galacticsouth

Solstice present!

2009-12-21T07:43:00.001-08:00

The guy who plows the driveway/parking area next door remembered not to plow me in!

Since the mail carrier won't deliver if he has to climb over snowdrifts (which is not at all unreasonable), and since it is really hard to dig through the snow piled up by a plow - and since I live in a congested urban area where my front door is practically on the sidewalk, and don't have any alternative spot to put a mailbox - I'm really grateful. I hope the trend continues!

Memo

2009-12-08T05:39:00.000-08:00

To: Pretty Boy Floyd

Regardless of what you may have read on the internet, dead mice applied externally are not a remedy for the H1N1 flu. The resulting flurry of activity from your human - flailing, cursing, and a frantic search for paper towels and/or plastic bags - are temporary only, and not to be confused with "getting well."

Thank you.

Drumroll, please

2009-11-25T06:05:00.000-08:00

It's officially official, and I can announce the project that's been taking over my life for the last few months, and is likely to occupy it for a few months more. This from the publisher:

"Stargate Atlantis: Legacy is an exciting new book series from Fandemonium Books coming in 2010. As the fantastically successful New Jedi Order series did for Star Wars, Legacy takes Stargate Atlantis fans on to uncharted new ground, exploring what happens next after the end of season five. With no reset to zero, the jeopardy for our favorite characters has never been greater as they face entirely new challenges and dangers, as well as old foes revitalized. Sheppard, McKay, Teyla, Ronon and the rest must face Wraith, Genii, and their most dangerous foes yet in a galaxy-spanning adventure to uncover the true legacy of the Ancients -- a battle from which all may not return.

Book One, The Return, by Melissa Scott and Jo Graham, will be out in September, 2010. Melissa Scott is the author of more than twenty science fiction and fantasy books, including Trouble and Her Friends, Five Twelfths of Heaven, and, with Lisa A. Barnett, Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams. She has won numerous awards, including the Campbell Award in 1986. Jo Graham is the author of three historical fantasy novels, as well as the Stargate Atlantis novel Death Game. Book Two, The Missing, by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold, will follow in January, 2011."

I am unbelievably psyched to be working with these folks. You've heard me raving about Jo Graham already. Meg Burden is a talented YA author (Northlander and the forthcoming The King Commands). This is Amy Griswold's first professional sale, but I can almost guarantee it won't be her last.

And I'm looking forward to doing another series tie-in, particularly since the events of the novels take place after the end of the fifth season, and we're being allowed to move the story and the characters forward. It's always a privilege to work in other people's universes; to be able to do it with the brakes off.... It's going to be seriously fun!

FYI

2009-11-24T06:11:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for a perfect stocking stuffer, Jo Graham's first novel, Black Ships, is out in paperback.

I've raved about Jo's books before, and will continue to do so - wait till you see Stealing Fire! Black Ships is a retelling of the Aeneid from the point of view of Gull, priestess to the Lady of the Dead, who becomes Aeneas's Sybil. It's an astonishing reimagining of Virgil - her version of Dido is both chilling and heartbreaking - and the characters are unforgettable. I actually got up at 7AM on the Sunday of a convention so I could sneak down to the hotel lobby and finish the book.

So if you have fans of historical fiction or the classics on your holiday list, or if you're just looking for a different kind of fantasy, this is the book for you. And it's in mass market paper!

Just a Teaser....

2009-10-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

You may remember me raving earlier this year about author Jo Graham (Black Ships, Hand of Isis; a new book, Stealing Fire, will be out in the spring). Well, she and I and Amy Griswold and Meg Burden have just signed the first two contracts for what we hope will be a 6 book TV tie-in deal. I can't say a whole lot more just yet, but....

It's so much fun. And I think it's a good novel, one that could stand alone, as well as doing justice to the show.

The ms. is due in January. I'll have a lot more to say before then, I'm sure!

Rollercoaster Summer

2009-10-13T05:37:00.001-07:00

The summer has been a bit of a rollercoaster once again, not helped by the cool, wet weather and the reappearance in New England of potato blight - which, to make things even more fun, also affected the tomato crop. So I've been busy, with things both good and bad, but it's time to try to bring this blog up to date.

The bad stuff first. My father died in August. He'd been failing since January, when his doctors lost control of the congestive heart failure he'd been fighting for a couple of years. However, considering that he'd had serious heart problems for 37 years, starting with heart attacks and bypass surgery at the age of 38, I can't say it was exactly unexpected. And yet, considering how many times he'd rallied and beaten the latest problem, I'm still a little shocked. (He used to say, with some justice, that every time he developed a new symptom, medical science had just created the device to deal with it.)

The only good thing was that I was able to spend a bit more than a week with him in July while my mother was traveling - it was one of those situations where he was in fairly good shape, but wasn't able to stay alone just in case - so I feel as though I had a chance to say a proper goodbye. It was a good visit, carefully orchestrated: every morning we'd make our breakfasts, then he'd go read on the deck in the (sweltering!) sun and heat, while I'd write. At noon, he'd come in and announce where we were going for lunch that day - usually some extremely interesting dive that my mother didn't particularly like. (All this, he said, was in the interests of giving me inspiration for my books - it had nothing to do with, for example, how good the hot tamales are at Izzy's. Or the country cooking at Homer's. Or the gyros at Leo's.... You get the idea.) Then he'd take a nap, waking around 4 for a milkshake. (He had lost nearly 40 pounds, and needed to gain weight.) Then supper was promptly at 6:30, and the Tour de France coverage started at 7. And in between, we were able to talk. So, while I'm grieving, I at least don't feel that there was much of anything left unsaid.

At the same time that all of this was going on (and I've been to Little Rock more times in the last 3 months than I've been in the last 3 years), I've been getting quite a bit of writing done. The bootlegger story is into the solid draft stage, with 4 chapters complete; I have a lesbian pirate story coming out in a Lethe Press collection, Sisters of the Coast, sometime soon. (I'm guessing next summer, and will post the date when I have it.) I have a handful of other projects in the sketching and plotting stages - glass airships! The Sea of Louisiana! Weird science in Napoleon's army! And on top of that, I'm in negotiations for a group project that will be massively fun. I hope to have a proper announcement on that within the next couple of days, actually.

So.... A rollercoaster, indeed. But I think maybe I'm starting to hit the fun part of the ride.

A Weekend Away

2009-05-27T06:30:00.001-07:00

I'm back from a weekend at Balticon, which was completely lovely - hung out with some old friends, some new friends who already feel like old friends, talked story with them all until I was giddy, and even danced a quadrille. I bought books, and heard good panels, and didn't even go over budget. And now I have more ideas percolating than I know what to do with.... But that's a good thing, right?

(However, I have noticed that it takes me longer to get over staying up til 2AM for 3 nights running. It's a good thing the day job is slow at the moment.)

And when I got home, there was an email waiting to say that my story, "One Horse Town," was being included in the Year's Best Lesbian Fiction 2008.

An excellent capper to an ideal weekend!

Hand of Isis

2009-04-30T05:45:00.000-07:00

When I was two, we lived with my grandparents, and I am reliably informed that I used to terrify my 6'2" 250-pound grandfather by toddling up to him, holding out a kid's book (which he had read to me so many times already that he had it memorized), and saying, "Read it, Grampop! It's good!" I'll try not to do that to you all, but....

Jo Graham's Hand of Isis is out. If you've read her first novel, Black Ships, then you know the kind of writer you're dealing with: elegant, intelligent, and compelling. (And if you haven't read Black Ships, which is a version of the story of Aeneas, told from the point of view of Gull, who is Pythia and a seer.... Well, you should. It's an amazing novel.) Hand of Isis is the story of Cleopatra, told from the point of view of her half-sister and handmaiden Charmian, and it's wonderful - searing at times, tragic, and yet profoundly hopeful. Graham's grasp of period is fantastic, the characters are complex, and it's connected to Black Ships in ways that would be a spoiler to reveal.

Read it! It's good!

Connections

2009-01-05T06:40:00.000-08:00

There was a lovely little story on the editorial page of today’s Globe, recounting the author’s memory of seeing one of his schoolteachers — a Sister of Mercy, in full habit — skating on the school’s frozen playground. I was charmed by the image, and when I read that she wasn’t Sister Charles, as the author had thought, but Sister Gregory, I had to smile. There’s a Sister Gregory at the elderly apartments next door, and that sounds just like her — could it possibly be the same person?

It is. Really, how could I have expected otherwise? This is the Sister Gregory who taught her shaggy little black dog all kinds of tricks, culminating in “say your prayers.” At that command, the dog would put her paws up on Sister Gregory’s lap and lay her head between them — and then peep out from under her bushy eyebrows, bright brown eyes waiting for the praise to follow. Lisa and Vixen used to run into them fairly regularly, and had the kind of dog-connected acquaintanceship that one develops.

The dog, alas, is gone, so I don’t see Sister Gregory very much any more. Lisa ran into her a couple of times after that, expressed sympathy, and told her about the cancer diagnosis, and Sister Gregory was both sympathetic and heartening, promising her prayers. After Lisa died, she stopped me to say that she was sorry, and that she hoped I was bearing up. That particular day, it was exactly the degree of sympathy that I needed — that I could handle — and I was grateful for the kindness, and for her sensitivity in knowing what to say.

According to the article, she’s 84 now, and only just retired, though she remains active in STOP, Sisters Together Opposing Poverty. I’m lucky to have her for a neighbor.

Ice Storm '08

2008-12-16T07:29:00.000-08:00

I had several posts I wanted to make over the weekend, but I was one of the 400,000 people caught in power outages here in New Hampshire. I’ll get to those, but for now.... Let’s just say that it was an increasingly chilly 40 hours.

The ice started on Thursday. I actually went to some friends’ house that evening (and had a lovely time, thank you!), and, though I had to scrape the car when I left, the roads were perfectly clear. I got home without a problem, even though I had to cross a drawbridge with a potentially problematic metal grid in the central span. The dog needed some attention, though, having been crated for longer than usual, so I poured myself a glass of wine and settled down to throw her flippy toy for a while. And in the middle of that - the lights went out.

I had a bad feeling about this from the start. Usually when ice is predicted, I make sure I leave the heat up so that there is residual warmth in the house if the power goes. This time, though, I hadn’t done it. I hadn’t even turned the heat up when I got home, so the thermostat was set to about 61F. I sat there for a minute, hoping the lights would come back on, but nothing happened. My eyes adjusted to the dark. I put the flippy away, finished my wine, and found the flashlight so I wouldn’t trip over stray animals. The lights were out all the way up Middle Street past the stop lights, and all the way across to the junior high school. I could hear the generator starting up in the old folks’ home next door. Yes, I definitely had a bad feeling about this.

So, since there was nothing else to do, I went to bed. At 2 o’clock Friday morning, the lights came on long enough to wake me up. I turned off the bedside lamp that I had accidentally left on and went back to bed. At 8 o’clock Friday morning, the power was out again. There was a big chunk of a tree down in the middle of the street, and it had taken down the wires that led to both houses opposite mine. It lay in pieces, with a scattering of broken ice like glass under it, and a raw pale scar on the tree where the limb had fallen. The street was closed. There were no cars next door at the Victorian monstrosity, nor in the apartment lot across the street.

I walked the dog. Trees were down everywhere, and everything was coated in ice - incredibly beautiful, except for the silence and the absence of everybody. We came back in, I baked some Pillsbury cinnamon twists - I have a gas stove - and I called the local power company. The hotline said to assume that power wouldn’t be restored for several days, and plan accordingly.

Luckily, not only do I have a gas stove, but Lisa’s brother, who has been a Civil War reenactor, has over the years given us many useful historic gadgets. And some contemporary ones: I got out the hand-cranked radio he gave us 10 years ago, got it going, and tried to find out what was going on. Everything was closed, of course, and there was a state of emergency. I kept the oven on, and wore a hat indoors. And a sweater. And my heaviest handknit socks. And a knitted wimple. And fingerless mitts. I have never been so glad to be a knitter!

Around noon, the city came and chopped up the tree that was lying in the road. They tied more caution tape across the road because the wires were still down, and went away. I dug out all my candles and candle lanterns and put them in place for the night: there’s nothing worse than trying to find candles and matches in the dark. I called my usual kennel to see if they had power, thinking maybe I could get the animals there and go to a hotel, but they weren’t answering their phone: no power in Greenland, either. With nothing else to do, I cast on for the fish hat from the latest Knitty, using yarn from stash. (It’s a present for my new niece, or at least for my brother - hey, he gave me a Gummi rat a couple of years ago, so a fish hat seems appropriate.)

At 3:30, I decided I would chop the onions and garlic for chili while I still had light to see. At 3:45, the dog and I walked up toward town to see that power was still out everywhere. We came back home in the increasing twilight, and I saw that the caution tape warning people about the downed wires had blown down. The road was still blocked, but people were ignoring the “road closed” signs, and trying to drive around the tangle of wires. The bigger SUVs didn’t fit very well, and the wires kept being dragged around. I called the city and asked apologetically if they might send somebody to put up something more substantial. They said someone would be there when they could, but to their credit a crew was there within the hour. They walled off the wires with sawhorses and more caution tape. People still tried to go around the roadblocks, but at least when they saw the second set of sawhorses, most of them turned around.

I ate my chili by candlelight, and tried to read, but the light was hard on my eyes. For the first time, I was aware that my eyesight isn’t what it was even 5 years ago: the print trembled and faded in the yellow light, and my eyes itched and burned from the effort of reading. I got out my iPod and battery-powered speakers, and listened to music for an hour or so while I knit some more on the fish hat. I was knitting by touch, mostly, and it was surprisingly easy.

Eventually it was 9 o’clock. I walked the dog, dug out extra blankets and my spare down comforter and piled everything on the bed - the radio said it was going to get much colder overnight - and I went to bed.

And Saturday was cold, well below freezing all day. I put on long johns and two t-shirts and a wool sweater and extra socks and fur-lined boots and the wimple and hat and fingerless mitts and a shawl, and the dog still got a shorter walk than usual. (Not that she seemed to complain.) I huddled by the stove for a while, listening to NPR, and then I decided I would knit some more on the hat. I was closing in on the tail fins now, and quite pleased with my progress.

But it was getting colder. I began to think that staying in the house another night without heat might not be such a good idea. I had options - I could call Lisa’s sisters, either of whom would certainly let me and the animals stay, or I could call a friend in Manchester, where things weren’t so bad, see if she had power and space - but at the same time, I wasn’t all that happy about driving long distances across roads with no traffic signals and wires still down. The batteries were dying in my flashlight - maybe, I thought, maybe I’ll just go get batteries while it’s still light and see what’s going on before I make a decision.

Every other traffic light was working along Route One, and Wal-Mart had power. I got my batteries, and bought a couple of cans of sterno, thinking I could make a heater with them if I wanted to stay in the house one more night. And when I got home, as I was unpacking the bag, the lights came on. I turned the heat up to 72F to celebrate
and slowly, slowly began to remove the layers of clothing.

It was an odd experience, all considered. On the one hand, I was fairly proud of myself for making do - for having the supplies and knowing what to do with them. On the other - well, as I said, I noticed for the first time that my eyesight isn’t up to reading by candlelight any more. At least I can still knit, as long as the project is light yarn and relatively large stitches! But somehow that feels like a more concrete sign of aging than my graying hair or my aching knees. The strangest part, however, was how alone I felt.

