given every appearance of being a crooked politician with some fairly out-there views (not necessarily on the evolution issue, as lots of people believe pretty much the same thing he does; but the “birthers” are just plain loony). But he feels qualified to go around saying that people are unemployed because they want to be, and he expects us to all just accept his word on that.

Sorry. I don’t think so.

Yet another sabbatical from posting...

2010-03-08T11:04:00.000-08:00

Um-hum. Yeah. It has been a long time since I've posted here.

But, no, you haven't gotten rid of me yet. It's just that I spent most of January worrying about various issues, while most of February was spent in the process of moving house (well, apartment).

I could not believe the amount of crap that one can accumulate in a one-bedroom apartment and that you don't even see until you start packing to move. I think I threw out as much or more junk than I acutally moved. And the time spent shredding old mail so as to avoid identity-theft. Can someone please tell me why places have to print account numbers on every single page of mailings? It is absolutely insane.

Also, I celebrated the move by going to Gallifrey One in Los Angeles. For those of you who don't know, Gally is a Doctor Who convention...yes, we've established before that I'm a geek...held annually at the airport Marriott in L.A. Lots of fun, loads of insanity, and a good way to get rid of a lot of stress.

Now, I'm just concentrating on work and finding more work. The former is going as well as can be expected in a time of recession (no, it isn't over yet, no matter what the talking heads on the news stations say), and the latter is, well, dismal.

I guess we will see how much more time I have to post here. Maybe if I'd start reading the news again (I've been avoiding it; too depressing), I'd find stuff that riles me up enough to post.

Neener, neener, neener...or, another archaeological paradigm bites the dust...

2010-01-09T22:31:00.000-08:00

I have to say that this news made me do a little happy dance, sitting here in my office chair.

Sphere is reporting that the British archaeological journal Antiquity has published a paper outlining evidence showing that a large-scale, monument-building pre-Columbian civilization did indeed exist in the Amazon basin, possibly dating back to around AD 800. This directly contradicts the prevailing paradigm that the Amazon basin was never capable of supporting more than small bands of people and certainly not a settlement that housed upwards of 60,000 people, which is what the authors of the Antiquity paper claim, adding that they have so far uncovered only around 10 percent of the existing remains of the city.

The find vindicates the beliefs of Percy Fawcett, a British explorer who vanished in the area of the find in 1925, along with one of his sons and another gentleman while searching for the remains of the "lost city" he thought he had evidence for.

Last year, I read The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann, which tells about Fawcett's obsession, the obsession of later explorers to find out what happened to the disappeared Englishman and his party, and the search by a few archaeologists to overturn the reigning paradigm and find evidence that the Amazon was, indeed, the home of a large-scale vanished civilization. The news of this new find only makes me more enthusiastic about my recommendation of this very good book, as well as of a book I reviewed in this blog back in 2007, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann, which also spent some time looking at the existing paradigm and newer ideas of who might have lived in the Amazon basin in the past and how large their settlements might have been.

If I haven't said it before, or haven't said it emphatically enough, go find Brann's book, and Mann's, and read them.

Unfortunately, part of this story is not good. The road to this new discovery was opened only because of extensive clear-cutting of the Amazon forest. Nothing is perfect, I suppose, but I really wish that these new remains could have been found without so much destruction having been done to the enviroment of the Amazon basin.

A year of reading...

2010-01-03T20:15:00.001-08:00

I thought I'd post the list of books I read in 2009.

I'm not especially happy with it. I had hoped to read 52 books during the year, one a week. As you will see, I didn't even make quite half that.

It isn't that I didn't read a lot last year, but more that most of what I read was not in the form of books. I read a lot for work; none of that made it onto the list. I also read quite a bit of other stuff on the internet...reviews, articles, even some fan fiction (some of it horrendous, but some of it very good). Again, there is no place on the list for any of those.

But...I did manage to read 24 books. Sitting in the restaurant tonight, reading after I finished eating, I got into a conversation with one of the waitstaff. She seemed to think that 24 books in a year is a lot. But one year, quite a few years ago, I read 100 books in a year. I know people who regularly read even more than that.

The list:

Finished, January:
1 *Censoring Science, by Mark Bowen
2 Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay
3 *The Longest Cave, by Roger Brucker and Richard Watson (re-read)
4 Dearly Devoted Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay (warning: the "ick factor" very high in this book)
5 Wives and Sisters, by Natalie R. Collins
6 The Twilight Streets, by Gary Russell
7 Torchwood: SkyPoint, by Phil Ford
8 Slow Decay, by Andy Lane
9 Something in the Water, by Trevor Baxendale
10 The Aztec Heresy, by Paul Christopher
11 Rainbow Drive, by Roderick Thorp
12 Trace Memory, by David Llewellyn
13 The Last Colony, by John Scalzi
14 Joplin’s Ghost, by Tananarive Due
15 *From Housewife to Heretic, by Sonia Johnson (re-read)
16 *History as Mystery, by Michael Parenti
17 *West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State, by Mark Arax
18 Devil Bones, by Kathy Reichs
19 Amazon Ink, by Lori Devoti
20 CSI: Sin City, by Max Allan Collins
21 *Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit, by Matt McCarthy
22 *A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, by Michael Barkun
23 *The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann
24 The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly

The starred titles are non-fiction. I'm a little disappointed that there are only eight of those out of the 24 books I read, just a third of the total. Especially since, of the others, nine books have some relation to television shows, another third plus one. Not that those were all bad, trashy novels; some of them were quite good.

One out of those nine books related to series television, I should note, is only related to it's show ("Bones") because the lead character of both have the same name and the show is "based on" the series of mysteries. In another case, the "Dexter" books, one is the basis of the show's first season, which stuck very close to the novel, while the other is the basis of the second season, but the two diverge greatly. Another five are related to the British science-fiction series "Torchwood". Those are actually my favorites in this category, despite a slight variation in quality, simply because I like the show so much.

The books I read this year that I would recommend most highly are, among the non-fiction, West of the West, by Mark Arax and The Lost City of Z by David Grann. Both were fascinating, spectacular books.

And, of course, The Longest Cave, by Roger Brucker and Richard Watson, simply because it is my favorite book in the world. I've read it more times than I can count; it's my go-to book when I'm not happy with the world and want to be cheered up. That the book is about cave exploration may well say something about me, but I'm not sure what that might be.

Among the fiction, I would most recommend The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly. Then again, I would recommend anything of his that I've read. Also, Joplin's Ghost, by Tannarive Due, is a remarkable book that blends two different cultural movements from two different generations which might not really be all that different at all. Rainbow Drive, by Roderick Thorp, is also a good mystery, enhanced by the fact that it was written before the advent of a cell phone in every pocket, providing a pocket lesson in how much that one technological advance has changed our culture.

Other than that, I'm not going to tell you too much about any of these books. I've written about a few of them here before, but aside from that I want you to go out and seek them out for yourselves, and I don't want you to think you know enough abaout them that you'll say that you might not be interested in them. I want them to be surprises to you.

I think some of them will be good surprises.

My goal for this year, by the way, is to read 40 books. I really, secretly, hope I can reach the book a week goal I set last year, but I thought it might be a good idea to scale back expectations just a bit.

Happy New Year's Eve...

2009-12-31T18:17:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to those of you who have already made it into 2010, and for those of you who are still on this side of midnight, Happy New Year's Eve, and I hope you have a fun but safe celebr ation.

Me? I'm staying home and hiding from all the madness. It's a tradition that I like just fine, thanks. I'll make dinner, watch some TV, maybe some DVDs, possibly watch the ball drop in New York when they televise that (if I think of it), and perhaps get some writing done. I've got a new internet project that I hope will go live within the next week or so, and I need to do some preparation for that.

I did have to share something I saw earlier today as I was on the bus on the way home after spending the day knitting with friends.

There was a guy standing on the median at one of the busiest intersections in town, one of the places where people usually stand with signs asking for work, for money or for something to eat.

None of that for this guy. His sign read, in big block letters: "WON'T LIE. NEED BEER."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I guess my worse nature came out, because I settled on laughing. But, you know...I think he at least deserves points for honesty.

That was just...amazing

2009-12-21T20:13:00.001-08:00

Every once in awhile, you see and/or hear something that just has to be shared.

I'm watching "Spectacle", Elvis Costello's show on the Sundance Channel. It isn't a regular stop for me, but every once in awhile I tune in. And, boy am I glad I did this evening.

To open the show, Costello sang the most amazing version of "If I Only Had A Brain", (from "The Wizard of Oz), that I've ever heard. It was sweet, quiet, very much in the spirit of the movie, accompanied by just a guitar. There are almost no words for me to describe how lovely it was. So I won't even try.

But, if you get the chance to see a re-showing of the episode - it's the one on which his guest is Rufus Wainright - tune in early, it's the very first thing on the episode. I think you'll like it.

I told you I recognized that rock...

2009-12-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

It is amazing, some of the things you find when you channel-surf late at night.

Amazing, and occasionally frightening.

A couple of nights ago, I had just finished watching “Capote” (fabulous film, by the way…you should see it if you haven’t), and wasn’t quite ready to go to bed yet, so I started flipping through the channels, looking for something interesting.

I landed on a secondary cable version of one of our local TV stations, where there was a movie that looked oldish and like something that used to show up on Creature Features, which I loved when I was growing up. Because my father taught me from a young age to appreciate truly bad movies, I decided to watch for awhile.

It took a few minutes to find out that it was a little thing from 1966 called “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein”.

Yeah. I know. Still, with a line like, “You should have stayed in Europe and given pink pills to little old ladies”, I just couldn’t resist spending a little time with it.

But, it was getting late and I was getting cold, so I went to bed instead of watching to the end.

When I got up the next morning, however, I was still curious about the film. This was mostly because I thought I recognized the rocks I saw in several scenes. Well, not the exact rocks, but they looked like the rocks in the hills around where I grew up. That was in Southern California, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that I did know those rocks.

So, I clicked over to IMDb and looked the film up, half expecting that I had heard the title of the film wrong.