Most of my neighbors - many of whom have electric stoves and heat - up and left. There were no cars in the parking lots at the Victorian monstrosity next door, or across the street in the duplex. I saw another neighbor pack up, leave a note on his door, and leave. The people at the old folks’ home had generator power, and therefore heat, and I saw the Red Cross truck arrive with meals, but everyone was, wisely, staying indoors. The few neighbors who remained were doing the same. So was I. It was cold, and quiet, and at night the full moon was very bright, but very cold indeed. And I was lonely. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, because, though I may live alone, I’m not unconnected. And I didn’t like it at all.

I have never been so in sympathy with Bilbo Baggins before: I don’t want adventures, and I don’t like being cold, and I certainly don’t want to be late for dinner!

Ahem

2008-11-03T08:06:00.001-08:00

This summer, Bywater Books in Ann Arbor, MI, ran a web poll asking readers to nominate and then vote for the Best Lesbian Novels of the 20th Century. This is their final list:

The Top Ten
1 Curious Wine
by Katherine V. Forrest
2 Oranges are not the Only Fruit
by Jeanette Winterson
3 The Price of Salt
by Patricia Highsmith
4 Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
by Audre Lorde
5 Desert of the Heart
by Jane Rule
6 Rubyfruit Jungle
by Rita Mae Brown
7 Patience and Sarah
by Isabel Miller
8 The Sea of Light
by Jenifer Levin
9 Beyond the Pale
by Elana Dykewomon
10 Trouble and Her Friends
by Melissa Scott

Needless to say, I'm psyched. It's amazing company to be in - these are books that inspired me to be a better, queerer writer - and I'm really proud and pleased to be considered with them.

Another One Gone

2008-09-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

The trouble with having animals that are close in age is that you sometimes end up with a summer like this one. Tuesday I had to have Tenzing put to sleep. It wasn't unexpected — he's the cat I'd been expecting to lose; he'd been diagnosed with megacolon some time ago, and more recently with a probable bladder tumor — but it's never easy.

We got him from our kennel lady almost 15 years ago. She had a litter of kittens from a rescue cat, and swore to us that they all had homes. So when we dropped off our cats to be boarded, we felt safe admiring the babies. They were adorable: all black, all of them, and active and cheerful. Tenzing came to the front of the enclosure and climbed up the mesh to about chest height, mewing at Lisa. We agreed that we were very glad he was spoken for.

Of course, when we returned from vacation and picked up our cats, we discovered that Tenzing's home had fallen through, and he was all alone in the big enclosure. Once again, he climbed up the mesh door and called to us — and, of course, he came home with us the next day.

We named him Tenzing for obvious reasons: he climbed everything. "Everything" included any human being who stood still long enough, and at that point in his life, he was small and light, light enough that he could get most of the way up a loose pair of (occupied) blue jeans before his claws hit your thigh. Of course, this usually resulted in a shriek and an inadvertent swat, but Tenzing never seemed bothered by being knocked down. It certainly never discouraged him from trying again. At this point in his life, he got the nickname "Bug" — he looked like a little black bug as he scuttled around chasing the bigger cats. Or his tail. Or nothing at all.

As he got older, he became a larger cat, a cat of considerable size and solidity, and he climbed less. (For which we were profoundly grateful.) He did discover that if he jumped into a wheeled office chair, it would go skidding across the floor, and he seemed to enjoy this new trick, but that was about the extent of it. At his largest, he weighed 22 pounds, which was quite a lot when he walked on you in the middle of the night. We got him down to 19 pounds with some effort, but he remained a cat of substance. We called him Tenzing Norgay Bug-sama: he needed a name to match his presence.

Over the last few years, he's been losing weight, slowly at first, and then more quickly. He was diagnosed with megacolon, and had to go on a special food. As he lost still more weight, he rediscovered climbing, and I once again found him in the kitchen sink, on the table, on top of the icebox, once in a bookshelf, where he had pushed the books back to make a nice niche for himself. He spent a lot of time snuggled up next to me, and I tried not to notice how bony he was getting. The megacolon was treatable, and we carried on.

And then he developed what seemed to be a bladder infection, which quickly became something more. He was having more trouble passing feces. And finally he stopped eating, and it was obviously time.

The funny thing is that the surviving cat, Pretty Boy Floyd, has slowly started taking over all Tenzing's favorite spots, and even a few of his habits. This morning, I was making grits with cheese, and Vixen came trotting in to the kitchen to get her taste of the shredded cheese. Normally, Tenzing would have been right there with her, but to my surprise, Floyd took his place. In the past, Floyd has never been much interested in people food. So I gave Vixen her cheese, and put a little down for Floyd, who snatched it — and then did a double-take, as if to say, this is what the fuss was all about??? He eventually condescended to eat it, but I think it was only to keep the dog from getting it.

Random Thoughts

2008-09-22T05:47:00.000-07:00

I seem to be fated to take cute animal photos these days.

This handsome gentleman is Socrates, a resident of Historic New England's Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm. He was kind enough to attend the Jackson Hill Cider Days, one of my favorite Historic New England events - I like it well enough that I've signed up to work it the last 4 or 5 years. I would have been far more flattered by his display if he hadn't done the same to pretty much every female (and most of the males). He really is lovely, though apparently stupid enough that he would keep displaying and forgetting to drink until he passed out. So the farm staff would periodically scoop him up and pour water over his head to cool him down. He'd squawk, and his feathers would deflate - making him about half the size he had been - and then he'd forget what had happened and run over to show off to someone else.

In a completely unrelated note, Friday's paper had an article on overcrowding in college dorms. (Yes, that annual article, though to be fair the situation seems a tad worse this year.) Brown apparently was so strapped for space that it had to put some freshman in with older students, including one poor boy who was assigned to the dorm occupied by a co-ed literary fraternity. His (for-publication!) quote on the matter:

"I was kind of weirded out. I didn't know what kind of person you'd have to be to join a society designed for people who read a lot."

The boy went on to say that he didn't intend to become one of those people.

Huh. Maybe these aren't unrelated stories after all.

My Summer Vacation

2008-08-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

I went on vacation with my mother, my brother, my sister, my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law, and my 8-month-old niece. We stayed on an island in a house in the woods. There were deer in the woods. The deer were waiting for us. The deer were hungry....

This is the picture I took when I first saw the deer:

This is the picture I took when I thought, "oh, cute, the deer are coming closer."

This is the picture I took when I realized I wasn't going to have any problem getting cute deer pictures.

No visitors or deer were harmed in the creation of this blog post.

Living Down to One's Image

2008-08-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

I really try not to repeat stereotypes about men, because we all know they have about as much relationship to reality as dumb blonde jokes — ie., not much. But today….

I shop at several grocery stores because each one has the best deals on certain things, which means that every Sunday I make a quick circuit through town, finishing at the most expensive, which also has the best produce and butcher shop. Because it’s both good and expensive, I’m used to seeing fancy cars behaving badly in the parking lot, but this one was outrageous even by Expensive Market standards: a gigantic V-10 4x4, which to be fair would have taken up part of a second parking place even if the driver had been polite, had ben carefully positioned so that it took up four full parking places. The junction of the cab and the truck bed was centered on the point where the four marked places met: this was not just bad parking, it was bad parking on purpose.

And the thought immediately flitted through my mind. The driver is a small man. In every possible sense of the word.

I metaphorically slapped my hand. Maybe the guy needs a big truck for work — there’s certainly enough equipment in the back that it looks like he might. Maybe he’s actually 6 foot 10. Heck, maybe he's a she, and maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental.

But when I came out of the store, the driver was getting into the truck. He was gray-haired, balding, and about 5 foot 2. He couldn’t see out the door’s window when he was standing on the ground reaching up to put his groceries in the (pristine and uncluttered) cab. And all I could think was, holy crap, doesn’t he know he’s a stereotype? At which point, he realizes I’m looking at him, smirks, adjusts his crotch, and climbs into the cab and drives away. The truck, by the way, needs a muffler. On all four tailpipes.

I guess that’s why the stereotypes exist.

A Squirrel Story

2008-07-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

As so often happens, sadness has been followed by a day of pure farce. As I was quietly working in my upstairs office, with Vixen (the dog) and one of the cats dozing at my feet, I heard what sounded like something being knocked over downstairs. I looked down, and was startled to see Tenzing sleeping beside me. He was a climber as a kitten — thus the name — and since he’s lost quite a lot of weight in the last two years, he’s rediscovered his Sherpa habits. So normally if I hear strange noises in another part of the house, it’s just Tenzing exploring another route up the North Face of the icebox.

This time, though, it clearly wasn't him, so I decided to investigate. At the top of the stairs, I heard another, more ominous crash, and hurried into the living room to find — a squirrel. A big — nay, gigantic — gray squirrel, hanging from the valance over the main windows, twitching its tail and chirring at the other cat (Pretty Boy Floyd), who was sitting in the middle of the room, head tipped to one side, just… looking at him.

I must have made a noise, because the squirrel leaped into motion, scrambling around the upper edges of the room. It looked like a cartoon animal, legs pinwheeling, tail straight out and bottled — and Floyd lay down in the middle of the rug to watch the fun.

Needless to say, I was less than pleased with Floyd’s response. I picked him up, dumped him down the cellar stairs, and closed the door. I closed the door to the upstairs — which trapped me with the squirrel, but the rational part of my mind told me that I didn’t really want help from the other animals.

And then the fun began. I emptied a wastebasket, thinking I’d drop it over the squirrel. (This used to work with the flying squirrels that got into my folks’ house when I was a kid.) The squirrel threw a dish at me (OK, he just knocked it off the shelf) and raced higher. I grabbed the dog’s towel, thinking I’d throw it over him. He shoved a lamp in my path, and snarled at me. I retreated. I propped open the front door (which took a minute because I couldn’t find anything to prop it with except the snow shovel, and I thought that might discourage the squirrel from leaving if it fell on him) and went back to the living room — and the squirrel was gone.

I swept through the living room and dining room and kitchen, checked the bedroom (you can imagine how much fun that was, then grabbed the leash, went upstairs, put the dog on the leash and brought her back downstairs to see if she could find anything. She looked completely confused — willing to help, bless her sheltie genes, but not at all sure what I was after.

It was gone.

I cleaned up — bought a new lampshade, replaced the broken dish, hung the pictures back on the wall — and then stuffed rags into the hole where I suspected it had gotten in. (I’ve replaced them with copper wool since then.) But I can’t believe that, in a house with two cats and a squirrel-hating — indeed, squirrel-obsessed — dog, the damn thing would come in here in the first place.

Cat Memories

2008-07-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

I had to have one of my cats put to sleep last Friday: a liver tumor which led to a steep and sudden decline. Trouble was her normal self on Tuesday — nearly took my fingers off when I gave her a treat, which was perfectly usual — and then by Friday morning was obviously sick. The vets were unable to get her stabilized, and it became clear that the kindest thing was to let her go.

Trouble was very much Lisa’s cat. We got her from a local animal shelter, where she had been returned for “acting like a kitten.” (The staff were pretty indignant about that excuse, as well as the one who had been returned because “his poop smells,” and were in the process of revamping their adoption procedures as a result.) The minute she saw Lisa, she walked straight up her chest and perched on her shoulder, chirping and purring; she slept on Lisa’s pillow, lay on Lisa’s feet while she worked at home, and was the only cat who would play with Lisa's dog. There’s nothing sillier than watching a 10-pound cat chase a 35-pound dog... unless maybe it’s watching them take turns chasing each other.

After Lisa died, Trouble and I continued to negotiate our sleeping habits. She condescended to sleep on my pillow; I refused to accept a face full of fur in the middle of the night. So every evening we had the ritual Circumambulation of the Human: Trouble leaped onto the bed at ankle level; I said, “good Trouble, stay there.” She proceeded to walk up the bed to the pillow; I pushed her across the pillow, over my head, and off again, and she walked down the bed to ankle level, tail twitching indignantly. And then we’d do it again. And again. Some nights she won, some nights I did: it was undecided up to the day of her death. And, while I may be breathing better in the mornings, I have to say I kind of miss the ritual.

Last summer, I lost Lisa's other cat, Grendel, apparently of old age. He was an apparent Siamese (ie., he looked exactly like one, but we had no real clue as to his breeding, or his age or history) who showed up in our back yard in September of 2001. He was a nasty cat at the beginning, hiding in the undergrowth and rushing out to hiss and swipe at your ankles, and Lisa complained vociferously that she couldn’t garden without the stupid cat attacking her. But then he disappeared for almost a week, and when he came back, he was clearly injured. He couldn’t put one hind foot to the ground, and so we decided to trap him and take him to the vet, which led to the episode I consider the Ultimate Cat Farce.

You see, we successfully lured Grendel (then known as “Mr. Grumpy,” a woefully inadequate name) into one of the dog’s crates, only to discover that it didn’t fit in the back seat of the new car. (It had fit into the old car quite easily.) It didn’t fit in the front seat, either, so we had somehow to transfer a cat who couldn’t be touched from the crate to something smaller and more portable.

We borrowed a Have-a-heart trap, put more tunafish into the back, and arranged things so that Grendel could go for it and nothing else. He sniffed the tuna, glared at us, crawled into the trap — and lay down short of the trigger, stretching himself as far as he could go in an attempt to reach the tuna without setting off the trap. And he lay there for nearly half an hour before we stopped laughing and realized that he wasn’t going anywhere. So I finally got a chopstick and lowered the trap onto him.

We took him to the vet in the trap (wearing my old fencing glove to carry it); the vet anesthetized him in the trap, treated the tire burn on his foot, returned him to the trap, and gave him back to us. We brought him back to the house and turned him loose in the yard: he was not, at the point, a candidate for house cat status. This was when we named him Grendel: he had a den by the back door, and he only came out to eat or attack people.

But he stuck around. Lisa fed him Rescue Remedy in the water she left out for him, and finally he because tame enough that she was able to bring him inside. He was still very shy with strangers (the friends who cat-sat for us got worried once, and finally tracked him down in the cellar, where he was visible only by the red glow of his eyes in the flashlight beam), but he became very affectionate with us, and particularly with Lisa, whom he allowed to pick him up and cuddle him. After she died, he liked to lie on the back of the sofa behind me — right in the light I needed for my knitting — and purr and nuzzle me if I showed any signs of wanting to move him.

I’m now down to the regulation two cats per lesbian (plus the dog, of course), and no longer qualify for crazy cat lady status. But I miss the pair of them.

Marriage a la mode...

2008-06-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

This link was posted to my knitting list, and, given my current project, I naturally had to try it. I can't say I'm totally surprised at the results....

As a 1930s wife, I am
Average

Take the test!

As a 1930s husband, I am
Very Superior

Take the test!

It's an interesting survey, particularly the parallel questions for husband and wife. For example, the husband is asked if he ensures that his wife has an orgasm during "marital congress"; the wife is asked if she reacts with eagerness and pleasure to the same. (She's not asked if her husband succeeds at his task!) The husband has separate questions for whether or not he smokes or drinks, and there's a further check box for "bring drunk." The wife is asked if she "smokes, drinks, gambles, or uses dope." Both, however, are asked about their personal grooming, and both are asked whether they criticize the other in public, or criticize marriage as an institution. In general, though, I think the difference between the two is that the husband's questions are geared to finding out if he is polite and caretaking (does he help his wife's relatives as willinly as his own?), while the wife's questions are interested in whether she is polite and deferential (does she write to her husband's relatives for him?) — and whether she likes children. Interestingly, the wife is awarded extra points for having children, and the more of them, the more points she receives.