But there it was, so I checked the list of filming locations and, sure enough, the movie had been filmed at Corriganville, a movie ranch a few miles from where I grew up.

Discovering that piqued my interest further, and I did a little more research.

I found out that the movie had been made in 8 days (which is six days longer than Hollywood legend claims it took to make the original, Roger Corman-directed production of “Little Shop of Horrors”). Based on the general quality of the acting, among other things. I also discovered that the lab equipment in the film was the same equipment used in the original Frankenstein films, made years earlier by Universal. The equipment was also used later on, in “Young Frankenstein”. Which almost gives “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter” a little legitimacy. A little.

The acting was so bad…really stinky, in fact…I looked to see if any of the cast ever worked again.

Well, yes, as it turned out. The marshal was played by Jim Davis, who became better known for his portrayal of the Ewing family patriarch, Jock, in the prime-time soap opera “Dallas”. And the title role of Jesse James was played by John Lupton, a name that was familiar but that I couldn’t quite place.

Lupton, it turns out, might possibly have been in every TV series ever made. Well, maybe not every one, but the list of shows he did parts on was quite long. And before this movie, he had been in, among other productions, the 1953 version of “Julius Caesar”, the one in which Marlon Brando played Mark Antony and James Mason played Brutus. Lupton only had a small part in that, but he had been in it. One of the interesting things (to me) was that “Julius Caesar” was partly filmed at the Iversosn Ranch, another movie ranch that was at the other end of Santa Susana Pass Road from Corriganville.

Lupton is also an August 23rd person, which means nothing to any of you. But my birthday is also August 23rd, so I get to add him to the list of people who share my birthday, something I’ve been putting together for a long time and is probably far more interesting to me than it should be.

And then there was Narda Onyx, who played Frankenstein’s daughter, Dr. Maria Frankenstein, who was looking to recreate her father’s experiments in the Old West. According to IMDb, this was her last film.

And so you see how easily amused I am, that I can write over 700 words about a B-movie (well, maybe a D-movie, when you get down to it) after actually taking the time to do research on it.

All because I recognized those rocks.

A little less "drama", a little more emphasis on the "docu", please...

2009-12-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

So, I'm sitting here watching a so-called "docudrama" on History. It's called "Manson" and is, of course, about the murders of Sharon Tate and others by followers of Charles Manson.

It's a new take on the whole mess and includes an extensive interview with Linda Kasabian, the hippie girl who lived with Charlie and his "family" for all of a month, was taken along on both nights of carnage but never entered either house, then turned state's witness and was one of the main reasons (I think) that Charlie and the others were convicted.

I know the theory behind docudramas and all, that sometimes characters are composites and small details might be changed. But this is more like a documentary with re-creations of the events being examined. The re-creations are interspersed with interviews with some of the individuals involved, including not only Ms. Kasabian, but also prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and other surviors of Manson's group. Under these circumstances, I sort of expected that the filmmakers (the film is a joint UK/Canadian production) to be able to get the details correct.

Right.

Near the beginning of the film, a title is shown to indicate that the location being shown was the Spahn Ranch. Well, it had to be a re-creation of the ranch; the buildings at the actual location were burned in a brush fire in, I think, 1970 or so. But that doesn't mean that it's okay that the title identified the ranch and then gave it's location as "Benedict Canyon".

The Spahn Ranch was not in Benedict Canyon. Benedict Canyon is in the Santa Monica Mountains. Spahn was in Chatsworth, in the Santa Susana Mountains, a whole different location, miles north of Benedict Canyon. I know this to be so, because I lived not more than 8 miles or so from Spahn during the time the events portrayed in the film were happening. I passed by there on a fairly regular basis. I knew people who hung out there on occasion.

Which is, perhaps, why I'm just a little disappointed that the filmmakers couldn't manage to get such an easy-to-check detail correct.

Other than that, it's a fairly interesting film, even to someone who is farily familiar with the whole story. It really is notable that Linda Kasabian finally consented to tell her story, 40 years on. Apparently, she has been living under an assumed name and had only spoken for the record about her experience once or twice before, which is remarkable considering the enduring fascination Manson and his exploits seem to hold for so many people.

It's also interesting to read some of the reasons why prosecutor Bugliosi thinks the story still holds such interest, which he spoke about in an article for The Guardian at the time, in August, that the film was first shown on television in the UK. Click here to read that article.

It's raining, it's pouring...or, things to do inside on a rainy day

2009-12-12T14:40:00.000-08:00

I've been stuck at home, mostly, for the past week by a combination of rainy, cold weather and a car that isn't working.

One would think that this would mean that I've gotten all those things done around the apartment that I've been putting off for so long.

One would be wrong.

Well, partly. I've gotten all the laundry done this week. All of it. And I've pretty much kept the dishes washed, rather than letting them accumulate until the sink is full, something I usually justify by thinking that it's a waste of water and energy to fill a sink with hot water just to wash a couple of plates, a frying pan, a cup or two, and a few pieces of silverware.

But I still haven't decorated for Christmas. And I still haven't found a place to store the ten books and one DVD I have out of the library right now, rather than just stacking them on the chaise in the living room (the stack looks kind of like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or something right now) in hopes that I will see them and get some of them read before they're due.

I haven't even really done much reading...and I'm kind of bitter about that, because I had one book due today that I returned while Pamela was running me around town on errands, which I hadn't finished reading.

I have done some knitting, which is a good thing, since some of it has to be done next week for the gift exchange Friday night at the yarn shop and some more of it has to be done for...well, that better be left unsaid, since I don't know who's reading this. (Insert evil smilie here.)

And I've mostly got the laptop set up for work stuff after the desktop went belly up the other night. That's been a real pain in the arse to do...you never realize how much you rely on those bookmarks to get you to heavily-used sites.

There are so many things I could be doing...writing projects, cleaning. Baking something just to run the oven to get the place to warm up a little. But right now, all I really want to do is go take a nap.

Or, maybe, sit here and play with PlayDoh. No really. I was out Christmas shopping a couple of weeks ago (before the car broke), and Pamela found a package of 10 mini-cans of PlayDoh for $3.50. She handed the package to me, which meant that it had to go into the basket, since I love PlayDoh more than almost any toy I ever had growing up. Not quite as much as I loved my little red demolition derby car that would break into four pieces when I wound it up and aimed it at a wall, just to be put back together and demolished again, but that's another story for another time.

Maybe that's it. Maybe these rainy days remind me of when I was young, and I didn't have all these "things that have to be done" and I could just sit and watch the rain fall, or veg out in front of the TV, or play jacks on the linoleum floor in the entry hall, or go read a book until I fell asleep.

Man, what I wouldn't give for jacks and a ball, and a nice smooth linoleum floor so I could play a game of jacks or two right now.

Of course, with my arthritis, I'd have a seriously difficult time getting back up off the floor when I was done. But what the heck. It'd be worth it for a good game of jacks, I think.

Giving "Billions and Billions" A Whole New Meaning...

2009-12-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

I want you to click here. Just do it. It's safe for work.

Okay, now that you're back...is that amazing or is that amazing?

That photo is a result of several exposures totaling 48 hours late this past summer, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and some of the galaxies shown are 13 billion light years away (in case you've forgotten your astronomy, 1 light year = around 6 trillion miles). Basically, that means when you look at that photo, you are looking 13 billion years into the past. That, all by itself, is mind-boggling, as far as I'm concerned.

But that's not all.

Each of the bits of light in that photo is a separate galaxy, not just one star, like most of what we can see when we go out and look up into the night sky.

What? You don't do that? Well, you should. It's pretty.

Anyway. Each one of those galaxies is made up of billions of stars. Take the Milky Way, for example. Our galaxy contains somewhere around 200 billion stars. Multiply an approximation of that by each galaxy in that photo, and you've got a lot of stars. A lot of planets, too, probably.

Which is interesting to think about, I think. Imagine all the possibilities presented by that many stars, that many planets, that many...places.

Well, who knows what has happened in the intervening 13 billion years. All those stars might be nothing but cinders now, and their planets with them. Still, I don't know how anyone can look at a photo like that and not have the words, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." occur to them for at least a little while.

Yeah. We might be the only intelligent life in the universe (and I sometimes have doubts about us, even). But we might not, too. And if we are not...what might have happened out there, over all that time and in all that space?

We'll never know, of course.

But it's a lot of fun to think about.

Getting on with it...

2009-12-06T19:52:00.000-08:00

This is me, moving on with my life.

Today is a year since my mother died. In some ways, it seems like forever. In other ways, it seems like it was just yesterday.

And, the oddest thing: I woke up this morning at just about the exact time I got the call last year that she was gone. I missed her. But, somehow it was okay. It was as if the universe was finally giving me permission to move on. Or, maybe, it was just me giving myself permission to do so.

I’ve actually been feeling this way for the past couple of weeks, after going through a period of a few weeks when I felt about as bad, emotionally, as I did right after she passed. I felt vulnerable, needy, as if I couldn’t do anything right. But then, astonishingly quickly, almost overnight it seemed, that feeling of sadness lifted.

It isn’t that I suddenly don’t miss her, because I do. But I’m losing that feeling that I should be doing something for her, or not doing things that she might not have liked or approved of. There were flashes of that in the past year, but just flashes.

I would have liked to do more today to memorialize Mother, but I couldn’t figure out the right way to do that. And so, I just moved on. I went shopping with my best friend. We took toys to the Toys for Tots drive and went out to lunch. Then I came home and took a nap. And now I’m thinking about the writing I want to do, as well as wondering what I’m going to do about my car, which has decided to be cranky and which I really can’t afford to get looked at now.

And it felt right to do those things.

And it feels right that I’m watching some Doctor Who episodes while I’m writing this and trying to decide what to have for dinner.

Been awhile...

2009-11-10T22:11:00.000-08:00

Sorry it has been so long since I've been in here.

It's been a busy time, and a bit of a sad time. I got my work hours cut back, and I've been trying to find something to do to replace the income that went away with the lost hours. No success yet, and I'm beginning to get worried. No. I've been worried since I found out about the cut, but I've been trying to remain positive.