I wish I knew, though, whether "wears red nail polish" received a positive or a negative rating.....

In Stitches

2008-05-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Quite literally, as it turns out. A little after noon today, just after I finished the day’s writing, a sword fell on me.

Now, before you worry too much (or hurt yourself laughing), I have to explain. First, the sword was one of mine, one of a pair that is usually securely fastened to a wall plaque. Second, I had a little help, as one of the cats (Trouble — I’m perfectly willing to name names) ran under my feet trying to beat the other cats to the kitchen, and tripped me up. So I stumbled, knocked the swords off their holder (no, I hadn’t refastened them properly since the last time I’d had them down), and one of them sliced a 3-inch cut along my right triceps. The other one hit the back of my forearm, but just left a little hole and a big bruise.

It really didn’t hurt all that much — the blade was very sharp — but I could see that I was bleeding, and went on downstairs to look in the mirror. (You try looking at your triceps without a mirror!) It was pretty obvious that it was going to need stitches, so I called my doctor, and was told to proceed to the emergency room.

So I did as I was told, drove myself over to the emergency room (I drive an automatic), and presented myself to the triage nurse. Who, to her credit, did not even crack a smile when I told her what happened.

And then the fun began. I knew one of the duty nurses from when she treated Lisa at Hematology/Oncology, so she wasn’t entirely surprised that something this weird had happened to me. The other nurse just kept shaking her head and saying, “now, where was this sword? And it fell on you?” The nurse practitioner who stitched me up wanted to know why I had a sword in the first place, and exactly how it had happened (to be fair, I think she was making sure I hadn’t been in some weird fight) — but then I explained I was a writer and a collector, and it turned out she was a Trek fan, and so we had a nice chat while she put in the stitches. All seven of them.

Actually, the Novocain worked just fine, and I’m only just starting to get a little sore. (Which I will treat with ibuprofen and probably a glass of bourbon once I’m done with this post.) But I’m still left with seven stitches in my arm.

And two nice new Pirates of the Caribbean stickers — Jack Sparrow and Will, both brandishing swords — for having the weirdest story of the day.

Lost Book

2008-05-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve lost a book. Worse still, I’m not entirely sure I ever actually owned it in the first place. Its title is something like “Everyday Life in the 1930s,” and I know the local library has it; I also know it was so handy that I was going to buy it, but — assuming I actually did — it’s disappeared somewhere in my bookshelves.

This is not a normal thing for me. When my office was downstairs, I had everything arranged by subject: medieval history here, early modern there, classics above military arranged by war, science next to language below books on Japan…. I even had a special place to put the books I was using on a particular project. (OK, that’s an exaggeration. I had a shelf, and then a pile on the floor. But I could find things.) I knew what I had, where it was, and where I’d put it if it wasn’t in its proper place.

When I moved my office, though, other people put my books away, and, though I’ve made a couple of stabs at reorganizing things, I haven’t taken the time to do a proper job of it. And now I’m paying for it.

I think the most frustrating part is that I only need to look at it for about 10 seconds. All I want is to check on 1930s slang for homosexual. I know it’s in the book, I even know about where on the page it is — but I can’t find the book. So, in four minutes, when the library opens, I’m off to borrow their copy. Luckily, it’s only just around the corner, so the whole thing should take me less than 20 minutes, including a quick glance through the new arrivals. But I’d rather be writing!

On the other hand, this is slightly better than the last time I couldn’t find a book. Imagine me walking obsessively from one end of my bookshelves to the other, muttering, “where the hell are my Ming Dynasty eunuchs….”

A Little Pick-Me-Up

2008-04-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

I was feeling more than a bit melancholy this morning when I walked the dog, despite the sunshine and the greening trees. The second anniversary of Lisa’s death is fast approaching, and I just couldn’t manage to ignore it any more. It was exactly the sort of morning on which she would have been up at 6 and off with the dog to walk along with river; exactly the sort of day she’d spend emailing me about plans for the garden; exactly the time of year she’d be downloading past performances and calculating imaginary Derby bets, and not having her here to do any of that is still shockingly painful at times. I had Justin Hayward’s Forever Autumn running through my head - “you always loved this time of year” - and there was a single crow, one for sorrow, staring at me from the fence by the ballfield.

And then, wonderfully, one of the neighbors pulled up alongside us, and rolled down the car window to say hi and to share a silly, stupid joke. I giggled, we chatted, and I felt - lightened. Grieving still, yes, but it wasn’t the burden it had been. It’s still a Lisa sort of day, and spring days like this always will be, but I can see a time when that will be more joy than sorrow. And that is a gift worth celebrating.

Memory Trouble

2008-04-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was sorting through things to go to the recycling, and came across one of the many equine supply catalogs that I get because Lisa used to get them. This one had a photo on the cover of a horse in a fly mask, and all of a sudden I remembered visiting a very nice, very good racehorse who had worn a great fly mask that had green lenses on it, just like sunglasses. But I couldn’t remember his name.

One of the things about being in a long-term relationship is that you (or at least I) ended up off-loading a certain amount of memory. The names of actors, for one: Lisa had genius for remembering them. Where to find certain recipes. Song titles. Plays and playwrights. Horses and horse stories.

I stared at the catalog. We’d seen the horse at Saratoga, Sean Clancy took us to meet him on the backstretch, the same trip that we met Beautiful Pleasure.... Nothing. I got up, went to the bookshelves, and, after about an hour of skimming through various books, I think I have the answer: John’s Call. Who, if I remember correctly, began as a flat racer, didn’t have much success, and was switched to steeplechasing. At which point, he fell on his head, and became a very good flat racer indeed - perhaps so he would never have to jump a hedge again.

But I’m still not sure.

These days, when I run across something that falls into the “Lisa handled that” category, it makes me melancholy rather than miserable, which I guess proves that I’m healing. But I wish I could remember that name!

Milk

2008-04-03T06:09:00.000-07:00

It’s rare that I don’t finish a book. I read quickly, and I read constantly, and if I don’t finish a book, then I have to find something else to read that much sooner. The obvious corollary to this is that I read a lot of reviews, and keep a list of books to watch out for when I go to the library or the bookstore. I’ve been in Victorian mood lately, at least as far as fiction goes, so when I saw reivews of The Sonambulist, it immediately went on the list: right period, it was about a stage magician (though very few novels about magicians match JB Priestley’s Lost Empires), got good reviews — what’s not to like?

In a word, milk.

The title character drinks milk the way private eyes in the pulps drink cheap whiskey, guzzling it by the gallon, chugging it before every action, carrying it with him when he can’t finish his tipple in the bar or at home. And I really hate milk. If I’m not very careful with it, it makes me sick; more than that, though, I don’t like the way it tastes. It’s always sour-ish, no matter how cold you get it; it’s a thin, nasty flavor except when it’s so rich it gags you. It leaves a gross film on the dishes, dries to disgusting flakes — in short, I find milk completely revolting. Every time the Sonambulist chugged down another pint of milk, I got a little more queasy, until finally, about two-third of the way through, I had to stop.

I had just settled down to supper (yes, I read at meals, and I feel a little frisson of satisfaction every time I do it, having been forbidden to read at the table most of my childhood) and opened the book — to yet another description of milk-drinking. This time, the Sonambulist had spilled some down his shirtfront, and it had dried, and I just couldn’t go on. I put that book down, picked up another, and had my supper in peace.

After supper, I stared at The Sonambulist for a while. It was an interesting story, and I did want to know what happened; however, I’d been skimming the milk-drinking episodes for quite a while, and I was still reading more of them than I wanted. It was time to give up. On the next morning’s walk, I dropped it into the library’s return box.

Next in my stack was a biography of John Dillinger: badly written (“providential” used in place of “provincial” — that kind of error), poorly attributed (too many “facts” come from mysterious papers collected by an ex-cop, and then lost in an attic for years), but still infinitely preferable to another glass of milk.

Robins

2008-03-02T10:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday it snowed, and rained, and rained with snow, and snowed with rain, and then it rained and snowed some more. And during the worst of it, the dog kept running downstairs (I was working upstairs in my office) and barking out the windows. I didn’t think too much of this because — well, to be honest, the dog will bark at anything from blowing leaves to falling icicles, not to mention squirrels, seagulls, crows, passing dogs (known and unknown), and the strange little man who walks down the street talking loudly to himself. (He has been known to bark back, and they both seem pleased by the interaction.) But after a while, she started to sound kind of frantic, and I went downstairs to see what was going on.

She was in the living room, bouncing from one front window to the next, so I pulled back a shutter to see what was going on, and found robins. Not just a robin, or even a pair of robins, but dozens of them, a mob of robins busily stripping the pea-sized crabapples from the two dwarf trees that dominate the narrow flowerbed that is my “yard.”

Lisa planted those trees in her last really good spell, and she’d picked them in part because the nursery people had said they would attract birds, but I’d never seen anything like this. The robins were perched on every possible branch of the crabapples, and there were more waiting their turn on the wires that run along the street. A few were scavenging along the ground, picking up anything the bigger birds dropped. They completely ignored me, standing in the window with the shutter wide open. All right, one of them cocked his head to make sure I was really confined, fixing me with one beady black eye, but then he went on eating. As I stood there, they stripped the tree bare — there truly wasn’t a single apple left behind — and then swirled away into the snowy rain, bright red breasts against the gray sky.

I’m still smiling, thinking about it.

Periphery is available!

2008-02-23T12:38:00.000-08:00

Periphery, the Lynne Jamneck-edited collection of erotic lesbian SF, in which I have a story, "The Rocky Side of the Sky," is now available on Amazon. After the delay caused by the sale of Haworth Press, and the company's subsequent decision not to continue publishing fiction, it's nice to see the collection in print!

A not-so-shaggy dog story

2008-02-13T14:14:00.000-08:00

I watched the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show the last two nights — another family tradition, particularly since someone in Lisa’s dog club had a dog go Best of Oppposite a few years back. The dog slept through most of it, while the cats and I watched with some attention….

The best part, though, was during the Toy Group, when one of the diminutive champtions — I think it was the toy fox terrier — was introduced as "Louisville Slugger." (His father was "Grand Slam.") Not only is this funny to start with, it reminded me of one of our trips to Chicago, and the first time I ever saw a Chinese Crested.

We were staying at a hotel near the lake, in a neighborhood that clearly was full of dogs and dog-lovers, and that particular morning we'd decided to find coffee and croissants somewhere in the area before we headed off to the conference. Our search for an open coffeehouse led us past a small park, and as we passed it, we could see a guy behind the fence who looked like — well, like Tony Soprano's Chicago uncle. A goombah. A great big dark-haired dark-chinned man in polyester slacks and a polo shirt with a sports jacket over it, and a diamond ring you could see from across the street.

And as we tried not to giggle, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a plastic bag, and stooped to clean up after a dog that was too small to see behind the parked cars. A bulldog? A small pit bull? Some vicious little dog of uncertain lineage and obvious menace?

He carefully deposited the bagged waste in the trash can, then pulled out his handkerchief and picked up the dog: a Chinese Crested — a hairless Chinese Crested. He wiped its feet and the puffs of ankle fur, then settled in in the crook of his arm. It bounced up and licked his chin, bracing its now clean paws on his jacket, and he gave it a hug and walked on.

Naturally, we spent the next couple of days inventing stories about the man. Lisa found a name for him, but she never did get the chance to use him in a story. But now…. If you read anything of mine that includes a semi-retired mobster named Sonny Trentacosta and his little dog Louie (short, of course, for that well-known Chicago gangster's weapon, the Louisville Slugger), well, you'll know where they came from.

Story Sold!

2008-02-05T06:15:00.000-08:00

Well, it's official! My short story, "One Horse Town," has sold to Catherine Lundoff's anthology of lesbian ghost stories, Haunted Hearths. I'm extremely pleased, not least because I enjoy Catherine's work, and it's been a pleasure working with her on this project.

I understand there's going to be a reading/release party for Haunted Hearths and for Lynne Jamneck's Periphery (in which I also have a story) at this year's Wiscon. Woohoo!

Super Sunday

2008-02-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you end up continuing a tradition long after its original purpose has been lost. This is the case with the Super Bowl and me. Although I grew up paying attention to college football (how could I not, living in Arkansas?), I was never a huge pro football fan, so it was actually Lisa who started me watching the Super Bowl. She was fascinated by the ads, and by the time the game aired, she'd compiled a list of the ones she was waiting to see. (I think she would have been delighted by the announcements last night that repeatedly directed viewers to a MySpace site if they wanted to see all the new ads without having to bother with the game.)

The first time we watched the game together, she wanted to channel surf during the game, and come back for the ads, and for the first time in our relationship, I caught myself saying words like "heresy" and "abomination." Cut away during the game? The gods of football will punish you for that - and even after she pointed out that neither one of us cared who won, the mere idea made me twitchy. So we compromised, and I ended up watching the game (and getting emotionally involved, always) while Lisa read a book and looked up whenever the ads came on.

I'm not sure that the appearance of the Super Sunday Yarn Sale made anything better. Oh, it made me happy, deliriously so, but Lisa grumbed that there ought to be something equivalent for gardeners. (An All-Star Plant Sale?) And even when I made her come along to pick out yarn for herself, she made her decisions in under half an hour and had to stand around while I fondled skeins and made arcane calculations and generally had a wonderful time.

I went to the Super Sunday Yarn Sale yesterday, arriving 3 minutes after the doors opened (and, no, I wasn't the first person there), and spent about an hour and a half picking out some lovely yarn. (From which I intend to make 2 pairs of socks, and two different jackets from the new Knitted Kimonos, a book I really adore.) And yesterday evening, I settled down in front of the TV to watch The Game and The Ads. And, you know what? It wasn't as much fun without the arguments over whether or not we could catch a few minutes of Mythbusters during the second quarter, and without knowing what the big ads were going to be.

Of course, if the Patriots had won, I might feel differently.

What I did on my Thanksgiving vacation

2007-12-13T07:02:00.000-08:00

(Yes, I know. So much for good intentions. But I'm trying to get back to some kind of schedule.)

I spent Thanksgiving with my parents down in Arkansas. It was fun for a whole lot of reasons: seeing family, hanging out with some old friends — one my best friend from elementary school — watching Arkansas beat LSU in triple overtime, and just generally being able to relax.

However, I also spent a couple of days in the library, continuing the research for a magical-realist novel about bootleggers in Arkansas in the 1930s. (This started with a short story called "Mister Seeley," which was published in Haworth Press's anthology So Fey. Because of the sale of Haworth Press, this edition is already out of print and hard to find; we're hoping it will be picked up elsewhere very soon — I'll keep you posted.) Essentially, this research involves reading the local papers, tracking "prohi" violations (that's "prohibition," of course, and I'd love to know how the word was pronouned — or if anybody besides the newspapers used it) and the progress of the drought and the Depression and generally getting a feel for the time. So I thought I'd share this gem, from the Arkansas Gazette, May 6, 1930:

==

Headline: That Is the John Law's Story and He Gets Away With It

Helena, May 5 — Patrolman Hibbs, Helena's biggest policeman, strode jauntily to the witness stand in Municipal Court today.

Judge Pipkin sniffed at his approach and eyed the officer suspiciously.

"I can imagine what your honor is thinking, but I can explain," Hibbs said.

Hibbs said that he and two other officers engaged in a liquor raid Saturday night. He was stationed beneath a window to intercept any attempt to escape.

Jesse Bee Edwards heard the officers at her door and hastily dumped a gallon of whiskey out of the window, drenching Officer Hibbs.