That's difficult to do, especially while also dealing with the emotions that are coming along with the approach of the first anniversary of my mother's death, now less than a month away.

Sometimes I think I'm doing so well, and then I get hit with all those emotions again, all those memories. I try not to let them get too out of hand, and I try not to bother my friends with all of it too much. They were such a help during the time before and after my Mother's death, and I don't want to burden them with how I'm feeling now.

By the same token, I don't want to come over here and be all whiny and depressing and anxiety-ridden. Makes for boring reading. But I've been distracted with everything and so haven't spent much time looking around for interesting things to share.

I hope things start looking up soon.

I plan to write more often, whether they do or not.

And apparently the finger-crossing didn't work...

2009-09-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

...because there's a big new fire (well, new yesterday) in the Moorpark-Fillmore area of Southern California.

Reports say that this fire was a result of spontaneous combustion on a farm in the area, not all that far-fetched given the high temperatures in the area when it started.

Once again, a hint...finger-crossing is not a good way to prevent wildfires.

As a strategy, it leaves a little to be desired...

2009-09-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

With at least two fires still burning in Southern California, Santa Ana winds - what we just called the East Wind when I was growing up there - are predicted to kick up today. One forecast calls for gusts up to 45 miles per hour tonight.

The wind, combined with predicted high temperatures in the high 90s and low 100s for the next couple of days, is par for the course for Southern California in September. It is also a dangerous situation, especially with a continuing drought in the region.

So what strategy did Joe Sirard, who works for the National Weather Service in Oxnard, advocate for avoiding fires? The Los Angeles Times quoted Sirard as saying:

"If any fires were to develop or ignite, it could be a serious situation where the fire could explosively grow. It's going to be a potentially hazardous situation, so let's cross our fingers."

Pardon me while I laugh and roll my eyes.

Not that there is really anything funny about the situation. But "it could be a serious situation"? No, it is a serious situation, and more than potentially hazardous. Take my word for it. I've lived through east-wind driven fires more times than I care to recall.

And this - "...so let's cross our fingers" - is a strategy for keeping fires from starting, or fighting them if they start? Maybe I just don't have much of a sense of humor about wildfires, but that could be the most inane thing I've ever read.

To give Mr. Sirard the benefit of the doubt, crossing one's fingers is one of those platitudes that just jumps out of people's mouths without conscious thought sometimes. Still, it seems like a spokesperson for the NWS could come up with something a little more intelligent than that.

It's a long, long way from Fresno to Salt Lake City...

2009-09-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

Ah, the three-day-weekend road trip.

At least until gasoline prices started getting so out of hand, road trips on three-day weekends were a tradition in the US. They still are for some people.

For my family, not so much. We didn't do the weekend-getaway thing too often.

However, this past Labor Day Weekend, I took the opportunity to ride with friends to Salt Lake City for the weekend. On the heels of that trip, I can tell you one thing for absolute certain:

It is a freaking long way from Fresno to SLC.

I haven't looked up the actual mileage. I'm not that brave. But I know that we were on the road by around 4:30 or 5 p.m. on that Friday, and we didn't reach our destination, just north of SLC, until around 7 a.m. Saturday morning. Even with figuring in a lost hour for the time change (from Pacific Time to Mountain Time), that's more than 12 hour in the car.

Monday morning, we were in the car by around 5 a.m. and I didn't get in my back door until around midnight. Yes, that's an even longer drive. But instead of retracing our route back on I-80, we dropped about half-way down Utah and came across on Highway 50, billed as the Loneliest Road in America.

They aren't lying. Once you get into Nevada especially, there are five towns across the entire width of the state. None of them have very many people. Well, with the exception of Fallon, but they're nearly to Reno...and they have a Naval Air Station. Of the others, I think the biggest one had a population of 5,000. Maybe.

Lest you think I'm whining too much, I will add that the drive, especially on Monday, was absolutely gorgeous. Couldn't say much about Friday night/Saturday morning, as it was dark most of the way. Not as dark as it could have been, however, considering that it was full moon, or close to it.

You know those roads they talk about in the west, that go on pin-straight for as far as the eye can see? Saw those. Interspersed with winding mountain roads through passes in the 6,500 to 7,500 foot range. They don't call it the Basin and Range Region for nothing.

I would recommend the drive to anyone who likes getting out where you can drive for miles and not see another person or car or any sign of civilization. Only do it when you have three or four days to spend because, despite the sparse settlement, there are things to see out there. There are petroglyph sites, archeological and paleontological sites and, still in Utah, a quarry where you can go and dig for your own trilobite.

Don't know what a trilobite is? Go look it up. I've been entranced by them since I was a little kid.

But we all decided, in the last stages of the drive home, after a stop in Lodi for dinner and as we were driving down the 99, that Fresno to SLC and back is not a sane three-day weekend trip. Unless you're willing to fly.

Street-corner Totalitarianism...

2009-08-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer - I write this post not as someone trying to criticize Christianity, but in response to one particular Christian (at least, that's how he portrayed himself) who seems not to have bothered to do any research before he decided to preach on a street-corner.

Last night on the way to dinner, I happened to have to stop at a red light at the busiest intersection in town. It is the place where people often gather to get their message out to the world. This time, however, it seemed not so much a gathering - there were only two young men in evidence - as a takeover. There were signs planted in the ground. There were the two men. And there was a bullhorn.

If you know me at all, you know I had to put my window down so I could hear what the young man with a bullhorn was saying.

The Gospel of Luke, he shouted though the horn, says that it's fine to compel people to come to Christ.

Huh? What? Never heard that one before. One would think I would have come across that sentiment, if it exists in any widely accepted school of Christian thought. I graduated from a Christian university, after all, and took several Biblical studies and theology courses in the course of my education there.

He can't, I thought, be saying it's all right to force people to believe something, or to act as if they believe something, just because someone tells them the must.

The light changed, and I drove on, but what I had heard bothered me a great deal. There was some discussion of it over dinner, before the friend I was dining with and I went on to other topics.

It was still bothering me this morning when I woke up, so I decided to do a little research.

Thanks to an online Biblical search engine, I discovered that there is a verse in Luke's gospel which does, indeed, use the word "compel" in a parable that talks about a supper, a master, a servant, and bringing people to the table for supper. Or, the Supper, meaning, I suppose, to bring people into communion with Jesus.

In the King James version of the Bible, Luke 14:23 reads:

And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.

That wasn't the sort of Christianity I was brought up in. I was always taught, at least before my lengthy foray into Mormonism, that god wants people to worship him because they want to, not because they are required to. No compulsion, no force involved.

That is the definition of "compel", after all: "to drive or urge forcefully or irresistibly"; "to cause to do or occur by overwhelming pressure" (Thanks, Merriam-Webster Online.)

Fortunately, there were links to Bible commentaries on the website I was looking at, and so I had a look around to see what the commentators had to say about this verse and it's meaning. The reading was interesting.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible casts the verse as an invitation to all, that the servant in the parable was not to take excuses such as that the invitee was not worthy of the supper, or that the invitee did not have proper dress to enter the master's house.

Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible states explicitly that the verse is not an "argument...for compelling men's consciences, nay, for compelling men against their consciences, in matters of religion." Henry's Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible, calls the verse an instruction to the apostles to invite Gentiles to follow Jesus at a time when there were huge controversies about whether once must be a Jew in order to follow Jesus.

In another commentary to something called The Fourfold Gospel, the commentators follows Jamieson, et al. in insisting that the verse is a commission to make sure that no one holds themselves to be unworthy of the gospel. It specifically adds that they were to be constrained by moral and not by physical means" and that "Physical constraint would have been contrary to all custom" at the time.

That was clearly not what the street-corner preacher was saying last night. Even in the short bit of his screed that I heard, it was very clear that his intent was to say that it is just fine and dandy to force people to follow his particular brand of Christianity. That there is only one choice, his choice, and that he stood ready to "compel" - his word, not mine - people to follow Jesus.

I could hear it not only in his words, but in his tone, in his emphasis of that word, in his very posture, which was nothing if not aggressive.

Where do people get these ideas? That it is perfectly alright to force someone to accept Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism, or some other religion or philosophy, that they do not believe in.

And, how would he enforce this compulsion? By physical threats, economic threats, with firearms?

And what ever happened to the Christianity of my youth, where no one would ever have had this concept of what it means to be a Christian, that it is okay to force others to follow your religious beliefs, much less shouted it through a bullhorn as a threat on the busiest corner in Fresno?

I can only hope that this street-corner preacher was an aberration, that he was speaking only for himself and the young man who was with him, and not for the vast majority of Christians in America. Anyway, he wasn't speaking for the Christians I know.

Friday Follies...

2009-08-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

I love funny signs. I also love signs that aren't exactly what you'd call, oh, accurate.

I live more or less across the street from our local CSU campus. I won't mention it's name, but its initials are Fresno State.

This evening, as I was coming home from shopping, I happened to drive past the on-campus arena. The electronic message board was, as usual, flashing promotions for upcoming concerts and for beer. But, in between those, another message came up, this one in relation to the new semester, which starts Monday.

"Welcome Week, August 20 - September 16"

Uh-huh.

According to my calendar, that's not a week. It isn't even a fortnight. If it were February it would be whole month. Really. That is a span of twenty-eight days. Four weeks.

So, my question is...In an institution of higher learning, which is what Fresno State is supposed to be, who is the genius who decided that twenty-eight days makes a week? Surely there is someone on campus who realizes that one week equals seven days.

Not freaking twenty-eight.

I'll grant that "Welcome Month" isn't alliterative, like "Welcome Week" is. Which makes it the English department's fault, yes? They like alliteration over there.

Still, it makes me nervous that the same people who are educating the state's children apparently can't tell the difference between a week and a month. It's just...wrong.

Wait. Stop the presses. I know who did it.

It was the same dumbass who scheduled one of my finals there (one of the two semesters I attended the school before fleeing for a more promising campus) for 8 p.m. on a Friday night.