The officer wore his saturated uniform to court this morning. Judge Pipkin fined the woman $50 and costs.

==

I'm hoping "costs" included cleaning his uniform.

Where were we?

2007-10-29T08:21:00.001-07:00

Somehow the summer just slipped away….

Well, actually, I know where some of it went. My main part time job made some major computer changes that didn’t go as planned (yes, I hear those of you who work with computers laughing hysterically), and then I had some chances to do some extra work at my seasonal job — good extra work, like creating a tour of the servants’ areas of one house — and at the same time I was trying to get some writing done (a couple of short stories, and outlines for two novels) — and the next thing I knew it was October. The end of October.

Time to put the air conditioners away, and the storm windows down. Time to get out the winter clothes. Time to finish the sweaters I’ve been working on because it’s getting pretty cold in the mornings when I walk the dog, and it isn’t really all that warm when I go to work. Time to start thinking about the holidays....

OK, maybe that last is going a little too far, but then again, maybe not. I do need the time to think about what I want to do this year. Last year, I didn’t do much of anything, and that was good, or at least the right thing for me at that moment. This year, I need to make those decisions all over again.

That sounds as though I’m dreading it, which isn’t exactly right. There are some things I’m looking forward to, like planning another of our old open house/parties — though I think I’m going to move that to around New Year’s, partly to acknowledge that things have changed, and partly because there’s no way I can do a big party in December. But I want to have that get-together again, because it was fun to host, fun to prepare, and a good thing to move forward with. There are things I’m ambivalent about — whether or not to have a tree, for one. I’ve always enjoyed the bright lights; on the other hand, setting it up and taking it down by myself isn’t very appealing. Lisa loved Christmas the same way she loved birthdays, loved the excuse to celebrate, to decorate, to party. I enjoyed those things, too, but partly because it made her so happy. There are lots of options, and the main thing is that I have to decide what works for me.

And that requires time and a certain amount of energy. I have no obligations here at the house: no kids, no family pressure, no need to do anything except what I want. I haven’t had that much freedom in years, and it’s like any unused muscle, it’s taking me a while to get back into shape. So I figure if I start now, think about these things a little at a time, I’ll be ready to deal with the holidays — and with any bigger decisions that come along.

In the meantime, the leaves are turning. I drove to Manchester yesterday, and the color was spectacular, gold and scarlet and orange vivid against a bright blue sky. I came back in the dark, and the moon was rising, just past full, enormous and pale, pale orange, balanced on the horizon. It was beautiful, and it made me happy, and that was enough, to be in that moment. I’ll make decisions tomorrow.

Overheard at the Tennis Courts

2007-07-27T14:55:00.000-07:00

I walked the dog over by the tennis courts this morning, and realized that it was time for the 5 to 7 year olds' group lesson. The teacher was a very cheerful young man who was encouraging them in all the right ways, and clearly enjoying his job and the kids. And then, as I got closer, I heard him tell one of the girls - a tiny little blonde thing all in pink and ruffles - to get ready. She immediately lifted her racquet into a baseball pose, and the teacher said, "No, no, not like Manny Ramirez."

"David Ortiz!" The girl sounded totally indignant.

"OK, not like David Ortiz," the teacher said. "You want to be like Pete Sampras, or Roger Federer, or Venus Williams -"

"I want to be David Ortiz." The girl dropped her racquet and put her hands on her hips: not a kid to mess with, clearly.

There was a little silence, and then the teacher said, "OK, but you have to be David Ortiz playing tennis..."

I didn't hear what happened after that.

The Case of the Missing Sidekicks

2007-06-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve been interested in the new Nancy Drew movie because, like a lot of now-adult women, I was a big fan of the books when I was a kid. They were actually hard to come by, unlike many other books. My grandmothers gave me them for my birthdays, or sometimes I got them from a friend, but they were relatively expensive hardcovers, so they were never acquired casually. And the library, the source of all my other reading material, didn’t have them – couldn’t keep them, they said, when I got up my nerve to ask. They were checked out and never returned so often that they didn’t buy them any more. (As someone who had thought about doing the same thing with a few of her favorite books, I completely understood.) By the time I had an allowance, and could support my own book habit, I had moved on, but I still remembered them with great fondness.

I liked the mysteries, of course. Nancy – and the game of Clue that the Coopers left behind in the basement cabinets when they moved – are probably the source of my life-long fondness for the genre. I liked the fact that Nancy’s father was a lawyer, and was thoroughly annoyed that my father never brought home the kinds of cases that Carson Drew had. I liked the fact that Nancy had her own car –I even had some of the early versions of the books, in which the car was a “roadster.” I didn’t know exactly what a roadster was, but it sounded good. (And now that I do know, I still want one.)

The thing I liked best, though, was that, if you wanted to play Nancy Drew, there were parts for three girls. This was important, because my best friend had a big sister who was just two years older than we were, and the three of us always ended up playing together. This was great when it was board games, like Monopoly or Clue or Life, but harder when it was something imaginary. Take Star Trek, for example. There was only one girl in the cast, Lieutenant Uhura; Spock was an OK part, and I always liked Scotty, but none of us really wanted to be Kirk or McCoy, and you kind of needed Kirk to run things. (This was complicated by the fact that none of us had ever actually seen the show. We were going by a Big Golden Book that I had bought in the supermarket.) Sherlock Holmes was equally problematic: only two good parts – one, really, though our Dr. Watson always had more sense than the original - unless we could persuade the big sister to be Moriarty, which she wisely refused.

But Nancy Drew…. Nancy Drew had three parts, Nancy and her best friends and co-investigators, George and Beth. And they were all girls, so nobody had to pretend to be a boy to play. (Yes, George was a girl.) Admittedly, my best friend usually claimed Nancy for herself, because it was her house, and then her sister and I would argue over who got to be George, but even if you got stuck with Beth, she wasn’t all that bad. She was still part of all the investigations, and she wasn’t really a “fraidy-cat,” just a little squeamish. (Or at least that’s how I remember we tacitly agreed to portray her.) My friends’ house had a semi-finished walk-out basement, and there was an area where you could pretend you were in a mine tunnel. Nancy, George, and Beth investigated a lot of lost Wild West gold, especially after my family went on a western vacation and I read about rustlers and miners and the like.

So you can imagine my shock as I read the reviews of the new movie, and didn’t find a single mention of young actresses playing George and Beth. In fact, all they talk about is that dorky Ned Nickerson, and some kid named Corky. What’s happened to George and Beth? How can you do a Nancy Drew movie without them? And why aren’t any reviewers – even the ones who claim to have liked the books when they were younger – mentioning this omission? Have Beth and George been written out of the books, too?

And that would be a shame, because their presence was important, particularly at a time when there weren’t very many books for girls in which more than one girl was allowed to have an adventure – in which girls were allowed to be friends and have adventures.

It’s even more a shame that none of the reviewers have noticed the Missing Sidekicks.

Putting off my blacks

2007-05-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago Friday, I put off my blacks. That’s an old-fashioned phrase for an old-fashioned gesture, and it’s taken me a while to write about it because it’s taken me a while to work through what I feel and think about it.

After Lisa died, I wore black almost without thinking. It seemed the right thing to do, it suited my mood and my sorrow and it was a way of expressing those feelings without demanding that anybody else do anything about them. It was, I guess, a way of literally putting them outside myself: wearing my grief on my sleeve. After a week, I realized that I needed a ritual of mourning, something I could do for myself, and I knew almost immediately that I would continue wearing black. I would wear something black, not all black because I simply couldn’t afford that, but some major piece of black clothing, every day, and I would do it for a year and a day.

“A year and a day.” It’s an archaic phrase, too, and went with what felt like an archaic gesture. I found myself thinking of the folk song called “The Unquiet Grave” (or “The Restless Dead”), the first verse running through my mind over and over:

I’ll do as much for my true love
As any lover may
I’ll sit and mourn upon her grave
A twelvemonth and a day

In the rest of the song, the true love’s ghost rises from the grave to tell the lover to cut it out, but I wasn’t ready for that part yet.

So for a year and a day, I wore black. I bought a lot of black t-shirts, and was really glad that my warmest dog-walking pullover is black. Every day as I got dressed, I found some piece of black clothing, and thought of Lisa, and felt connected and comforted by the ritual.

And then, all of a sudden, it was May. And it was time to put off the black.

I was, I thought, ready. And yet it was hard to let go of the ritual, even though I was starting to yearn for color. I thought about keeping it going for a while longer, and I thought some more about “The Unquiet Grave,” with its verses about grief keeping the dead from resting, and the living, too, and I decided that it was, indeed, time.

So on the 4th of May, which would have been our 28th anniversary, I put on a bright blue shirt and blue jeans, and not even my socks or my shoes were black. And I wore color for the next few days, and even bought a new green shirt, a springtime, new-leaf green. It’s not that I won’t wear black again - both my good skirts are black, and I’ve still got too many black t-shirts to give them up entirely - but the meaning is different. It’s no longer a gesture, a ritual; I remember Lisa at different times and in different ways. I’m glad, so glad, that I did it, that I literally put my grief on my back every day, that I touched it and planned it and wore it until I wore it out, or at least wore it down. And I’m glad, too, that I reached the ritual’s end. I’ve put off my blacks. I will never entirely put off my grief, but it has changed, and I have changed with it. I am grateful.

Lisa on P'town

2007-05-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

I found this not too long ago, as I was going through Lisa's office here at the house. It has to be about 10 years old (Austin's is long gone, and so is Gallerani's, and we had to give up the winter trip because of work), but it's so Lisa, and so Provincetown, that it seemed worth sharing.

There is something, some vestige, I guess of the Yankee work ethic, that comes over me whenever I go to Provincetown. It affects me more there than it ever does here in Portsmouth, which is, after all, located in granite-backed, Republican, lean-faced New Hampshire. But in Provincetown, artists’ colony, favored by artists because it lies on the same parallel as Florence, Italy — as well as for other reasons, obviously — in Provincetown, I can’t do nothing. I can do nothing in Maine, quite successfully, and have done so on more than one occasion. I can do nothing in New York City, even, especially before 10:00 in the morning, which seems to be the earliest anyone wants to do business, unless they’re doing it at 7:30. I can even do nothing in San Francisco, and can show you the photos to prove it.

But....

I get to Provincetown, we unpack, and I want to be moving. The verb I keep coming back to is to see. No, I’m not making a pun on “sea,” as one might say I must go back to the sea again. There’s just so damn much to see in and around Provincetown that I have to be moving. I want to walk down Commercial Street as soon as I get there, see that Gallerani’s is still there, even though David Gallerani, alas, is not. I don’t particularly want to see that the deli that prepared our wonderful dune picnic last October is no longer there, but I do want to see what the new(er) store is like. Newer only in that it wasn’t quite open when I was down here in May, and I don’t venture much south of Boston during the summer months, it’s bad enough living in a tourist town without going to another one. I want to make something of a beeline (a short one) to see what the menu at Martin House is like, and then, straight on the Now Voyager to pick up some books for reading in, on, around the dunes, and next to the heater in the studio at night.

And I know that it’s only at night that I will read, most likely. Drives Melissa crazy, but I get to Provincetown, and I want to move, to see as much as I can. I want to go back to the National Seashore, up (sorry, down) in Orleans, and get not really lost on the paths that wind through wood and across Dutch landscapes, through more woods, and eventually toss you up onto the beach, from the land side, not entirely unlike being tossed onto the beach from the ocean. I want to slog through the Beech Forest Trail, and see the Audubon Sanctuary in Wellfleet. I want to walk down to the other end, the West End, where we stay, actually, of Commercial Street, to where the State Highway begins/ends, and go further, maybe venturing out on the breakwater — yes, it’s called a dyke, but c’mon, that’s too damned easy.

And I want to be doing this all the time, small wonder Melissa grows exasperated. I cannot sit still in Provincetown.

At least.... not until sunset. When I can sit at the little round table in the studio, and gaze out the broad, high paned window across Robert’s fantastic garden (I hate him, really I do), to the sunset and get a little melancholy. I watch the neighborhood cats perch in the most unlikely place all day, get up, stretch, and hop down, heading for home. Or I’ll wander to the window on the other side of the room and look out to the harbor, where the sky has turned a gray-violet that, by golly, Joel Meyerowitz does know how to capture. And then, it’s pretty quiet, at least the times of the year we go there, and night falls. And we get ready for dinner.

And I start moving again. It’s very dark, and very bright, on Commercial Street at night, slightly less of both on Bradford. To your right (remember, we stay in the West End) is the harbor, a dark mass streaked by the lights at Wood End, and beyond, the wealthy harbors of Wellfleet, Truro, and Dennis. I try to fit my walk between the aimless meanderings of the tourists and the purposeful but not necessarily fast strides of the year-rounders, of whom I desperately want to be one, all the while not willing to give up what I like about where I live now -- I job doing what I love, and a music scene that doesn’t spell words funny, and that rewards talent and hard work, not just good intentions. I want to look like I belong, so maybe I don’t investigate everything I would like to. I still haven’t nerved myself up to go to a tea dance at the Boatslip, if you can believe that. I try to walk casually, as if I’m not thrilled to pieces to be back here, but I try to walk firmly, as though I belong. And I don’t make fun of the straights, I really don’t, though they do walk funny.

Martin House is usually our first stop on any trip. Martin House, with George the cat who knows when the fishermen are returning with the fresh oysters, and I’ve seen this cat waiting under a garden pergola in the rain, waiting for that damned fisherman with the same expectancy as the women at the other table who have ordered the oysters, and have told the waiter that he can bring them along whenever they get there, no matter if they’re on their dessert course. We contentedly settle down to our meal, since Melissa got the last of the original batch of oysters, and all is well.

We are creatures of habit, always open to a new experience, but not willing to let an old, good one, go. And that means that, dinner at Martin House duly taken care of, we can scan the Women’s Week program book to see when we’re going to go to Austin’s. The phrase “Going to go to Austin’s” is best uttered in a playground sing-song. And different restaurants in Provincetown inspire that reaction in different people. For my sister, I think it was Inn at the Mews, and for someone else, of course, Ciro and Sal’s. But Austin’s won our hearts when we first went to Women’s Week. I think it was the bread pudding, but it might have been the best smoked chicken I have ever had — a Willy bird, which is a terrifically rude name. Last year, it was our haven when we escaped from a musical event that didn’t quite live up to our expectations to go to Austin’s champagne and shellfish extravaganza. Upstairs, in this cozy attic/bar, with windows and skylights and not a lot of light, Melissa focused on the oysters, and I went for the tiger striped shrimp. $10 for a glass of very nice champagne and a respectable plate full of shellfish. We stayed there quite a while, thank you. Not a lot of movement. I could sit still for this. Try me.

You know, you can tell that Joel Meyerowitz, long may he photograph, spends his summers in Provincetown, because while I see intimations of that light in the autumn and spring dusks, that light is nothing like the light you see at the end of December, on a bitterly cold day, when the sky is a blue so intense that not even the reflection of the ocean can keep up with it, so it fancies itself up in a mass of whitecaps. And if you hit the dunes at the end of Snail Road (canola oil, by the way, I have it on good authority, isn’t any good for dune surfing), the contrast between sand, water and sky will take your breath away. As will the wind. If a man (or woman) may stand here and put all of America behind him/her (thank heavens), this is also a place where the winds seem to converge and crash together, a little Good Hope. So, after an invigorating morning’s struggle up the dunes, we retreat to the beach at Herring Cove, somewhat more protected, and settle down there to listen for the loons we heard last May when we went down there for our anniversary, to stare at the water and grin like fools because it is so damned gorgeous. And big. I remember on December day, standing near the water line, but above it, wind burning my ears off my head, and growing dizzy with the perception that the water of the ocean was actually above me. That I was below it, and that perception was only enhanced by a tide that rose very, very swiftly, pushed by the searing wind that sent sea-foam scuttling across the packed, icy sand.

There’s also a sense of stillness, of expectancy, in his photographs that I also recognize from a spring dusk, having drinks on the deck at the Red Inn, trying to ignore the Guppie group, men and women both, sitting next to us and talking loudly about money and cars... it’s not just the straights. And I told you that dusk was the one time I’m comfortable being still in Provincetown. But I go to Provincetown two, three times a year: in October, for Women’s Week (and the last whale watches of the season); in December, between Christmas and New Year’s (a much better tradition than working at the MLA!), and, if work allows, in May for our anniversary. And two of those times don’t allow for much sitting still in the dunes and letting life wash over you — try it, especially in December, and you’ll be there until you thaw out in March!

The place gets inside my heart, and makes it swell, and I sometimes have to listen to a Boston station we can pull in to bring me back down to earth, to return everything to everyday size, to remember that my life lies elsewhere.

Yearnings

2007-04-30T08:15:00.001-07:00

It’s a rainy, dreary day, and I’m in a rainy, dreary mood. A year ago today was the last day Lisa was fully conscious, and the last day she spoke coherently. At least — and I will always be profoundly grateful for this — she was never in pain. The tumor was in the brain stem, shutting down the body functions that aren’t consciously controlled; we were told — less than 36 hours before — that she would simply get more and more tired and eventually fall asleep and not wake up. And that’s exactly what happened: an easier end than many, but hard enough to bear.

I wish we had had more time to talk about it. She had been so determined to live that we didn’t really talk about the possibility of her death until the very end, and it was a jumble, trying to fit in years of thought and philosophy and comfort into about 36 hours. At the same time, I’m glad it was quick. I grew up with tornadoes, not hurricanes; I understand how to deal with random, intense devastation, dropping out of nowhere and gone again in an instant. Lisa and I went through one hurricane together (Gloria), and I thought I would go out of my mind after four hours of it. I don’t know if I could have handled a longer dying — and yet I’d have given anything for a little more time together. It’s not that I feel there was much of anything left unsaid — I think we got through the crucial stuff — but there’s stuff I would have said better, and more of, if we had had more time.

I saw a newspaper story recently that said that the bereaved felt not depression, but yearning, and certainly that’s been true for me. I yearn for her, I ache for her presence, I listen for her in spite of myself. I still think of emailing her with new ideas, or look up from a book to tell her she has to read this one. Last week, I bought a new mystery, and realized it was more for her than for me.

And yet, I’m making new starts. For the first time in nearly 30 years, I’m meeting people who have never known Lisa. And, to be honest, I’m enjoying them. I do think about how much Lisa would have liked them, but I’m also enjoying them for their own sake. I spent a weekend with people from the knitters’ list, and had a wonderful time. I have begun work on two novels that Lisa never knew about; I’ve finished a short story she never saw.

The last thing Lisa said was, “Thank everybody.” I think I have as much or more to be grateful for, so I offer my thanks as well. Thanks to all my friends, old friends and new ones, the ones who knew Lisa and the ones who didn’t. Thanks for being yourselves: it makes all the difference.

Newsworthy

2007-04-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

Today's Portsmouth Herald (print edition) leads off with the headline "Working with Anna Nicole: Exeter native stars in 'Illegal Aliens.'" Accompanying the story are two stills from the film, though, to be fair, neither one makes more use than necessary of Smith's assets.

Below that is a large picture of Mitt Romeny, with the caption/headline "Romney Makes 1st Local Stop of '08 Run."

Next to the Romney photo is the headline "Gays can say 'I do' in N.H.: Civil unions OK'd in Senate; Lynch to sign."

I'm glad someone has their priorities (dare we say?) straight.

It's the Little Things

2007-04-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

(I haven’t been posting much lately because of my job with the CPAs. Now that tax season is past, I hope to get caught up on the entries I’ve been imagining over the last few weeks....)

It’s never a good idea to speak too loudly about one’s good fortune, because it’s bound to come back and bite you. This time, I made the mistake of commenting (to my mother) that despite the windy weather, the pilot light in the furnace had not blown out. For good measure, I added, “which is a really good thing, because it was Lisa who knew how to relight it.” Such a remark is asking for trouble.

Three nights later, on a Saturday evening, I noticed that the house was a little colder than usual. Since the house gets cold right before the heat comes on, I waited. Nothing happened. I went to the thermostat and pushed the lever until I heard the “click.” I waited some more, and nothing happened. By now, I pretty much knew what was going on, but nonetheless I went into the bedroom and checked the thermometer there, just in case I was hallucinating the chill. The temperature was 59F.

The pilot light was out.

For a few vain minutes, I wondered if I could wait until Monday and call the repairman to show me how to do it, but if it was already 59, and tempereatures were expected to be in the low 30s overnight (again, Fahrenheit), that probably wasn’t a good idea. I thought about calling the repair guy right then and there, but it was Saturday night, and that meant serious overtime — again, not a good idea. Besides, Lisa always swore the pilot light was actually easy to relight... once you’d done it.

And that was the catch. I hadn’t actually done it myself, though we’d talked about it a few times, and I knew that (1) there were instructions on the inside of the furnace door and (2) you hold the red button down for at least 60 seconds. I’d never seen the red button, mind you, but I knew it had to be held down firmly and for a full minute. Armed with this knowledge, I headed downstairs to the basement.

I should add that this isn’t a finished basement. It’s more of a cellar, really, with a concrete floor and fieldstone walls and a habit of flooding when the storm drains get too full. (But that’s another story.) The washer and dryer live down here, which has more to do with lack of space upstairs than the intrinsic habitability of the basement, and it should tell you something that this is where I had the plumbers put the cheap new sink I intend to use for dying fabric. Oh, yes, and the cats’ boxes are down here, too, along with lots of gardening supplies and Christmas ornaments and miscellaneous tools and scrap lumber and other junk.

So you can imagine how much fun it was to come downstairs and discover that the best way to gain access to the furnace was to sit on the floor. But I had found a flashlight, and there was an obvious handle, so I successfully removed the furnace cover and turned it over to read the instructions.

Steps 1 and 2 (turn down the heat and remove the cover) were already done. Step 3 was “Follow the gas line to find the pilot light. Remove cover if present.” I found the gas line — it was right next to a knob that said “pilot” and “on,” and next to that was the mysterious red button — but the gas line went back into the depths of the furnace, between the burners and behind a rusty piece of solid metal. After some fumbling with the flashlight and a pair of kitchen tongs (to hold the matches), I realized this was the cover (to be removed if present), and finally figured out that the spring-thing sticking out from it was in fact the handle by which it could be removed.

And, voila! The pilot light! Stone cold dead, but definitely the pilot light. At this point, I think I would have been happier if it had been on, so that I could have called the repairman with a clear conscience.

The next step seemed simple: turn the knob to “pilot,” hold down the red button, and immediately light the pilot light. I patted myself on the back for knowing that you had to hold the button down for a full minute to keep the pilot lit, and then took a deep breath and did as I was told.

Nothing happened.

I did it again.

Still nothing. So I did it a few more times, all without result.

Then I lay down on the floor and peered into the furnace (using the flashlight) to make sure that this was in fact the pilot. There was nothing else that could be a pilot light, and it matched the little picture on the inside of the furnace door. So I turned the knob to “pilot,” held down the red button, and lit yet another match.

And nothing happened.

By now, I was accumulating quite a pile of spent matches, and the cellar was definitely getting cold. I was beginning to wonder just how cold it might get by Monday, and exactly how much the repair guy would charge me for a Saturday night call, anyway. And then I looked at the knob again. I was turning it to “pilot,” all right, but only to the “t.” Maybe, just maybe, you had to turn it further. So I lit another match, grasped it firmly in the kitchen tongs, and turned the knob past “t” to “p.” There was a definite, gratifying hiss. I mashed the red button down, stuck the match into the pilot light — and it lit! Of course, I was in an incredibly awkward position to keep holding the red button (I hadn’t really expected it to work), but I held it down while I counted to sixty, and then let go.

The pilot stayed lit. I sat for a moment, smiling at that pretty little flame, and then realized I had to put it all back together again. But, you know, Lisa was right. Once you’ve done it, it’s not that bad.

New Job

2007-03-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

I have a new job, which is one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging much lately. You see, I’m working part time for a CPA, and it’s tax season.... So the job hasn’t been as part time as I’d originally thought, but, since they’re happy to pay me for the extra hours, I’m perfectly willing to be there.

I am also the third Melissa in the office, which has entailed boundless confusion, and too many repetitions of “Yes, this is Melissa, but not the one you’re looking for.” Being Melissa S. doesn’t help, as the accountant Melissa is also Melissa S. There’s an accountant named Scott, too. I’ve fallen back on Mel, but that seems not to be helping all that much.

The best part about the job, though, is the view. I have a tiny office at the back, which I share with the paper waiting to go to the shredders, but it has a picture window that looks out on Islington Creek and across the highway to the dock where the salt ships tie up (that’s road salt), and beyond that to the Piscataqua River and the Memorial Bridge. This may not sound so great, but the Creek is full of ducks and gulls and (lately) swans. And I love ships, and I have a clear view of the main channel

A ship on the river is an impressive sight. First the Memorial Bridge goes up — it’s the kind of drawbridge where the central span rises in a single piece, so you hear the warning horn, and then watch the road start to rise. Mostly, it goes up a little less than halfway, just enough to let the fishing boats through, but if the tide’s high, I keep looking, hoping for a big ship. If I’m lucky, the bridge doesn’t stop, but just keeps rising, until it’s perched at the very top of its towers.

Then I start looking for the ship. If it’s coming downriver, I won’t see it until it’s almost at the bridge, my view being blocked by the scrap pile (scrap iron is another big product here), but if it’s coming upriver, into port, I can often see the top of its superstructure over the roofs of the downtown buildings before I see the hull.

The river channel is a difficult one. To make it under the bridge, the tankers have to swing almost over to the Maine shore, right against the Navy yard, and then make a huge, sweeping S-turn that takes them under the raised span and into the deep channel on the New Hampshire side of the river. All the ships are attended by tugs, the Moran tugs that dock on Ceres Street in the middle of the tourist district, and the tugs seem to communicate by hooting back and forth, so that the ships’ progress is accompanied by their atonal music. A ship coming upriver is nudged around the first part of the S and lined up for the bridge, which from my point of view means she’s absolutely bows-on to me as she comes through the bridge. In the afternoon, the shadow from the bridge hits the top of the superstructure, pointing up just how big these ships are. And then the tugs hoot again, and the ship swings, ponderous and fast at the same time, until it’s broadside to me and solidly in the channel, and it churns on up the river and out of sight behind the scrap pile. They move astonishingly fast for something that big, and yet you can never be in any doubt about the sheer mass involved. It’s a spectacular sight, and one that I can’t imagine getting tired of. It’s one of those little extras that make a job worthwhile.

Life's Little Ironies

2007-02-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

I learned from a story in today’s Portsmouth Herald that the woman who ran into my house has a brain tumor. A malignant one. It was removed once, but grew back five times larger. She’s had a second operation, and is scheduled to start chemo today.

That’s an ugly little irony, since the crash happened six months and one day after Lisa’s death, and the situation is made worse by the fact that the family doesn’t have health insurance. Car insurance, insurance to fix my steps, but not to fix her. We used all our savings just to pay the incidentals of cancer treatment, and Lisa had excellent insurance. I can’t imagine how they’re managing. The story in the paper says to contact Kim French, defboat@yahoo.com to find out how to make contributions. If you’ve got a few bucks to spare, this is a good cause. Drop Kim a line. They’re nice folks, and they could use a break.

I hate irony.

There's Always One

2007-02-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

After I posted about Barbaro and Lisa, I got a comment saying something on the order of “I’ve also posted about Barbaro, please check it out. Enjoy.” (I’ve deleted the comment since, so I don’t have the exact wording.) Since it was someone I didn’t know, and this isn’t exactly the kind of blog that attracts a lot of unfamiliar postings, I checked it out. The entry in question said, in essence, that the poster was glad Barbaro was dead. He had no particular reason for being angry at the attention paid to Barbaro in life - unlike, for example, the writer of a letter to the editor in the Boston Globe, who pointed out the unfairness of having Barbaro’s picture and obituary on page 1, and the announcement of her cousin’s death in Iraq (and the photo of his pregnant widow) on page 6 of the B section. In this case, it was the mere idea that people cared about the horse that seemed to send the blogger into spasms of anger.

The poster’s profile says he’s 18, and his .edu email makes him a student. My best guess is that he searched for blog entries about Barbaro, and mass-commented. (I’m assuming that he didn’t actually read my entry, not because realizing that it was as much about Lisa as it was about Barbaro might have stopped him from posting, but because he didn’t try to be offensive about her, too.)

I’ve posted before about some people’s convulsive need to attack other people’s — not even their beliefs, but the things they are passionate about. The kindest explanation I can come up with is that they think it’s funny that other people care about anything, and that these attacks are intended as mockery. But the anger behind them is always startling, and obviates any intended humor. Why, indeed, should it bother anyone that someone else cares about — anything? The Red Sox, the Yankees, the Super Bowl, Barbaro, whatever…. My passionate interest in any one of those things does not, cannot, affect a total stranger. What makes anyone thing that anger is the appropriate reaction to someone else’s passion?

In an earlier post, I made some comments about the expanded sense of self as a possible cause, but in this case, I think I’ll have to fall back on an old Southern comment: “That boy — he’s just not right.”

Barbaro

2007-02-04T09:16:00.000-08:00

Damn. That’s really all I have to say about Barbaro’s death. I thought — like so many people — that he actually might make it, might even manage to stand at stud, and to lose him like this…. Well. It was clearly the right thing to do, to put him down, but that doesn’t lessen the sorrow and the disappointment. Nor does it lessen my respect for the doctors and his owners and all the people, trainers, jockeys, exercise riders, grooms, who did their best for him.

I did actually see the Derby last year. It fell in the dull hard awful days between Lisa’s death and her funeral, and Barbaro’s win — by nearly seven lengths — was enough to make me perk up for a minute or two. I remember saying to one of Lisa’s sisters that Barbaro had been Lisa’s horse, insofar as she’d picked a Derby horse. Did I make juleps? I can’t remember, but I do remember Barbaro’s win.

In retrospect, the fact that Lisa hadn’t picked a horse should have warned me that things weren’t right. She usually followed the prep races with delight, watching the horses sort themselves out, seeing who could get the distance and who couldn’t, and finally picking a horse to root for through the Triple Crown races. She followed those horses for years after; we visited some of them at stud and rooted for their offspring. Last year, though, she was too occupied with her own body, with the progressing paralysis and everything we had to do to manage it, to do more than know who was running. I remember her mentioning Barbaro as a top choice, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was losing her race, and I think she knew more than she was letting on.

Lisa and I used to fantasize about what the racing world would be like if there were more owners who not only wanted to do everything they could to save an injured horse — because we had every reason to believe there were plenty who would do anything they could — but who had the resources to carry through. In the Jacksons’ care for Barbaro, that fantasy was made real, and it was an amazing effort. As a fan, I’m grateful.