Has to be.

Maybe you can help me understand this...

2009-08-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

So, I'm starting to re-read Lies My Teacher Told Me (Touchstone, 1995), by James W. Loewen. I mentioned it in a post a few days ago as covering some of the same territory as Michael Parenti's History as Mystery, only in a better, more interesting way.

In the Introduction, on page 15, Loewen writes, after discussing how boring history textbooks (and especially high school history textbooks) are and how often they aren't exactly accurate:

Often a textbook is written not by the authors whose names grace its cover, but by minions deep in the bowels of the publisher's offices. When historians do write textbooks, they risk snickers from their colleagues--tinged with envy, but snickers nonetheless: "Why are you devoting time to pedagogy rather than original research?"

I knew that textbooks (of most kinds) are often not written by the named authors, but ghostwritten by publishing company employees. They're kind of like U.S. Supreme Court decisions that way; those are often written not by the Justice whose name is on the majority opinion, but by their law clerks. So that is not a shocking revelation to me.

However, I'm having a serious problem with his characterization of the attitude of many professional historians to the writing of textbooks. Why would they not want to participate in the writing of textbooks? Why would a professional not care whether or not the knowledge in their field is accurately presented to the next generation?

Maybe Loewen is exaggerating the problem? I don't know. I do know that the history textbooks I had in school, and that I've run across along the way are mostly very boring. I've never done a fact-check of any of them...although that would probably be an interesting project (yes, I'm a geek). But, despite the fact that whoever writes the books has to get a lot of information into a fairly small amount of space, I don't believe that history textbooks have to be boring and error-ridden. And certainly, even if the books are name/date/fact heavy, teachers can make the subject interesting. I've seen that done before. Not in my own junior high and high school classrooms, but that's another story for another time. It can be done.

What do you think? Can history textbooks be interesting and accurate? If Loewen is characterizing the attitude among professional historians toward the writing of textbooks accurately, do you think they need an attitude adjustment? How can that be accomplished? Do you think part of the problem lies at the hands of the textbooks publishers?

Oh, and one more question: If the minions are going to continue writing the textbooks, how do I get to be a minion? I think that would be a fun job to have. Well, maybe not if I have to do it in a basement, but still...I'm a writer, I love history, and I wouldn't have a problem with checking facts. I love to do research.

Edited to add: I do not mean to cast aspersions on the motives or attitudes of any professional historians by what I've written here. I'm asking these questions for a couple of reasons: 1) I don't know how accurate Loewen's characterizations are. 2) It is an issue that I'm concerned about as a writer; I want all books to be interesting, no matter what the subject, and I believe that they can be. I'm just here to learn.

Book Review: West of the West...

2009-08-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

I don't usually go around telling people they must read a book. Mainly, that's because I don't generally like people telling me that I must read some that they've just finished reading. I don't mind recommendations, mind you. Love them, in fact. But I just figure that you like what you like, I like what I like, and those two things might not be the same thing.

I'm going to make an exception here. Bet you saw that coming.

Whatever you're doing right now, go out and find a copy of West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State (Public Affairs, 2009) by Mark Arax, and read it.

Well, finish reading this first, but then go get the book and read it.

West of the West is a spectacular book. It is a series of essays that grew out of Arax's reporting (he was a writer for the Los Angeles Times and is a contributing writer at Los Angeles magazine) and his life. The stories he tells are fascinating, and his writing is graceful without being inaccessible. No matter who or what he writes about, he is present and engaged in the story he is telling.

And he tells a wide variety of stories here. There are several stories about immigrants...from Armenia, from Mexico, from Pakistan, from Vietnam. Besides the immigrants from other countries, he also writes about immigrants to California from other parts of the United States, in a piece called "Last Okie of Lamont", that mourns the passing of the Okies from the town where the labor camp John Steinbeck used as his model for the camp in The Grapes of Wrath was located.

He also writes about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how it has affected two families in the heart of the state; about Humboldt County, in the north state, where the debate is not whether or not to grow marijuana, but whether to do it in an environmentally responsible way or in a higher-yielding but far-from-green way; about a dairy farmer who only wants to be left alone to provide raw milk products to consumers who wish to buy them.

Arax shows the reader a bit of his own life as well, and in the process perhaps a bit of how he had become able to see the world around him the way he does.

I recently heard Mark Arax speak at a writers group I belong to, and one of the things he said that day struck me as particularly important. He said that it is impossible for a writer to be completely objective, because writers are not robots, but humans. So, the writer's goal is not to be objective, but to be fair. As far as I can see, he has met that goal admirably in these essays. He has a point of view, and he sometimes shares it, but not at the expense of the point of view of others.

Perhaps the reason, or one of the reasons, I like these essays so much is that a fair amount of them strike personal chords for me. I am an Okie on my mother's side of the family, which made much in "Last Okie of Lamont" familiar. My father was an immigrant to this country, so those stories about immigrants made a lot of sense to me, as well, despite the fact that their experiences are really not at all like his in most ways. And he writes more than once here about Fresno and the surrounding area, where he was born and where I live. Some of the places he mentions are places I drive by weekly, if not daily. There are events he explores that I knew as stories in the local news section of the paper when they were taking place.

But this isn't just a "Fresno book" or a "San Joaquin Valley Book", but a book about the California experience. And although Arax has picked and chosen the stories he tells, the real and complete California experience is here. Not the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and not just the big cities and the beautiful people, but the real California. Arax's California is the California where the very poor live cheek-by-jowl with the very rich, where the farmers have to argue with the cities for their water and with the government for their very right to exist, where the most horrible and wonderful things can happen.

Okay. I'm done now.

Go. Read. This. Book.

In which I finally manage to finish reading a book...

2009-08-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

It took me a week, but I finally finished reading Michael Parenti's History as Mystery. I was nearly finished, but it took most of a week to make myself sit down and read the last ten pages or so, which are the end of a screed criticizing what he calls psychopolitics, the psychoanalysis of historical figures.

It isn't that I completely disagree with him on this, but it was also the part of the book where he explicitly (and finally) comes out as a Marxist historian, not my favorite way of analyzing history. As I said in an earlier post, it isn't because it's Marx, but that I find it a fairly simplistic way of looking at history. This is probably because I see a variety of things shaping historical events rather than just putting everything down to class conflict.

So, it was really funny to find Parenti, on page 265, calling psychopolitics "simplistic in its interpretation" and "reductionist", since that is pretty much how I view Marxist historical analysis. Just proves, to me anyway, that how you feel about historical analysis is relative, based on your own biases.

And, goodness knows, we all have our biases. I'm just more comfortable when a writer can recognize that they have biases and is willing to acknowledge them. My bias, then, related to my feelings about Parenti's book, is that, as I said, I don't like any analysis of history that reduce all causation to one single issue, such as class conflict. (Ouch! How many commas can I get into one sentence?) The world is a complicated place, motivations of the people who have shaped history are complicated, and to say that all of history comes down to any one aspect of all that is too simplistic for me.

Ah, well. It was an interesting book anyway, and Parenti has some interesting things to say. One of the most important things he writes about is the idea that "history", as it is viewed and taught in US public schools, is avoiding controversy and turning the student into a good citizen who does not question or criticize orthodox interpretations of How Things Should Be. This is not an original thesis, and has been explored by others, including Frances Fitzgerald in America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (Little, Brown: 1979) and James W. Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (New Press: 1995). Both are very good books and do a better, more thorough job than Parenti does in looking at how US history is taught in US public schools. I recommend both books; in fact, I'm about to go back and re-read Loewen's book, and perhaps Fitzgerald's, as well.

Parenti, on the other hand, goes farther afield and his scattershot approach, while uncovering some interesting issues in history and historiography, is sometimes a bit difficult to follow and I would have liked it better if he had taken more time and care to tie all the threads here together into a more coherent whole. As it is, despite the valuable places he goes in the book, I was left wondering what his point was, aside from the fact that he advocates Marxist historical analysis.

Maybe that was he only point, in the end. He could have said that more clearly, rather than just tacking a one-page "afterward" to the last chapter, the one on psychopolitics, where he sort of just sticks his tongue out at orthodox history and historians and essentially proclaims that "My historical analysis can beat up your historical analysis."

A weekend with no reading...

2009-08-09T22:51:00.000-07:00

But there was a good reason...I was at a family reunion, and it was lovely.

I took books along, all three that I'm reading at the moment. And I think I read about three paragraphs last night before I went to bed, and I can't remember a thing I read, so I'll have to go back and read those paragraphs again.

The only bad part of the weekend was the traffic.

The reunion was in Folsom, which is about a three hour drive from here. And I expected the traffic to be bad on Friday. I didn't get on the road until 3:20 p.m., after having to wait for my rental car, which turned out to be worth it since I got to drive a brand new Chevy Malibu. It had all of 7 miles on in when they gave it to me. So, I hit Stockton right about at rush hour, but traffic was heavy the whole way up there. And, as I said, I was expecting that.

But I really didn't expect so much traffic when I started home at just before 2 p.m. I don't know. Maybe everyone else took off this weekend, and they were all going home just when I was. But, I've driven home from places on Sunday afternoons before, and the traffic today was worse than I remember it usually being on a Sunday.

Well, expect for the Sunday after Thanksgiving, coming home from LosCon in Los Angeles, I suppose. But that's a special case.

Still, the traffic was worth it to be able to spend the weekend with family I don't get to see very often. We spent a lot of time talking, comparing memories, sharing stories and genealogical information, and just laughing a lot.

But...at least I got a little bit of knitting done.

In which knitting takes precedence over reading...

2009-08-05T08:15:00.000-07:00

I didn't get to read anything at all yesterday, aside from research for work.

By the time I finished with work it was time to get lunch, and then I went to knit. I got home from knit night about 8:30 p.m. and sat down to watch television for a few minutes before doing some reading...and promptly fell asleep for the next two hours. Now, I'm good, but not good enough to read while sleeping.

Today could be the same. After work (which I should get to soon), I've got to go pay some bills, check on my car rental for the weekend, and probably do some laundry. There are probably some other things I'll need to do that I just can't remember right now.

Knit night was fun, though, so I don't regret throwing reading over to attend. My knitting group is a wonderful community...definitely not your grandmother's knitters. There were about 30 of us there last night (attendance was enhanced by the fact that it was Pineapple Pizza Night), and as far as I could tell, everyone had a marvelous time. I know I did.

Well, time for breakfast, and then work. Or breakfast while I work, more likely.

I get these scathingly brilliant ideas sometimes...

2009-08-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

And I intend to write about them, but then I get distracted by Ravelry or Facebook or Twitter, and before I know it, I'm about to fall asleep or its time to go to bed even if I'm not sleepy.

But I'm getting better. I managed to tear myself away from Ravelry (if you knit, crochet, spin, or dye, you might want to go visit) after only 45 minutes or so, and here I am. It's all in the willpower.

Yeah. Right.

Anyway...I'm still in the middle of my...well, it isn't a love/hate relationship, so just call it a like/throw it across the room relationship with History as Mystery. So, I'm not really prepared to write about it yet, but while I was reading at dinner tonight (at Irene's, home of the world's best hamburger and fries), I got what I can only call a scathingly brilliant idea.

I'm in the middle of chapter 5, in which Parenti writes about history and historians in academia. He complains (rightfully, to an extent) about the trouble leftist historians have had in the past in getting and keeping university appointments and points out that conservative (I think he really means rightist) historians have not had this problem, which is probably more true than not. But it struck me that he probably wouldn't be complaining if it was, say, Newt Gingerich, who lost his teaching post because of his ideology.

To be perfectly honest, I don't think that personal ideology belongs in the classroom. I've run up against that, on both ends of the political and ideological spectrum, and it just bothers me. However, there is no way that teachers, especially in history and political science, are going to check their beliefs at the door, so there needs to be another way to deal with how students are taught history.

Bingo. Right in the middle of munching a French fry, my scathingly brilliant idea sprouted. Because there needs to be room for left, center, and right (not the loony right, but real conservatives...and yes there is a difference, a big difference) on the university campus, there also needs to be a way to neutralize that for students. So, my idea is that, for history majors at least, to take their survey courses in U.S. (here in the States) and world history three times...once from a conservative professor, once from a centrist or moderate professor, and once from a leftist professor. At the same time...all three US history courses at the same time, and all three world history courses at the same time, so that they get all three perspectives in a way that can allow the students to compare and contrast and, oh, make up their own minds which is the most useful and accurate. Rather than be at the mercy of whichever point of view from whichever professor they happen to get because that course section fit into their schedule.

Yeah. I know. No university would ever go for that. I still think it is a brilliant idea. And I'm going to go on thinking so, because I don't get scathingly brilliant ideas very often.

So. I need to finish reading this book...I'm about three-quarters of the way through it. And I need to finish the other two books I'm reading, as well. The goal is to have Parenti finished before I head out of town Friday to go to my family reunion, seeing as it's due back at the library Monday anyway. Then, I'll take one or both of the others, if I haven't already finished them, with me in case I find some time to read in the evenings. But I'd like to have the fluff book finished before the weekend, as well. We'll see.

So, how was your day?

Oh, and extra points to anyone who can tell me what movie the concept of the "scathingly brilliant idea" came from.

Getting back on an even keel...

2009-08-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

One of the things I didn't get to do nearly enough of during the time I took care of my mother was reading. It wasn't so much a matter of time constraints as that it was difficult to get to the library, and while I own a good number of books, that didn't mean that I always really wanted to read the books that were on hand.

Anyway, I've been trying, in the past few months since my mother died, to get back into the habit of reading...and of finishing the books I start. I've always been bad about picking up a book and starting it and then never quite getting around to finishing. Part of that is the fact that I just won't finish a book that I don't like; I might be OCD about a lot of things, but that isn't one of them. And part of it is that when a book is due at the library, it has to go back even if you're not done with it. Since I depend so much on libraries for my reading material, that is often a factor.

But, I've determined that I'm going to read more books, and I'm going to try to finish more of the books I begin. And I'm going to write about reading. If I do that, maybe I'll be more conscientious (damn...spelled it right the first time; go me!) about finishing the books I start. It just wouldn't do to have to keep writing, started X book...didn't finish; started Y book...sat it down halfway through; started Z book...threw it across the room.

(Yes, I throw books across the room. I threw The Grapes of Wrath across the room in high school; and I've been throwing them ever since. I would have thrown Catcher in the Rye in eighth grade, but I hadn't quite gotten yet that just because it was assigned didn't mean that I had to actually finish the cursed thing.)

The fact that I haven't been finishing things, however, doesn't mean that I haven't been reading anything. I've started lots of books in the past few months. And I've either gotten bored, or gotten hold of something that is more interesting than what I was reading when I found it, or just forgot that I was reading it and had to take it back to the library. There were even one or two that were just unbearable.

Anyway...I'm in the middle of three books now. Well, four, but one was put down so long ago that I'm not counting it, and besides that one is a re-read, so it isn't quite as bad that I haven't finished it this time.

I'm reading a silly trifle, Dirty Sexy Knitting, by Christie Ridgway (New York: Berkeley Books, 2009). Basically a romance novel, and not my usual sort of reading, but it's fun...although it hasn't exactly scorched my eyeballs yet, as the fellow knitter down at Ancient Pathways (my local knitting shop) who brought it in to pass around said it would. Maybe I just read more, um, adventurous, things than she does.

On a more serious note, I'm reading History as Mystery, by Michael Parenti (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1999). This one is interesting, basically trying to make the case that most of history as we know it is a lie, or at least willful misdirection in order to make the powers that be look good. Parenti, a Ph.D. in history, has made some good points so far, but his is basically a Marxist interpretation of history, something I'm not that big a fan of...not because it's Marx, but because I've always found it kind of a simplistic way to look at history. There's lots of finger-pointing at those he does not agree with, without much of the same toward those he does agree with but who have done some of the same things that he criticizes. Still, as I said, he is making some points that probably need to be made if historiography is not going to degenerate (if it hasn't already) into a tug-of-war between ideologies. I'll be writing more about all of this once I've finished reading and thought about it all a bit. Which is one thing I like about this book...about any book...I love a book that makes me think about things, and that challenges me to confront my own biases and opinions.

The third book I'm reading is West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State, by Mark Arax (New York: Public Affairs, 2009). This is a series of essays, some that have appeared in different form elsewhere, that grew out of Arax's work as a journalist and out of his own life. Very, very good so far. I read his first book, In the Name of My Father, which is a memoir about his family, growing up in Fresno, and dealing with the murder of his father when Arax was a teenager, when it was first published. Now, this past Saturday, he came and spoke to my Sisters in Crime group and so I had the chance to get this new book as well as a copy of his first book, which I will re-read soon.

Arax's talk Saturday was fabulous, by the way. It has me more motivated than I have been in a long time to get on with my writing. It's nice to hear the other writers who come speak to the group, but most of them are novelists and short story writers. Which is fine; I'm trying to learn how to write fiction. But I mostly write non-fiction, and I self-identify as a non-fiction writer rather than as a would-be novelist. So, it was good to hear from someone who does what I do, what I try to do. And I loved that he said that the objective of a non-fiction writer is not objectivity, which is impossible unless you are a robot, but fairness. This is something I've believed for a long time, and it was nice to hear that a writer as successful as he is agrees.

Well, it's late, and 7 a.m. comes very early. I just hope I can get to sleep; I slept 'til 10:30 Sunday morning, and then took a three-hour nap in the afternoon. Catching up was a good thing, but now I'm not sleepy although it's after midnight.

Oh, and I wanted to ask you...what are all of you reading right now?

Being of two minds...

2009-04-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

I've always been intrigued with the concept of being of two minds about something.

That phrase always puts me in mind of having two separate brains inside my skull, with each trying to convince the other of its point of view. Arguing sometimes, of course, but usually finding some accommodation.

It's a silly, scary image, but it is a pretty good approximation of what goes on in my head when I'm feeling ambivalent about something. Which is probably more often that I really want to admit, but that's a different post.

The reason I'm bringing the whole subject up is that I'm feeling very ambivalent, very much in two minds, about a memorial service I am going to attend tomorrow evening. I feel like I need to go, but I really don't want to go.

As some of you might know, my mother died in December. It's been a bit over four months now, and I'm mostly doing pretty good with it. Well, I saw a Mother's Day display in Barnes & Noble the other night when I went in there, and that kind of ruined the good mood I had been in. Still, I'm carrying on, doing the things I need to do. Getting a life.

So, the hospice organization that was caring for my mother at the end of her life is having a memorial...or as they call it, a remembrance service, tomorrow evening in the chapel at the hospital that operates the hospice. We had a celebration of life for my mother a bit over a month after she passed (the delay had to do with the holidays and arranging a time when the most people could attend), and that was a good thing. That service was largely (not completely) devoid of religion, as my mother was not a religious person. She followed the church of "God knows my intentions, and as long as I'm a good person I don't need an institution to tell me what I'm supposed to be doing." There was a lot more laughter than there were tears at that service, as she would have wanted it. And we all got together afterward for a meal and more remembrances.

But somehow, I feel like I need to go to this service tomorrow night as well. More as a show of respect for my mother than anything else, even though it is the kind of thing she would never have attended. Which, knowing that, makes me not want to attend.

I don't know if my feelings about the whole thing are complicated, or just convoluted. It's very possible that none of this makes any sense at all. That I'm over-analyzing something that is really very simple and straightforward...go, deal with the feelings that it brings up, and go on with life.

It'll probably be fine. But I'm still worried about it a bit.

I thought computers were supposed to save time...

2009-04-20T14:06:00.001-07:00

I finished work over an hour ago.

I was determined to get off the stupid computer as soon as I finished work today.

Yes, I know. A computer is an inanimate object and therefore cannot be stupid. Still, my computer is stupid. Very stupid, sometimes.

Anyway. Sorry for the digression. I learned Tangents 101 from the best of them.