An Anniversary

2007-01-23T08:28:00.000-08:00

Today is the 28th anniversary of the day Lisa and I ran into each other outside the old Science Fantasy Bookstore in Harvard Square. It wasn’t actually the first time we met — we’d been introduced the previous spring by a mutual friend — but it marked the beginning of our serious friendship. If I’d realized I was gay, it would have been the day we started dating, but I hadn’t gotten that far yet.

At the time, I was actually dating someone else — someone male, at that — but I did know that Lisa was someone pretty special. After all, we’d stood outside the bookstore door just talking for forty-five minutes before we noticed that (a) the sun had gone down and (b) I hadn’t made it into the bookstore. Anyone who can distract me from a bookstore....

We decided to go to dinner, because we were getting cold and hungry, and ended up at a long-defunct restaurant called the Swiss Alps. I can’t remember if it was the place with the fondue or not — there was a place we went to that had fondue, and another one with crepes and a fabulous array of soups, and still another that had things like chicken cordon bleu — but the restaurant could probably have served me cardboard that night and I wouldn’t have noticed.

We talked. Lisa went off and found a pay phone so she could let her mother know she’d be late home. (That alone tells you how long ago this was.) We talked some more. We both loved Star Wars (there was only one Star Wars then) and Lord of the Rings (the only movie was the Bakshi cartoon; it was the books we were talking about). We’d read many of the same books, and pretty much liked and disliked the same ones. We both loved theater, but Lisa knew more about it than I did, and had actually been in a number of high school and college productions and was working for a theater bookstore. We both loved history, but I knew more about it than she did, and was making it my major. We both wanted to write. And then, for some reason, we got into a discussion of Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni novels — the first trilogy, which was, yes, all there was then. In fact, there may only have been two of them out at the time. We had both enjoyed the books, but there were some plot points that we didn’t agree with, and we were happily hashing them out when there was a lull in the conversation. And in it my voice rang out clearly: “If Duncan had just cut his throat right then when he had the chance —”

Heads turned. I wanted to sink right through the floor. And Lisa giggled. Not nervously, but with genuine, unembarrassed amusement, and I laughed, too, and it was all right. The awkward moment passed, we had dessert, and when Lisa found out I’d never seen Dr. Who we went back to my dorm room and commandeered the television. We could barely make out the picture, but it didn’t matter. She called her mother and told her she was going to be later still, and eventually I walked her over to the subway station to catch the last train back to Dorchester. But she didn’t leave without making plans to get together again, and the rest... Well, the rest was pretty good, too.

Ice Ice Puppy

2007-01-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

As many of you already know, the northeastern US has had an ice storm. I haven’t had horrible problems, unlike many folks, so it seems somewhat ungracious to complain. Be it noted, however, that the complaint is on behalf of my dog more than myself….

This has been what my mother describes as a “good old-fashioned Arkansas ice storm.” The trees, cars, porch — everything not heavily salted — developed a quarter-inch-plus coat of ice. When the sun hits it (not that that’s happened much), it glitters beautifully; if it’s on your car, you’d better allow an extra twenty minutes to get the heat going so that you can chip your windows clear. (If you’re really unlucky, the door freezes shut, but, so far at least, I’ve been spared that trouble.) And that brings us to the major difference between an Arkansas ice storm and a New England ice storm: in New England, you go to work regardless.

That’s been OK, because the streets, which the town for once has salted sufficiently, have been passable. One can take tiny cautious steps between car and door; I’ve even broken out the yak-tracks to give extra grip. One can stay inside the rest of the time, and drink cocoa and live on things from the depths of the freezer.

However, if one is a dog…. The situation is a little different. Dogs do not use litter boxes. Dogs must, in fact, go outside at least twice a day to, well, go. And when the world is covered in a sheet of ice, the potential for humiliation is endless.

Vixen generally leaves the house with a rush, eager to see the new day and, incidentally, to kill the squirrel who lives in the tree by the back door. The first time she tried this, her hind feet went out from under her, and she fell hard on her side. Then she tried to squat, and her feet slowly slid apart, so that she had to scramble upright at the most undignified of moments. There is a tiny incline — literally the height of a curb — between the end of our walk and the parking lot next door. She slid down it, and was so surprised that she sat down on the ice, and spun halfway around.

None of this has been a learning experience, because every day she’s ready to do it all again. I have been terrified that she is going to hurt herself, but, so far, she has been only surprised and annoyed — each and every time.

Fortunately, Lisa taught her several commands that have come in very useful. First is the all-purpose “easy,” which we learned first to try to keep her from pulling, and now I use to slow her down as she leaves the house. It’s also helpful when she’s reached the end of the ice, but I’m still picking my way across. Second is an obedience command — I’m not sure you’re supposed to give it to the dog, it may just be something the judge says, but in any case Vixen knows it: “slow.” This is also helpful when picking our way across the ice, or when I can’t see if the dark stuff is ice or just a puddle. The third command is “treat!” said in a bright, cheerful voice. It’s used to persuade her that she doesn’t want to go any farther, but wants instead to come back inside where the floor doesn’t try to tip her over.

I can’t wait for spring!

Invasion of the REALLY Bad Drivers

2007-01-19T07:48:00.000-08:00

No, no one’s run into the house again, but the way things have been going, I wouldn’t be that surprised. And all of this happened before the ice storm.

First, there was the lady on the cellphone who swerved into my lane to make a (for her) right hand turn. When I honked at her — she was only 20 yards away, and in line for a head-on collision — she took her other hand off the wheel to flip me off before completing her turn.

Then there was the woman and daughter who pulled up next to me on Fleet Street at the intersection with State. Unfortunately, Fleet is a two-lane, two-way street, so there we were, stopped at the light, both of us signaling left turns — and she’s in the opposing travel lane. I’m not sure if she ever realized that there was a problem, but she and her daughter were laughing uproariously the whole time.

But the real winner appeared on Tuesday night. I was on my way home from the new part time job (more on which later), and stopped at one of the larger intersections in the downtown area. As I said, this is a large intersection: on my side, there is a left turn lane, a travel lane, and a right turn lane, plus a parking lane; there is a single lane plus a parking lane for the opposing traffic. The cross street is a standard four lane road, two lanes of traffic in each direction, and there is a stop light at the intersection. I was stopped in the travel lane; there was a woman in the left turn lane, and the right turn lane had cleared.

A car came through the intersection — legitimately enough, on the green light — and turned not into the proper travel lane, but into the right turn lane to my right. And continued in that lane until I couldn’t see it any more in my mirror.

I didn’t hear a crash, but I’m not sure why I didn’t.

Now, Portsmouth is a tourist town, and people do get lost quite a bit — and I will admit that there are one-way streets through the downtown that make it hard to get to some places if you miss that all-important and largely unmarked first turn. But this is a bit more than can be explained by lost tourists.

Now the Neighbors KNOW I'm Weird

2006-12-28T07:51:00.000-08:00

I had a nice Christmas: I went down to Lisa’s sister’s house as planned, and we exchanged gifts and had a nice, quiet, large dinner, and then I came home. As I said, very nice.

However…. Did I mention I got a sword for Christmas? This is something of a tradition: for years, Lisa’s brother Bruce has given one or both of us a sword (or a knife, or some other reproduction weapon) for the holiday. (He’s a collector himself, and he understands the writerly desire to be able to play with some of the things we write about.) This year’s sword is a beauty: a 16th century cut-and-thrust sword, with scabbard. It’s essentially a rapier’s lower-class cousin, and the minute I unsheathed it I knew this was the sort of blade Philip Eslingen owned. He’d like something a little more gentlemanly for show, but this is the weapon he keeps for use.

It came wrapped in a blanket — looking rather like the sword wrapped by Eleanor in The Lion in Winter, for those of you familiar with the movie — but I brought it home unwrapped in the trunk of the car. As usual when I have a lot to carry, I parked (illegally) by the back door, put the emergency flashers on, and started to unload. I left the sword for last, and had just picked it up when the new neighbors came around the corner of their building.

They moved in less then two weeks ago, from someplace out of state. They are twenty-somethings, nice looking, pleasant kids that I’ve seen only in passing; if I’ve identified the right car as theirs, at least one of them is a grad student at UNH. And here I am, a hefty middle-aged woman in a fur-collared coat with a sword resting on her shoulder. I close the car trunk and smile politely. The girl hides her beer behind her back. (There’s nothing more calculated to make you feel old.) The boy — who I suspect has been sharing the beer, and is currently carrying their laundry — says, “Is that a sword?”

What does one say to that? A simple “yes,” while accurate, is likely to put one on the local police watch list; any more involved explanation is probably going to do the same, and end up embarrassing all of us. So….

“Yes,” I said. “I’m a collector.”

Which probably still puts me on the watch list, but hopefully didn’t frighten them too badly.

And is better than the answer I really wanted to give: “Doesn’t everybody get a new sword for Christmas?”

A Cacophony of Lights

2006-12-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

Before Lisa got sick, we always tried to take one evening for a long walk through the older parts of town to see the lights, finishing up at the commercial pier where there was always one boat with red and green lights wound around its mast. Many years ago (more than fourteen years, I think, because it was before the house) we made that walk on Christmas Eve in absolutely frigid weather, and arrived at the pier to find — seals. Four or five of them, at least, bobbing in the thick-looking water and hunting scraps from the last boat while the crew washed down its decks under the spotlights. One swam over to see if we had anything edible, looking for all the world like a sleek, wise dog as it popped up out of the water, and abandoned us as soon as it was clear we didn’t.

Lisa hadn’t been up for that walk for several years, so I haven’t missed it as much as I might. Besides, the immediate neighborhood has been doing a good enough job of lighting things up. The Neighbors Who Decorate have done their usual stellar job: icicle lights hang from the upper porch, and giant candy canes hold signs wishing everyone a happy holiday; there’s a mini Christmas tree on the lower porch — complete with bubble lights — and a wonderful lighted garland wraps every inch of the lower porch railing. It’s particularly nice because the actual lights look like tiny berries until they’re lit: a nice effect. The family across the street, who put their vegetable garden in the front yard because that gets the best sun, have been equally practical about their lights. Their bushes have gotten too big for the strings of lights they already have, but they used them anyway, producing some odd zigzag shapes and a lot of good cheer.

The Victorian monstrosity next door — a former mansion now divided into apartments — is also putting on a good show. There are nearly identical trees on the first and second floors, placed in the corresponding windows, so that as you’re walking back from town you see two 8-foot trees decked in white lights and gold ribbons sitting one on top of the other. The fashion designer whose workroom windows are now opposite my office windows has rainbow lights in all his windows. (Gay? Nooo....) And, best of all, someone on the very top floor has placed a light-up gnome in one of the porthole windows under the mansard roof.

There are lots and lots of lights in the old folks’ home across the parking lot, more than last year, I think — though I’m not sure about the funereal blue lights someone has draped across all their windows. I’m also not sure I want to share my across-the-street neighbors’ brand-new giant flatscreen TV, but I really don’t have a lot of choice. That baby projects! I can quite literally tell what they’re watching from across the street — standing in my living room, in fact.

One light that’s returned unwanted is the streetlight outside my living room window. This has been a bone of contention since the late unlamented neighborhood association, the Richards Avenue Residents’ Association (yes, “RA-RA”), decided we needed more lights, and raised money for fancy, Victorian-style lights — but failed to get the money for the posts to put them on. Instead, these fake gas lights are attached to the telephone poles, and that’s how I got streetlights directly outside my living room windows. And I do mean “directly”: they are level with the upper half of the windows, and ten feet away. I put in light-blocking shades, got the electric company to put in baffles to direct the light away from the house, and never, ever call when a bulb goes out. Lisa kept threatening to leave a baseball bat out at Halloween and tell all the kids they were big piñatas.... (You have to understand, this is not a low-light area. There is a big streetlight on the corner, about half a block away, and another pair of lights at the entrance to the Margeson parking lot, less than half a block away.) However, a few days ago, I came back from the morning dog walk to find the utility company installing new bulbs. I said they didn’t have to do that on my account, but the guys allowed as how there had been complaints, so they had to do it. And somehow they managed to leave the baffle off one of the lights. Of course, I didn’t find this out until the light went on that evening, but the utility company has promised to send someone out to replace it — next week. If all goes well.

However, to offset that, we have one more new light in the neighborhood. The new library is open, just around the corner from the house, and it’s gorgeous. It’s more than twice the size of the old, crowded building, and has been designed to create lots of cozy study space and there are lots of windows to let in light (and air, apparently, in the spring). There are meeting rooms, and wifi access, and a cafe and courtyard; best of all, there’s room to browse what is really an awfully good collection. (In the old building, they kept moving the shelves closer together to try to make room for more books, until I had trouble walking down any aisle while carrying my purse slung on my shoulder.) I ran in just to see what it was like, and ended up spending an hour exploring sections I hadn’t known existed. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to return my books on time!

So, all in all, it’s been a good season for lights. I wish Lisa were here to see them, of course, but I’m also just very glad of their presence.

Holiday Planning

2006-11-12T10:59:00.000-08:00

The hardest part — at least so far — about holiday planning has been giving up the old routines. After 27 years, Lisa and I had the holiday thing down pretty well. We tried to visit my parents at Thanksgiving, and her family at Christmas; we threw a single big open house-style party on a Sunday close to the Solstice; I went to her work party, and she, wisely, didn’t come to most of mine. (Her tolerance for penis-shaped lipstick —no, really, don’t ask — was even lower than mine.) We had a tree covered with ornaments that we’d collected over the years, and we spent the Saturday of the weekend before our party decorating it and drinking eggnog, and then the rest of the season keeping the cats from knocking it over. (Yes, that explains the two hooks screwed into the undersides of the living room windowsills: a little twine goes a long way toward preventing accidents, although Jack, the Cat Who Climbed Christmas Trees, is no longer with us.)

This year, of course, everything has felt horrendously unsettled. I did decide to go ahead and visit my folks over Thanksgiving, but even beyond the obvious there are all kinds of little differences. First, I’m flying down. This also means I don’t get to go to the Kentucky Horse Park, or any of the farms, or to visit all of Lisa’s Lexington-area friends, all features of Thanksgiving trips past. Last year — was it only last year? — we got to see Da Hoss and Cigar up close and personal, thanks to Lisa’s obvious interest and the generosity of the Horse Park staff. We even saw more than John Henry’s butt, which is usually all one sees when he’s in his stall. We also got to visit the retirees at the Our Mims Retirement Farm, and for a bunch of geriatric mares, they intimidated the heck out of me! Frankly, I feel a bit lost without a horse fix this time of year. I have plans to indulge in some horsepower — a visit to the antique car museum on Petit Jean Mountain, research for an ongoing project — but no horses.

I’ve also decided not to try to throw our big party this year. First of all, the house still isn’t in order. I still have a closet full of yarn and fabric to move to what was Lisa’s office and is in the process of becoming a sewing space. I still have to figure out where to pay bills and handle household finances that isn’t the dining room table. Et cetera. It’s like one of those sliding puzzles, where everything has to be done in the correct order, or you get completely screwed up. Second, because of the Arkansas trip, the logistics are almost impossible. I’d only have two weeks after getting home to do everything, and I’m just not sure I can do it by myself. And one thing about this party has always been that it’s been something we did for everybody else. Not that I object to potluck, and I’ve been shameless about asking for help in other areas, but this was a chance to give back, to provide for others. I’d rather not have the party than change that feeling.