I was going to finish work, get off the computer, have some lunch and then read for awhile.

But then I thought: "I'll just check Ravelry (the knitting site I frequent) one more time." Fine. Didn't take long. Oops. Got to look at Twitter just once more before I log off. That didn't take long either. OH. Bills have to be paid. That took awhile. Always does.

Then another thing came up, and another.

And now, here I am, writing a blog post. Complaining about how much of my time my computer sucks up. Because it's stupid.

No. It isn't stupid. I am.

I'm going to go read a book now. Really.

What was that resolution I made...

2009-04-19T15:02:00.000-07:00

Yes. I know. I wrote at the beginning of the year (which seems like a long, long time ago, by the way) that I was going to post here more than I did last year.

It seems, however, that that resolution has gone the way of most resolutions made around New Year's Day...I haven't posted very much at all in the past three and a half months.

Now, here are the excuses...I've been busy working. I've been busy knitting. I've been busy reading. I've been busy trying to get the novel I've been thinking about for years now started.

And all those excuses are the absolute truth. But none of that is any real reason not to post more often.

I mean, there's still plenty to complain about.

Starting with the weather. It's hot here today; in fact I've been thinking about closing the windows and turning on the air conditioner. In April. That is just pathetic and ridiculous. It isn't supposed to be hot enough for that until, oh, the beginning of May, at least.

Anyway, every time lately that I've sat down to write a post, I end up just blathering on. Kind of like I'm doing now. I think some of it, at least, has to do with my mother's passing at the end of last year. Her death, and the months leading up to it, just took so much out of me emotionally that I'm having to take some time to recharge my batteries before I can get really exercised about anything. I don't want to think about serious issues right now, much less deal with them at enough length to write about them.

I suppose this is not altogether surprising. One of the things they taught us in the grief support group I attended was that it takes between a year and two years to really process and "get over" the loss of someone close, to the extent that one ever really "gets over it" at all. It has just been four and a half months or so, and some of the emotions surrounding losing my mother are still pretty raw. On my way into Barnes and Noble the other night, just seeing a display about the upcoming Mother's Day upset me quite a bit. Much more than I had expected, although I should have suspected it considering that I still have issues about Father's Day, over thirty years after my father's passing. Which is probably silly, but he did pass just before Father's Day, which is probably part of all that.

At any rate, I should write more here. I'm going to try to write more here. It might get more personal for awhile than I've tended to make this blog in the past. But that's all right. It's probably good for me, in fact. One of the issues I've had my whole life revolves around a fear of opening myself up emotionally to others.

I guess we'll see what happens.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I am a Torchwood fan...

2009-03-27T10:46:00.001-07:00

Yes. It has been awhile. But, I suppose it figures I'd come back with this quiz:

Which Torchwood Character Are You? Your Result: Gwen Cooper You most resemble the team's second-in-command and ex-police officer. Empathetic and stubborn, you tend to grab the bull by its horns and have difficulty admitting when you're wrong, though you always mean well. You are inconsistent in your relationships, wanting stability but also craving drama, and sometimes end up putting yourself first.
Captain Jack Harkness
Ianto Jones
Toshiko Sato
Owen Harper
Which Torchwood Character Are You? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I can live with this result, but I somehow thought I'd be Toshiko...or maybe the female version of Ianto.

Overheard on the TV...

2009-02-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

You hear some of the strangest things on television.

Well, I don't know for sure about you. I certainly hear some odd statements on TV sometimes. Especially on the morning shows and on the cable news channels. And I don't even watch FOX Noise.

I tend to keep cable news channels on when I'm working in the mornings, since it is a good way to make sure I hear about breaking news (and, oh, Lord how I hate that phrase, especially after they still classify the news as "breaking" several hours after its first announcement...see today's story about A-Rod's use of performance-enhancing substances as a great example of this) that relates to my work so that I can incorporate it into my work. Most times, thought, the TV is just noise in the background.

But, every once in awhile I'll hear something that catches my ear and makes me sit up and say, "WTF?"

Earlier this morning, for example, I was listening to MSNBC. They were talking about the A-Rod thing and someone being interviewed asked ~~anchor~~ newsreader Contessa Brewer if she is a Yankees fan. Her reply was, "You have to be, if you live in New York City."

Huh? There's a law? I wonder how many people in NYC haven't gotten that memo?

As stupid as that statement was, I heard an even sillier one a couple of weeks ago. I wrote down the quote, it was so amazingly odd, but I didn't note where I heard it. I think it was on the Today show, but I'm not sure. Wherever it was, it was during a dieting segment and was from a person-on-the-street interview.

A woman said, in response to a question that I didn't hear, "As a woman, you always try to watch what you eat."

I wasn't aware that there was some genetic imperative that makes all woman obsessed with every morsel of food that enters our mouths. I know that the diet industry does its best to convince us of that, and they certainly seem to have reached success in the case if that woman. But, sheesh, just because I have two X chromosomes, does that mean that I am supposed to be obsessed with food?

Ah, well. It is a media-driven culture we have here, and conformity has always meant a lot to the American people. But still...

Does that Yankees' comment mean that I have to be a fan of the teams at the university across the street from where I live simply because I live here?

And, probably more important, will there be a quiz on win-loss records?

Oh, good grief...

2009-01-21T22:21:00.000-08:00

Let it be noted that on Wednesday, January 21, 2009, President Barack Obama had to re-take his oath of office because John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, got tongue-tied during the original oath on January 20, Inauguration Day.

The administration said that the do-over was simply "out of an abundance of caution". I think it was out of flashback to the Bill Clinton presidency, when certain components of the right wing did everything they could, however ridiculous, to try to push Clinton out of the White House. Yes, we do remember the incessant bullying.

And let it not be said that no one thought the bungled oath might be used in that way. Chris Wallace, of FOX News (I'm trying to be nice here), was quoted as questioning whether Obama might not actually be president due to the fact that the words of the original oath were not said in exactly the right order, and that the issue could end up in court. Never mind that the president-elect becomes president at 12 noon EST on Inauguration Day, whether or not the oath has been administered.

This strikes me as just the stupidest thing, superstitious almost, or at least a manifestation of some sort of institutional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Mr. Obama promised to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, or however the wording goes. That should be enough, without having to say every word, in order, like a grammar school memorization exercise.

But, you know what's going to happen? Someone, somewhere out there, is going to make a deal that the do-over did not involve a hand on a Bible.

Oh, and by the way, Chris Wallace...you're an idiot, a troublemaker, and a bully to even raise that question.

You can read the whole story on CNN.com

Comfort reading...

2009-01-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a tough few weeks for me, with my mother's passing and on top of that all the stuff that has to be taken care of in the wake of such an event. There are notifications to make, personal affairs to be taken care of, arrangements to be made. It is difficult when you're missing your loved one, but it falls to you to take care of the majority of these things and you don't really feel like doing any of it. You'd rather just go someplace warm and take a nap.

I've found that when I do have some spare time, I've gone back to an old standby behavior that I've used for years and years to cope with difficult times. I've been doing some comfort reading.

I suppose it is different for different people, but my version of comfort reading involves going back and reading old favorite books. It's very much like visiting old friends.

Right now, for example, I'm in the middle of reading The Longest Cave, by Roger W. Brucker and Richard A. Watson. It tells the true story of several decades of work leading to the connection of cave passages under Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave Ridge in Kentucky into the longest surveyed cave in the world. I first read it shortly after it was published in 1976, and this is probably about the tenth time I've read it, although I couldn't say for sure because I've lost track of just how many times I've gone back to read it.

It's comfort reading for me for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I'm fascinated by caves. Have been ever since I visited Carlsbad Caverns, in New Mexico, when I was 12 or 13 years old on a summer vacation with my family. I guess some people get claustrophobic in caves, but I find being surrounded by all those rock walls kind of comforting.

But even beyond my interest in caves, the people that populate the pages of The Longest Cave just seem like good people to spend some time with. They come across generally as smart, interesting and ambitious (in a good way), and they understand the value of teamwork. Their appeal, further, doesn't fade with repeated readings.

That isn't my only go-to book when I need to do some comfort reading. Little Women is another book I turn to when I need to do some comfort reading. The mystery novels of Faye Kellerman and the Company novels, written by Kage Baker, also have served as comfort reading from time to time. Which one (or ones) of these I go to when I need some comfort reading varies depending on the situation. But they all work.

So...what is your favorite comfort reading? Or do you tend more toward comfort movies or comfort music?

It's too early in the year for this...

2009-01-02T07:17:00.000-08:00

I sincerely hope that this is not an indication of how the year is going to go.

It was reported on CNN's website that a Muslim family of nine and a family friend who happened to be taking the same flight were taken off an AirTran flight in Washington, D.C. yesterday after some members of the family were heard discussing which seats on the plane were the safest. Apparently some passengers and the airline found this conversation "suspicious", even though CNN reports that no threatening words, such as "bomb" or "explosion" were used.

The FBI quickly cleared the family of any wrongdoing, according to the report, but while AirTran officials said that the family could fly the airline again, the airline apparently refused to rebook them yesterday and they had to buy tickets on another airline in order to reach their vacation destination of Orlando, Florida.

Both the father of the family and the family friend are attorneys; the friend is an attorney for the Library of Congress.

It frustrates me that this sort of thing is still going on here. Apparently, people who appear to be of certain ethnic backgrounds have to be careful of what they say for fear of being labeled terrorists, even when what they are talking about would not arouse any suspicion at all coming from individuals appearing to be from other ethnic backgrounds.

Which is just stupid. Terrorists don't "look like" any particular nationality or ethnic group. I mean, really, has everyone forgotten Timothy McVeigh, and what he did, already?

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

I am, I hope, back on a more regular basis as the new year begins.

During the last half of 2008, it was difficult for me to concentrate on much of anything as well as to find time to write anything beyond for my work.

My mother's health began to deteriorate at a more rapid pace after she fell and broke a hip in mid-July and she passed away on 6 December 2008, so my mind and energies were elsewhere.