But those are all excuses. Mostly, I’m just not ready. I don’t think I could get through it without bawling, and I don’t want to do that. This party has always been joyous, and I want to keep it that way. Instead, I’ll throw a house re-warming once I get things in order — with any luck, in January, when we all need a break.

Christmas... is tough. Christmas Day I’ll spend with Lisa’s family, sisters, brother, brother-in-law, two nephews. It’s not so much the celebration that I’m dreading as the quiet morning and coming home afterwards to the empty house. I don’t know if I want a tree. I don’t know how much decorating I want to do. I don’t know.

But one good thing has happened. Lisa’s sister and her two boys came up to have lunch, and the boys, 15 and 13 now, were very concerned about my holiday plans. Was I coming to their house for Thanksgiving, they said. I told them, no, I was visiting my parents. How about Christmas, then? Yes, I said, I’d be there for Christmas. That’s all right, then, the younger one said. That’s the one that matters. And then they told me which manga I should buy to read on the plane to Little Rock.

If I’d ever had any doubts about being part of the family — and I confess, I didn’t — that would have put them to rest. And I appreciate it almost more than I can say.

Okaay

2006-11-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went off to Home Depot to buy faucets, because on Monday I’m finally having most of the plumbing replaced. (This is not as horrendous as it sounds, because the plumbing in this house is mostly an afterthought, and hangs conveniently from the underside of the beams down in the cellar. It is, however, galvanized steel, and was put in some time in the 1930s, so… it’s time.) As I came in the back door, I noticed that all the cats were in the kitchen looking skittish. The dog, uncharacteristically, didn’t bark. And I looked out the kitchen window to see a fire truck pulling up beside the next-door parking lot.

This didn’t bode well.

I went into the living room to see what the fire truck was up to, and saw an ambulance and a police car in front of the house. Definitely not good. I opened the shutters to see what was going on, and was confronted with the nose of a car.

A Volvo.

A Volvo station wagon, sitting on two of the front flowerbeds and my front steps.

You have to understand, my house, like a lot of the houses in town, doesn’t have a real front yard. Instead, I have two raised beds, both about two feet high. One runs the length of the short end of the house, and contains either two or three enormous rhododendrons. (We’ve never been able to figure out just how many plants there really are in there, but they bloom beautifully in the spring.) The other is about three feet wide, and runs between the house and the sidewalk along the street side. Between the two are the steps that lead up to the long front porch.

Or that’s where they were. Apparently the Volvo’s driver had some kind of a seizure, lost control of the car, and drove her right side wheels up onto the two beds and over the steps. Honestly, I’m not sure one could do it while conscious. The steps and railing splintered, the granite block that tops the second bed has been moved about eight inches, and the railroad ties that edged the first bed have been knocked around pretty badly. Amazingly, she missed the house entirely — the right front fender had stopped about four inches from the corner of the foundation — and she was not otherwise injured, though the seizure had left her disoriented. And the Volvo? You know, everything they say about Volvos seems to be true. It had a broken bumper where it hit the corner of the first raised bed. Something had ripped loose in the undercarriage and was leaking water, and the left rear tire was flat. And that was it. I was, reluctantly, impressed.

And I was even more impressed by what happened later. I was calling around, talking to my insurance guy, finding out how to get my mail delivered (because the mailbox was smashed and you can’t get to the mail slot in the front door without stairs), and a guy drove up and got out to look at the steps. I went out to see what was going on, and he introduced himself as the woman’s husband. He’s a boatbuilder, and he offered to come by on Saturday with a buddy and replace the steps. No quid pro quo, no nothing, just because he wanted to make it right.

Baby's First Pun

2006-10-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

I overslept a bit over the weekend (maybe it was wrestling with the rose bush), so the dog and I went out for her morning walk during what’s usually kids-and-families time. One group, father, stroller, daughter maybe 6, son maybe 5, plus baby of unknown gender in a front pack, were coming toward us. Usually, I move the dog away — she’s friendly enough, but can be both bouncy and vocal, which can scare children — but the father seemed to have the children well in hand, so I didn’t interrupt Vixen’s busy marking. As they came closer, the boy showed signs of wanting to run up, but the father stopped him, and the girl said, “May we pet your doggie?”

This is behavior to be encouraged, so I said they could, warning them that Vixen would probably bark, and that it was just her being talkative. They asked the usual questions — what’s the dog’s name, is it a boy or a girl, how old is she — and the father commented on the nice size and how well behaved she was. At which point the girl tugged on daddy’s pullover and said, “Can I ask the lady a question?”

The father got the wary look that parents of bright and vocal children often get, but said that she could.

“Why do dogs pee so much?” she asked. (She’d obviously been watching Vixen mark everything in sight.)

It was actually a good question, and I said so; the father’s body language indicated that I could go ahead and answer, so I did. I explained that dogs have a good sense of smell (“the first thing my dog did was sniff your hands, remember?”) and that they peed on things so that other dogs could smell it and see who had been there. A dog can tell how long ago the other dog had been there, and whether it was a boy dog or a girl dog, and then they’ll pee in the same spot to tell the first dog that they were there, too.

The girl giggled at the idea, and so did her brother, but then his eyes widened and he got this big grin.

“Daddy!” he said. “It’s PEE mail!”

His father and I both burst out laughing, and as they moved away, I heard the father say, “wait till we tell your mother.”

Where DO You Get Your Ideas, Ms. Scott?

2006-10-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Understand, I am not a gardener. Lisa was, and we made a deal long ago that I would happily supply unskilled labor — digging, pulling up plants as directed (I’m not reliable on what is and isn’t a weed), hauling mulch, and abetting trips to the garden stores (“oh, that’s pretty, you should get it”) — in exchange for enough pesto to freeze for the winter. And now I am faced with putting the garden to bed.

I have an idea of what to do, and friends I can ask if I run into trouble, but before I can even get to that point, I have to deal with the two-and-a-half months of almost total neglect. (Hey, I had abdominal surgery. I couldn’t pull weeds.) As you might expect, there were a few surprises.

Some were good: the mint, which escaped years ago from a pot and was not eradicated in time, has actually spread into an area where nothing else had thrived. It seems to be doing well, so I think I’ll leave it alone. Some one of my neighbors left a hash pipe in the sage, along with a Bud Light can. (You can have the pipe back if you take away the can.)

Some were bad, like the lavender that was overshadowed by the asters and is unlikely to make it through the winter.

And some were just plain ugly. There is a rose in the front “yard” — a two-and-a-half foot wide raised bed right on the sidewalk — that seems to survive weather, neglect, and sheer ignorance. (I have no idea what kind it is. All I can tell you is that the flowers are pale pink, and it has lots of really big thorns.) Every year it sends out suckers in every possible direction, and every year we clip them back before any children or dogs get hurt. Every year it blooms profusely, usually on branches that need to be cut back, and then it’s a race to see whether it will finish blooming before the branch has to go.

This year I didn’t get to it in September, and I was really pretty halfhearted in July, with the result that several of the back canes grew to be eight feet long and curled into fantastic shapes against the side of the house. The flowers and the dark leaves were very pretty against the pale gray paint, but the time had come to cut them back before they got any further out of hand.

The next time I need a natural menace in one of my novels, I know what it will be: the thorn snake vine. It’s neither fully animal nor truly a plant, but combines the mindless voracity of a lesser predator with the growth habits of bamboo. It’s studded with inch-long thorns that stick out at random angles so that no attacker can grasp its body without being stuck — and I expect it’s poisoned, too. The thorns can be stripped from the stalk, but have a half-life of their own, and they’re strong enough to go through shoe leather. The vines live in tangles, and, though each strand is an independent organism, if one vine is attacked, the others will shift to protect it, trapping an attacker on their thorns. As soon as one vine draws blood, the others are roused by the scent and redouble their attack. Anyone foolish enough, or desperate enough, to mess with a tangle can expect to have serious problems....

I got the rose trimmed. I think we’ll call it a draw.

A Green Gansey

2006-10-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

The Yarn Harlot revealed today that the gansey and shawl she’s been frantically knitting were intended for her and Joe’s wedding. (She didn’t finish either of them.) This made me cry, not because she didn’t finish, and not because I always cry at weddings — I usually giggle, actually — but because of the gansey.

Ganseys are, for those who don’t know, fishermen’s sweaters from Great Britain, mostly the eastern coast; they’re tightly knit from a 5-ply skinny worsted- or hefty sport-weight yarn (in some parts, it’s known as “seaman’s iron,” and there are companies that make specific gansey yarn), and they have elaborate textured patterns on the chest and sleeves. Unlike the fancy Aran sweaters, the patterns are mostly made up of combinations of basic knit and purl stitches. They’re also knitted in the round: up from the waist, divide for front and back, then knit the shoulder seams together, knit a collar, then pick up the armhole stitches and knit down to the cuff. When you cast off that last cuff stitch, you can put the gansey on and walk away in it.

I’ve been knitting for about 20 years, ever since Lisa’s mother taught me the basics. After 5 or 6 years, I was pretty good. I could do cables, I had succeeded at colorwork even if I didn’t like it, and I could even make gloves — cabled gloves, at that. But for the longest time, I hadn’t really made anything that Lisa liked. I’d made her sweaters, which she wore dutifully, but they were all too heavy or too fancy for everyday, or just too... not Lisa. Ditto for the gloves and the hats and the scarves: all not quite Lisa.

And then I found Knitting Ganseys, by Beth Brown-Reisel. I’d read about it in a knitting magazine, and was intrigued by the one-piece construction and the subtle patterning, so I bought the book and some yarn from the farmer’s market and knit away. The yarn was a dark purple heather, heavier than the usual gansey gauge, so that I ended up with a cozy tunic: very much my kind of sweater. I showed it and the book to Lisa, and to my surprise, she said, “I like that. Can you make me one that’s lighter, and with ribbing? But I really like those pattern bands.”

“Of course I can,” I said. “Just give me a little input here....” (I’d learned something after all those years.) We looked at the book, and at the various patterns, and she picked four she liked, which would go across the chest of a basic, traditional gansey. Traditional ganseys have the owner’s initials knitted into the area of plain stockinette stitch above the ribbing, and Lisa decided she was OK with that, too. Then we went back to the farmer’s market and found two cones of an odd weight that you’d have to call either light sport or heavy fingering. It wasn’t quite what I was looking for, but Lisa loved the color, a deep but bright forest green flecked with bits of cream and a little brown. So we bought it.

And that’s the thing about ganseys: once you learn the technique, you can adapt it to any weight of yarn. I did my swatch, did the math, and off I went. I knit in the initials, and only had to unknit twice; the underarm gussets emerged just the way they were supposed to. The patterned sections were actually fun, though I did make a mistake on a wrong side row once I’d divided for the armholes, and I never did correct it. You’d have to look hard to find it, anyway. I could only fit three pattern bands on the sleeves, so I dropped the one that had given me the most trouble, and then.... I was done.

I called Lisa to come and try it on. She did, and I held my breath. She grinned. She tugged the cuffs and the waist ribbing, and then she ran upstairs to look in the mirror. She came back down running her fingers over the initials above the hem. It worked. She liked it, it looked good on her, and — she liked it.

That was almost 10 years ago, as best I can work out from the photos in our albums. I made her other ganseys, but it was the green one she wore most often, to work, on vacation, on long walks, finally as the hem and cuffs started to fray out to the barns at EPONA where she volunteered with rescued and retired horses. I offered to unravel and reknit the edges, but that never happened, partly because I was afraid I’d mess up the magic somehow, and partly because it was hard to get the gansey away from her. The horses rubbed hay and spit on it, chewed on the hem and generally felted the cuffs so that I doubt I could have unraveled them anyway. After she had to stop volunteering, she used to hold the gansey to her face and breathe in the faint barn-smell that still clung to it.

Finally, this January, I persuaded her to let me try again. We went to the local yarn store for the January sale. Lisa picked out her yarn in about half an hour, then retreated to the “husband chair” to wait while I spent another hour choosing yarns for my projects. Then.... You know the rest.

The new gansey yarn has been sitting in my basket ever since, still in the original skeins, not yet wound into balls. There’s not enough for a sweater for me (Lisa lost 45 pounds last year after the brain surgery, and she was 4 inches shorter than I to start with) and, anyway, that didn’t feel right. The hospice chaplain suggested making a shawl or a wrap with it, so that’s what it’s becoming. The green gansey sits on a shelf where I can grab it and try to smell the barn that Lisa loved. And, someday, I’ll make one for me, and I’ll put both our initials on it.

Mouse!

2006-10-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening the cats were noisier than usual out in the kitchen, which, in retrospect should have tipped me off. However, I ignored them, and didn’t wander out that way until it was time to start supper. At which point I found the lovely fluffy gray cat living up to his name — Pretty Boy Floyd — while Grendel and Trouble crouched eagerly behind him, and Tenzing, the oldest, fattest, and loudest, sat on the kitchen chair and supervised.

They were all staring at the kitchen wastebasket, and Floyd was batting at it, trying to get his paw under the back edge. For some reason, I thought he’d lost a toy under there — he’d been chasing a big twist-em for the past couple of days — so I tilted the wastebasket back a little, and there it was.

A mouse.

Floyd lunged for it, and I reflexively dropped the wastebasket, protecting the mouse, but not solving my problem.

A mouse. In my kitchen.

My first thought was, Lisa, help! My second, equally irrational, was, at least mice don’t eat yarn. (This only makes sense if you are a knitter, and have several large baskets of expensive yarn sitting in your living room.) The third thought — the first useful one — was, OK, it’s trapped. There’s time to think this through.

Lisa’s family always said that the little bitty mice were field mice, while house mice were bigger. This was a tiny mouse, probably not much bigger than the first joint of my thumb: field mouse for sure. Plus I hadn’t seen any droppings or any signs of nibbled food, and six years’ working at a historic house museum with periodic rodent issues has left me hypersensitive to such things. Plus there are four resident cats, and, while they haven’t exactly rid me of this one, they certainly are making its presence known

So I probably don’t have an ongoing problem. But what am I going to do about this stupid mouse?

Before Lisa died, it was easy, or at least easier: yell for Lisa, and we’d deal with it together. I indulged in a brief fantasy that she would have pushed Floyd away, whipped back the wastebasket, scooped up the mouse and removed it all in one smooth gesture. Then reality asserted itself. Lisa never dealt well with mice. At her job prior to Heinemann, the ancient building had a mouse problem, and she’d come home regularly complaining about being startled by a mouse jumping out of her wastebasket, or running along the shelves out back where the inventory was stored. (The company ended up getting a pair of office cats, who grew fat, sleek, and oddly corporate, sitting on the windowsills looking like presidents and CEOs.) In fact, Lisa never dealt well with small animals: I was the one who had to catch the injured bird that wandered into the back yard, though Lisa knew who to call and where to take it. Cat-sized or larger, Lisa could and did handle: that’s where two of the cats came from, not to mention the various lost dogs that she rescued and got back home and who paved the way for Vixen’s entering the household. But a mouse.... No, mice would have been my responsibility anyway.

I grabbed a big wad of paper towels off the counter: the mouse hadn’t looked injured, but if it was, I didn’t want to add to the problem. I hissed at Trouble and Grendel, moving them back, oh, a whole eight inches, and picked up Floyd and tossed him out into the hall. (We don’t have a kitchen door any more because we took it down to make room for Lisa’s wheelchair.) I pushed Trouble out of the way, blocked Floyd from making another charge for the wastebasket, and flapped the paper towels to make Grendel retreat. That was as much space as I was likely to get, so I quickly picked up wastebasket, put it down between me and the cats — and the mouse, of course, ran straight for the gap behind the stove.