I still miss her terribly, but life does go on...something my mother taught me...and so I plan to be back and blogging much more often in 2009. I can't say that I'll have something to write about every day, but my plan is to be here at least two or three times a week and I hope to write even more often than that.

So, here's hoping that 2009 brings you all health and happiness and as much success as you can handle.

And better weather. It's past 11 a.m. here where I am, and while the fog has lifted so that I can actually see across the street, it is still hovering above the Valley, making it still dark and dreary and cold. Not saying that I'm looking forward to those 105 F degree days we will surely get this summer, but a little warmth would be nice.

It's own rewards...

2008-10-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it.

I often complain about living here in the cornucopia of California, the San Joaquin Valley.

There isn't often a lot to do, although I will admit that things have been getting better on that count for the past few years. I can think about lots of jokes about watching the raisins dry.

But sometimes living here is its own reward, especially if you like a good laugh.

Take last week.

Friday, I was driving down McKinley Avenue and passed a yard sale. Not unusual around here. But the sign in front sure was. In big black letters, on a piece of poster board attached to a shopping cart, was a sign that read: "Fuck it sale".

I imagine that whoever made that sign was feeling very frustrated at the time...the economy sucks right now, after all. But when I saw that sign I started laughing so hard that I nearly had to pull to the side of the road.

Fast forward to the next morning.

I was up entirely too early, on my way to a 9 a.m. middle school football game.

I don't know anything about football, but my best friend teaches middle school and I go out to their football games because hardly anyone else does and I figure that someone needs to support the kids in their activities.

Anyway, I had the radio on and I heard an advertisement for some bars. The names of the bars? The Bar. The Other Bar. The Next Bar. Again, I thought I was going to have to park the car until the giggling fit passed.

And then tonight, as I was coming home from visiting my mother, there was a car stopped at a light in front of me with this license plate frame: "Grow dope. Plant a man". Sexist? Yeah, sure. But would you have thought of it?

The imagination (the license plate frame and the yard sale sign) and the lack of it (the bar names) around here just amaze me sometimes.

How quirky am I?...I got tagged.

2008-10-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

McMGrad89, over at So I Was Just Thinking, tagged me to list seven quirky things about myself.

So, here goes:

1) There are days when I have no attention span whatsoever. Those are the days when it takes me six or seven hours to get 4 hours worth of work done. Is there such a thing as adult-onset ADD? If so, I've got it, because I never used to be this way.

2) I am unreconstructed news junkie. Which probably explains why I've been writing so much about politics here lately. Since that's all, aside from the credit meltdown, that the media is reporting about these days and all. The only reason I don't write about the credit meltdown here is that it's what I've been writing about - constantly - for work.

3) I'm obsessed with the weather. Part of that comes from living in a place where I hate the weather all summer (which lasts about 6 months most years) and a good part of the winter (which lasts pretty much the other six months), and part of it comes from growing up with a father who was similarly obsessed. He could predict the weather more accurately just by going outside and applying trends than most meteorologists can with all their satellites and fancy computers. It's a talent I wish I had.

4) I want to go back to school. No, really. I earned by BA in 2002 and I wanted to go on to work on my Masters then, but real life intervened and I wasn't able to do that at the time. I don't know if that qualifies as quirky, except that it seems kind of odd for someone my age - and who should know better - to actually miss homework.

5) I forget to eat sometimes. I get started doing something interesting and just...forget. One would think this would help me lose weight, but it apparently doesn't work that way. This forgetting does not happen, of course, on those no-attention-span days I mentioned in item #1.

6) When I'm really tired, my internal censor shuts off. Completely. When that happens, whatever goes through my mind comes out my mouth. When I used to work in retail and worked closing shifts, my co-workers always had to explain to new hires that, no, I wasn't crazy or dangerous. I'd sing along with the songs on the in-store P.A. system, sometimes changing the words around since I'm a writer and words are my playground. I'd make silly jokes. I'd answer questions that were not addressed to me. Generally, when this happens to me I just babble. I always think I'm making intelligent, relevant, important comments. Those around me, not so much. I think it is my way of keeping awake when I'd rather be sleeping.

7) I love lemonade, but I will hardly ever drink it unless it is fresh-squeezed. Okay, so I'm spoiled. When I was a little girl, we had a lemon tree in our front yard that bore fruit all year long, so I had fresh-squeezed whenever I wanted it. But, since lemons cost so much these days, I spend a lot of time going to Hot Dog on a Stick, where they have fresh-squeezed all year 'round, just like when I was little. Fortunately, there's a mall with HDoaS, just down the street from me. Even better, they get all their lemons from Ventura County, where I grew up - and where that magical lemon tree was. But, you know, that's the only reason I ever go into that mall...since they got rid of the two bookstores they used to have, there is no other reason to go in there.

Okay. I'm supposed to tag seven people to do this, but since I can't think of seven people to tag, I'm tagging everyone who reads this. Just make sure that after you blog your seven quirks, leave a comment here so that I can come read. Except...John and xJane over at Mind on Fire - consider yourselves tagged.

Oh, for Pete's sake...

2008-09-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

This is what I'm hearing from the Republicans, just after the failed bailout vote in the House:

"Well, we were going to vote for the bailout. But then Speaker Pelosi made a partisan speech, so we voted against it."

Number one, how is that not partisan? And, number two, if they felt like a bailout or something was necessary, are they really ready to imperil the whole US economy because they didn't like a speech?

How stupid is that?

Oh, and just for good measure, one of them (sorry, can't remember who said it), blamed the upcoming Jewish holidays for "rushing" the vote.

And the third thing, the Republicans keep saying that they want this thing to be "truly bipartisan", but then someone (again, I wasn't taking names, just watching MSNBC coverage) said that they didn't vote for the bailout because they hadn't been able to push the provisions "far enough to the right".

Bloody fucking idiots. No matter if you're for or against the bailout, that's what the Republicans are acting like.

I've got to go back to work now.

I've been reading...

2008-09-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel. Incredible book. Oh, it has the gossip that you would expect in a book like that, but it also has some fresh and interesting insights into the making of the film and the personalities that made it possible in the first place.

It sets the film in its time, but also looks at how it has come down through the years, continuing to speak to generation after generation of kids and adults.

I didn’t see Rebel until I was well into my 20s. I’d avoided it purposely, fairly sure that it couldn’t ever live up to its hype. But then it came on a local television station one night, and there was nothing else to do, so I watched it. Actually, I had it on in the kitchen while I was baking something, convinced that I wouldn’t actually watch the thing but just glance in on it every once in awhile. Good thing there was a timer on the oven, or I would have very likely let whatever it was I was baking burn.

I was mesmerized by the film. It was really that good. James Dean really was that good. It was impossible, but there it was.

Of course, there was the extra added attraction of the role played by the Griffith Park Observatory, a place where I had grown up and have always adored. I hadn’t realized it was in the movie, just as I had had no clue when I was a kid going there on Sunday afternoons that something so amazing had gone on there. I had been up those steps. I had leaned right there. I had stopped to get a glimpse of the planetarium controls, just as Jim Stark, James Dean’s character did in the film.

But, even absent that echo of my own childhood, I would have loved the movie.

Yeah, it is very ‘50s, and awfully cheesy in places. But for all that, it is perhaps the most authentic piece of film making I’ve ever seen, am ever likely to see. It soars. It aches.

Maybe it speaks to me because I was the outsider as a teenager. Not in the same way as Jim Stark or Judy or Plato, but an outsider all the same.

So, when I found this book in the library, I had to check it out and read it. It doesn’t sugarcoat any of the people involved in the production, but it makes it clear that while most of them had the usual foibles and faults inherent in those who practice a self-absorbed art like film making, those same characteristics helped make the movie what it is.

My recommendation? If you have ever seen Rebel Without a Cause and loved it, this book is probably your cup of tea.

If you haven’t ever seen the film? What are you waiting for? Get thee to a DVD rental or sales outlet, or to your local library to borrow a copy and watch it. It’s one of the greats.

Lipstick and Pigs, Part 2...

2008-09-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

Yeah. I can’t let it alone. Wish I could, but I. Just. Can’t.

Not after seeing clips of Senator McCain and Governor Palin both using the same phrase they are tearing Senator Obama a new one for using.

I don’t like hypocrites. And that is what the McCain campaign is made up of, apparently, in light of the fact that McCain has used the same phrase at least once in specific reference to some of Senator Clinton’s initiatives. So, arguably, McCain could be accused at least as directly of sexism as Obama can for his comments.

If, that is, what was said was sexist, which it clearly wasn’t.

And even if it were, I think we all need to calm down and back away from the political correctness.

PC isn’t good for anyone. It makes well-meaning people paranoid to say anything that might possibly be misinterpreted, which is most things depending on the situation, and it doesn’t stop the people who say really malign things from saying them. Personally, I’d prefer that people who are prone to saying unpleasant things to just feel free to say them. Then I can know who I want to avoid keeping company with more easily.

The right wing of the Republican party condemns political correctness as so much censorship, but when someone who disagrees with them, say the Democratic ticket in the upcoming election, the right-wingers use political correctness as a club to beat the Democrats about the head and shoulders.

Like the McCain campaign is doing to Obama today.

And that, my friends, is rank hypocrisy.

Issues, people. There are issues in the campaign.

It would be nice if someone would talk about those rather than acting like a bunch of sixth graders calling each other names.

Now we know why...

2008-09-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

Yeah. Now we know why John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Every time someone criticizes anything she says, or says anything that can be remotely interpreted as a criticism of her, the Republicans can jump up and down and yell, "Sexism!"

The latest is how Obama characterized some of the McCain proposals as "putting lipstick on a pig", and the Republicans are trying to turn that into "Obama called Palin a pig."

Jeez. Are you falling for that? Because I'm not.

Well, Mr. McCain, you need to put that sexism card away, along with the POW card. They are both old and tired. But, I suppose you are afraid that you'll lose on the issues and have to cobble up some kind of controversy in order to try to gain the sympathy vote.

I've got to go back to work now, but I had to get this said.

I think I need to quit watching the news; it gets me too riled up.

Good Will? I think not...

2008-09-01T21:42:00.000-07:00

At the risk of sounding strident for three posts in a row, I’ve got to ask this question:

When did Goodwill become Bad Will?

With my mother now living in a board and care home and using a wheelchair provided by her insurance, there was no reason for me to keep the transfer chair (a wheelchair, but with all small wheels) that she used when out shopping or visiting before she broke her hip recently. Instead of just trashing it, as it is in fine shape, I wanted to donate it so someone else could benefit from its use.

The first organization I thought of to donate the chair to was Goodwill Industries.

So I went down to one of the local Goodwill stores and inquired about donating the chair.

A male employee snapped at me: “We’re closed for the day.” Which was kind of strange, since people were still shopping in the store and the doors were still unlocked. And then he added, “And anyway, we don’t accept medical equipment.” As he said “medical equipment”…he fairly spit out the words…he wrinkled his nose as if he had smelled something bad. As if the chair must be contaminated or something.

Fine. I managed not to rip the guy a new one and just said that I would donate the chair to someone who would appreciate it, in that case.

The chair has since been donated to Amvets.

But it is an interesting thing. I looked up the websites of both the national organization of Goodwill Industries and the organization in the region in which I live. The national site does not say anything about what is or is not accepted, as far as I could find. And the local organization’s website has a list titled: “Due to environmental regulations and/or safety concerns, we are NOT ABLE TO ACCEPT the following items [capitalization theirs]:”, followed by a list of items that will not be taken by the organization. The closest to wheelchairs any of the ten or twelve categories of items on the list comes is this: “Food, beverages, medicine or vitamins”. No mention of medical equipment in general, and no mention of wheelchairs or transfer chairs specifically.

So, the guy was not only rude. He was wrong. Not a way to build good will, is it?

I don’t think I will be donating anything to Goodwill Industries anytime soon.

Sarah Who?

2008-08-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

He thinks we’re all fools, doesn’t he?

John McCain thinks all women are fools, and that’s why he has chosen Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate.

He thinks that just because he put a woman on the ticket, women will come running to support his campaign for the White House against Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Well, this woman isn’t falling for it. Not for the blatant tokenism this choice is.

If the choice of Governor Palin weren’t tokenism, if McCain were really committed to putting a woman that can step into the presidency at a moment’s notice- which, after all, is the real reason for the vice-presidency in the first place - you would think he could have found a woman with just a little bit of foreign policy experience. Maybe a woman who is more than two years away from having been the mayor of a very small town in Alaska.

Such women do exist, women with domestic and foreign policy experience. They exist in the Republican party. Can anyone say Condoleezza Rice?

Ah, but she probably turned him down, if he even asked. She has said before that she has no interest in the vice-presidency. And McCain was clearly not looking for a running mate who has actual qualifications for the job.

Although I have to hand it to McCain. At first glance, Palin looks like the perfect token. The obvious first: she’s a woman. She’s a mom. One of her children has Down’s Syndrome. She’s married to a man who is one-eighth Eskimo. He’s also a union member. She’s a member of the National Rifle Association. She’s a Christian who is against abortion and in favor of teaching Intelligent Design in the public schools.

How many interest groups does that appeal to? By my count, that’s at least eight, and there are probably more than I’m not aware of.

But she isn’t the perfect candidate, it turns out.

It seems that Palin has some ethics problems back in Alaska.

As I understand it, Palin’s sister was married to a state trooper, key word being “was”. Apparently the divorce was messy, and Palin wanted her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police. When the official in charge of the state police refused to fire BIL, Palin fired the official. And it isn’t the first time she’s fired someone who didn’t please her. When she was mayor of that town in Alaska, she apparently fired the police chief and the head librarian of the town because they didn’t support her election. The firing of the state police official hasn’t been resolved yet…the report is due on Halloween, less than a week before the election.

And then there is the experience question. Just how is Palin qualified to be vice-president, much less president if, God forbid, something should happen to McCain? Besides having to foreign policy experience at all, as far as I’ve been able to see, she isn’t even on record with any opinion at all on anything even remotely connected to foreign policy. She’s been a mayor. She’s been governor of a very few state with a very small population. Alaska has a population of less than 700,000. That’s less than the county I live in. And that’s way, way less than the population of the United States. There are significant differences between running an entity with around 684,000 people and running a nation with a population of over 300 million.

Above and beyond the experience issue, where did McCain get the idea that all those Hillary Clinton supporters who were disappointed that Barack Obama got the Democratic nomination are going to come running to support him because he chose Palin to run with him? She’s seriously anti-abortion, something that most Clinton supporters likely are not.
Oh, and then there’s the husband problem. Anyway, I see it as a problem. Palin’s husband works…wait for it…for a multinational oil company. True, his position with the company is reported to be “non-managerial”, but still. What is it with vice-presidents and potential vice-presidents and ties to the oil industry? Is it a job requirement now, according to the Republicans? We’ve been there, done that, and it hasn’t really worked out that well for the nation.

What McCain got in Palin, and probably what he was mostly looking for, was a cheerleader. In her remarks when she was introduced as McCain’s choice for the bottom of the ticket, mostly what Palin did after she introduced her family was how great she thinks McCain is. And like all cheerleaders, she is there to look pretty - she came in second in the Miss Alaska pageant in 1984, after all - and make the man in her life, in this case McCain as the top of the ticket, look good and strong and smart.

It remains to be seen whether this choice of McCain’s will benefit him or hurt him. Polls taken since the choice was announced seem to indicate that the key demographic…undecided voters…are not especially impressed. And there is a great deal of speculation that not only is Palin not qualified to be vice-president, she is not prepared to even campaign for the office, in an environment where her every word and action will be looked at under a microscope and analyzed endlessly. That could be a problem for the ticket, what with all the misstatements that McCain has already produced all by himself.

Personally, I feel insulted that McCain thinks that people like me are so easily swayed. And I’m a little insulted, too, that Palin, who must know that she isn’t qualified for this position, is letting herself be used in the way she is by accepting the invitation to run.

Then again, I’m just a heathen Democrat and, according to McCain’s campaign, not qualified to even have an opinion.

Think I’m kidding? After an analysis of McCain’s pick in which several presidential historians criticized Palin’s qualifications to be vice-president, the McCain campaign issued a statement that criticized the scholars for criticizing Palin because the scholars had supposed either worked for or contributed to the campaigns of Democrats.

Interesting. So, the Republicans think they can say whatever the want about Democratic candidates and elected officials, but anyone who has ever contributed to, worked for, or…what…voted for a Democrat has no standing to criticize a Republican?

But that’s another rant for another time.

The POW card...

2008-08-27T20:24:00.000-07:00

John McCain is playing the POW card.

No, really. Did you see his appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno?

Leno asked him a question relating to his apparent inability a few days earlier to recall how many homes he and his family own. Instead of addressing that question directly, McCain went off on a whole tangent about how he was a prisoner of war for five and a half years and that he not only didn't have a house, he didn't have a table or a chair. I really expected fifes and drums to begin playing under his words.

Or, perhaps, the world's smalled violin, playing "My Heart Bleeds for You".

What in the name of all that is holy does his being a prisoner of war have to do with how many houses he (or his wife) owns now?

Nothing, that's what. It was just typical political misdirection, only even more disgusting than usual.

The whole theme of McCain's campaign seems to have become that because McCain was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict, he is a) entitled to become President and b) immune from any criticism on any subject.

Both are contentions are, you'll excuse my language, a load of crap.

I mean, I'm sorry that he had to go through that experience of being a POW. I'm sorry anyone who has ever had to go through that, has had to do so. But, mostly, those who have been POWs, in whatever war or conflict, don't go around acting like it makes them somehow immune to any sort of correction or criticism and that it entitles them to get whatever they want.

And lest you think I'm being disrespectful of the experiences he had, let me add that my father was a prisoner of war during World War II, a "guest of the Nazis" as he used to put it. And it was no picnic. He didn't talk about it much, and most of what he talked about made it sound more like an episode of "Hogan's Heroes" than anything. About the worst thing he spoke of was that while he was playing baseball one day, he forgot where he was and chased a batted ball and started to go over a fence to retrieve it and got shot in the leg for his troubles. And he talked about being marched from the camp to another location as the war was drawing to a close and the Russians were approaching.

What he didn't tell me was that the march was several hundred miles across most of Austria (that's where his camp, Stalag 17b, was located), in bad weather and with nearly no food. Or that as the war started going badly for the Germans, the prisoners got less and less food and were treated more and more badly. It wasn't like "Hogan's Heroes" at all. It was a real war, and they were real prisoners, and it wasn't a fun time.

And, although my father went through all of that, he never acted like that experience made him somehow better than anyone else, or that it meant he could do no wrong, or that he was entitled to special stuff or more privilege because of those two and a half years of, well, pretty much hell.

I daresay that, were he still with us, my father would be appalled at the way McCain and his supporters are using McCain's POW experience in the campaign. If there are any small earthquakes centered anywhere around the far northwestern corner of San Fernando Valley in the next little while, that'll be my dad, rolling over in his grave.

But, my dad isn't here to protest the rhetoric coming out of McCain's campaign. So I feel obligated to do it for him.

Mr. McCain, cut it out. The use you are putting to that admittedly horrific experience as a POW which you endured in Vietnam is offensive. You are not entitled to do or say whatever you want, and get away with it without any criticism or questioning, just because you were a POW. You are not ordained from above to be President just because you went through that.

Why should you be entitled to be President of the United States just because you went through that? You know what my father got out of being a POW? Some shrapnel in his leg, and a Purple Heart in consequence. A grave marker. And a certificate signed by President Carter, who was in the White House when my dad passed. Or, anyway, a certificate signed by a machine in place of the then-President.

Well, my dad never wanted to be President. But even if he had wanted that, he couldn't ever have even been president because he was a naturalized rather than natural-born citizen. But he went and fought for his adopted country anyway, and never asked for anything in return. Not even to be treated with kid gloves because of his experience during the war.