Luckily, something stopped it — it may even have been too large to fit — and I grabbed it. It ran over my hand and dropped to the floor. I grabbed it again, and this time I had it. It was pretty clearly uninjured — scared, certainly, and probably tired, but I could feel all four legs working inside the towel, so I figured it was safe to just let it go outside.

At which point Tenzing, who had done nothing (as far as I saw) to trap the mouse or chase it, who had been sitting calmly in the kitchen chair the whole time, let loose a yowl of complaint loud enough that I nearly dropped the mouse. I got the back door open, let the mouse go — it scrambled off into the leaves — and went back in to find all four cats lined up on the kitchen floor. Tenzing yowled again, and kept yowling the whole time I washed my hands. As I had handled a mouse, this was probably a good minute. When he stopped to breathe, Trouble chimed in, and Grendel gave a few Siamese-ish wails. Only Floyd stayed silent, but he had a distinctly disapproving stare.

What would Lisa have done, confronted with first a mouse and then four reproachful felines? Poured a stiff bourbon, and given the cats a treat. So that’s exactly what I did.

The Kindness of Knitters

2006-09-18T13:42:00.000-07:00

I belong to an email list for knitters, which has been one of the saving graces in the last year. While Lisa was sick, it was nice to have a place to go where people worried about left- and right-facing decreases — because they do make a difference, trust me! — and where my obsession with socks was considering abnormal by only half the population. After her death, it was extra nice, because not only was it a place I could go and read posts about everything from edgings and how to start a toe-up sock to spinning, dyeing and light-up needles (http://stores.ebay.com/Lighted-Knitting-Accessories), but it was also a place where people understood and respected what I was dealing with. Some of them had been through a partner’s death before, and their very presence and calm, ordinariness was a guarantee that I would, in fact, get through this. Others hadn’t, but it didn’t matter: folks checked in, gently, not wanting to bother, and didn’t mind my scattered responses. The list went on, and that was reassuring.

A couple of the list members live not very far away — just across the river in Maine, in fact. I’d actually managed to have coffee with one of them right before Lisa’s condition began to deteriorate, but after that we hadn’t had the chance to connect. I’ve been bad about connecting, actually, so I was delighted to get an email from the list member that I hadn’t met, suggesting that we try again, and see if we could arrange to meet, have coffee, and knit a spell.

We found a time that worked for all of us, and so yesterday I took myself off to the cafe at Barnes and Noble and (being unexpectedly early — Lisa would have been proud!) settled myself at a table with a frozen coffee drink, a sock, and a magazine. (It was crochet, actually, but at least it was fiber-related. It could have been Popular Mechanics.)

Mel and Kit arrived, bearing an enormous box, and an equally large bouquet of sunflowers from Kit’s garden. (I love sunflowers.) Inside the box was a present from the list: a patchwork blanket, 24 squares made by 24 list-members, and made up into a blanket by a 25th.

It’s gorgeous. All the squares are different, of course, as are the fabrics and colors; it’s heavy enough to be cozy in a New England winter, and just the right size to wrap up in and knit. There’s colorwork that I would never attempt, including a landscape and a funky furry red-and-black square; an embroidered square, mitered squares, openwork, lace — something else I wouldn’t try — and even a shadow-knit alien face. I love it! It’s beyond fabulous. (And, you know, I might just have to try some of the techniques I see in these squares....)

The blanket has already passed the cat test. I spread it out on the foot of the bed to admire it, and suddenly 3 of the 4 cats materialized and leaped onto the corners. (I have no idea where they came from. I thought they were eating, or I would have closed the door.) I removed them, gently and gingerly, and this time I did close the door — only to discover cat #4 emerging from between the pillows to settle herself on the blanket. Apparently she’d been sleeping in the gap behind the headboard, which explains why there is often fur on my pillow.... I removed her, re-closed the door, and let myself admire the blanket for a little while longer. Then I folded it carefully and set it where I can see and admire, but the cats can’t share. Eventually, they’ll wear me down — probably as soon as I wrap myself up in it on the first chilly night, which may be this week — but not yet. Right now, it’s just for me, so I can bask in the kindness of knitters.

Thanks, y’all.

A Strange Day in the Neighborhood

2006-09-02T15:27:00.001-07:00

Maybe it’s the weather. We are, after all, getting the winds from the former Hurricane Ernesto, and it’s definitely blustery and odd-feeling out there today.

Or maybe not.

As the dog and I came back from the mill pond this afternoon, we heard what at first I thought was a parrot. (No, that’s not the weird part: the guy down the street who repairs Macs owns a big green parrot, and takes it for regular walks.) Then as we got closer, we could tell that the sound was coming from a parked car, and that it was someone laughing — laughing really hard, as though they were being tickled. The sound had that half-hysterical edge to it, that not-quite-in-control note. That person was sitting in the passenger seat, alone, apparently without cellphone. In the driver’s seat was a bored-looking black Lab.

I have no idea, and no, it wasn’t that funny.

So we walked by really fast, and heard shouting coming from the big apartment building next to the house. (The building is elderly and handicapped housing.) The shouts resolved into words: “Thank you, Bob! Thank you, Bob! Thank you, Bob!” Over and over again, with varying inflection — sarcastic, wildly grateful, angry, no meaning at all — and then he started changing the emphasis: “Thank you, Bob! Thank you Bob! Thank you, Bob!”

Even the dog thought it was weird.

I figure, best case, it was an actor practicing lines. Worst case.... Let’s just say, I wouldn’t want to be Bob.

Surgery Update

2006-08-31T11:23:00.000-07:00

It is now three weeks and two days after my surgery, and I feel fine. Really, seriously fine. I haven’t even (knock wood!) suffered any major hormonal disruptions. OK, I’ve had a couple of hot flashes, I think — which gives you a good idea of just how minor and manageable they are. I’m amazed.

I’m not sure exactly what made the difference. Some of it is surely that I lost less blood this time. (They weren’t expecting endometriosis during the first surgery, but were well prepared for it this time.) Some of it may be that the anesthesia was perceptibly different. I woke up pretty easily, and felt tired and sleepy, but not that awful queasy heavy-headedness that I’ve always had in the past. (I did have ferocious itching, which I’ve been told was from the morphine drip, except that I had the morphine without itching last time, but, all in all, I’d rather itch!) And I guess some of it must be that there were fewer organs to remove. Whatever the reasons, though, I’m grateful.

I mean, I got to enjoy the 2 weeks my mother spent here. We were able to go out to dinner, to sit around and talk, and to be adults together. She let me babble on about the writing projects (now 4 of them) that I have in my mind, and also took over the yucky stuff like cleaning the cats’ boxes — which may mean that I wasn’t all that adult after all! Nonetheless, it was really, really nice, and I do appreciate it.

And, as I said, I’m feeling good. I still get tired and a little sore if I stay upright too long, but as soon as I lie down, I feel fine. This makes it hard to stay lying down, but luckily the US Open is on, so I have more televised sports to keep me amused. (I swear I saw Maria Sharapova playing in a little black cocktail dress, so maybe I was tireder than I thought....)

While recovering, I have finished my five washrags and a little gray sleeveless shell. The latter has a neat armhole edge treatment, a single line of ribbing two stitches in from the edge, that seems to keep it from turning under: I’ll be using this on other sleeveless items, that’s for sure! Of course, I then sent in a KnitPicks order, which will become a dark blue heather shrug (Wool of the Andes sapphire heather — already cast on and well begun) and a medium teal-y blue vest (Wool of the Andes stream), so it’s not as though my hands are idle. And there’s a pair of socks in progress, too.

(No, the Olympic sweater isn’t finished. Thanks for asking.)

But I do feel good.

Birthdays

2006-08-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Lisa’s birthday. She would have been 48. Lisa loved birthdays, hers, of course, and everyone else’s. She enjoyed all the little things that go with birthdays: cards, flowers, dinner out (OK, that’s not so little), and she tolerated the fact that I just wasn’t as good as those things as she was. (Lisa never forgot anything; my usual birthday cards are found in the “belated” section of the card store.) So, when she was approaching 40, she sat me down and said, “I really, really want a 40th birthday party. A surprise party. At a hall. With Hog Mawl. (a local band, not the food!) Will you do that?”

How could I say no?

So I rented the Elks hall, booked the band (as they were all friends of ours, they made their presense Lisa’s present), arranged for food and a really yummy cake (chocolate chip swirl!), and tried to explain to everyone I invited that Lisa had asked me to throw her a surprise party.

(Typical conversation:

“Lisa asked you to throw her a surprise party?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know?”)

It turned out wonderfully. The Elks (whose hall is on Sagamore Creek, with a spectacular view of the water) were a bit bemused at our crowd, who ranged in age from 60+ (my parents, who flew in from Arkansas for the occasion) to under-six (the youngest nephew), and included long-haired hippie-type musicians and a couple of very buttoned up-looking folks who really were librarians, as well as the tallest gay couple I know (the short one is 6’6”!), but by the time the band finished the first set, the Elks were hanging out in the doorway chatting with anyone who’d talk to them and visibly wanting to be let in. By the end of the evening, they’d invited Lisa and me to join. (I’m kind of sorry we didn’t.) We had a champagne toast and 40 candles on the cake, and, as I said, a lovely time was had by all.

I thought a lot about that birthday yesterday, of course. I wasn’t up to partying, but I did want to do something a little special. So I made a Manhattan (one of Lisa’s favorite drinks, and a pleasure to make because I get to play with the cocktail shaker), and got some cheese straws (another of Lisa’s favorites, and mine), and then I drank a toast and put on a silly DVD and made the dog run around and bark by laughing too hard. I think Lisa would have appreciated it.

More Surgery

2006-08-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

(Those of you who are squeamish about female reproductive organs should stop reading now.)

As some of you know, I had a hysterectomy last January. At the time, I decided — with my gynecologist’s agreement — to keep the one (apparently) good ovary and the cervix; my plan was to hold out for natural menopause and try to lose some weight/get in shape before it got there. Unfortunately, the surgeons found “severe” endometriosis as well, but the right ovary still seemed to be in good shape, and they left it. I had no pain, no periods, and generally good results for just about a year.

Then, this January, I started having pain again. It was essentially identical in quality to the pain I had before, though not in intensity — which is a good thing, because the pre-hysterectomy pain had me throwing up. (Though that may have been the fibroid that I was apparently trying to deliver. As it was firmly attached to the uterine wall, this was not a pleasant process.) I had tests done, and they confirmed that I did indeed have another large ovarian cyst, with some solid bits in it. In fact, it looked exactly like the left ovary had looked last year, and my gynecologist said she suspected the endometriosis had grown back as well.

Then Lisa’s brain tumor started acting up, and I stopped dealing with the ovary. Really, it only hurt when I lifted something heavy. Like Lisa. Or the groceries. Or the 19-pound cat. Or when I rolled over at night.

Lisa did bully me into making follow-up appointments with the gynecologist, and, after she died, I dutifully went, only to be told that the cyst had grown again, and the solid parts were larger as well. She strongly recommended that I have it out, along with the cervix, all the endometriosis that the surgeon could find, and possibly my appendix as well, to prevent further problems. (There were a lot of adhesions the first time, and the hysterectomy will only have made things worse, so her idea was to do everything possible to be sure “no one else will have to go in there.”) The fact that there was a solid component to the cyst made the surgery somewhat urgent, though given my previous history (hystery?) it’s almost certainly not cancer, just more endometriosis. She referred me to a gynecologist/oncologist at the Lahey Clinic — gyn/oncologists do a lot of endometriosis surgeries even when cancer isn’t suspected, as they have lots of experience in removing little bits of errant tissue — and the upshot is that I’m scheduled for surgery next week.

The day after my birthday.

Which means I spend my birthday doing “bowel prep.”

I am not amused.

Essentially, the surgery and recovery should be pretty much the same as it was for the hysterectomy: a couple of nights in the hospital, then 4 weeks out of work and another couple of weeks of taking things easy. I’m also not supposed to lift anything over 10 pounds for at least 6 weeks, which is going to be amusing since all 4 cats weigh more than that. Last time, Tenzing (the largest, at 19 pounds) figured out that I couldn’t lift him, and promptly settled himself wherever he pleased. As he is largely impervious to being swatted (unless by Trouble, who has claws and will use them), this became an issue. I came very close once to calling Lisa to come home from work to move him because I couldn’t get him off my knees, but he got bored and moved on. Luckily, my mother, who will be staying with me until I’m able to take care of myself, now has a cat of her own, so I feel safe asking her to remove Tenzing. How Tenzing will feel about it is another matter, but I’m not sure I care.

To add to the fun, I will be immediately menopausal. My one faint hope is that, since my reproductive organs have been nothing but trouble for my entire biologically-mature life, their departure will actually be easy. Failing that, I’ve been promised that there are plant-based estrogens that work, but I’m really hoping I won’t need them.

I’m getting to the point where I honestly believe that Galen and the ancient doctors who held that the uterus was an alien organ, not really part of a woman, weren’t misogynists, but actually talked to a few of us. I know I’m quite convinced that all of this mess — uterus, ovaries, and miscellaneous tubes and ducts — is in fact actively hostile. OK, I don’t believe that they move around in the body cavity, at least not much (though the ultrasound techs do seem to have a heck of a time finding my ovaries), but I really don’t feel as though they’re cooperating.

AATE

2006-07-31T14:32:00.000-07:00

Since Lisa died, Heinemann, the company she worked for, has been incredibly supportive and helpful, but I think they may have surpassed themselves this time.

Lisa was editor of Heinemann’s theatre books, which covered a wide range of topics: books for professionals and books for classroom teachers who were stuck doing the class play; monologue collections and essays on musical theatre; books on improv and books on playwriting; acting for animators and acting as a profession and so very much more. The books she published on theatre and education were particularly well received, and she was very proud that her authors had won the American Alliance for Theatre and Education’s Distinguished Book Award 10 times. The first one was for Gerald Chapman’s Teaching Young Playwrights; Lisa received an almost-completed manuscript after Chapman’s death, and saw it through to publication. Her books won again in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2005. Under her leadership, Heinemann also received a Lin Wright Special Recognition Award in 2001.

This year, another book she edited, Spaces of Creation, by Suzan Zeder and Jim Hancock, won the Distinguished Book Award. (I had the privilege of reading it in manuscript, and it’s wonderful! But that’s another blog entry.) AATE presents its awards at its annual conference, usually held at the end of July or the beginning of August.

This year, along with honoring Suzan and Jim’s book, AATE honored Lisa, too. She was voted a Lin Wright Special Recognition Award, which, according to the website, is for “persons who have established special programs, developed experimental works, made distinctive educational contributions or provided meritorious service thus furthering theatre and drama for young people.”

Heinemann brought me to AATE so that I could be there to hear the tributes. More than that, they asked me to accept the Lin Wright Award on Lisa’s behalf. They also co-hosted, with NYU, a reception in Lisa’s honor, for all the folks who valued her as a friend as well as an editor.

It was a wonderful, profoundly moving experience. The Lin Wright Award presentation was so funny and true and warm (one of the people who nominated her was quoted as saying Lisa combined the best features of a dramaturge and a mother — yep, that’s a Lisa I recognize!), and she received the longest standing ovation of the day, which would have delighted her! At the reception, I met literally dozens of her authors, and every one of them said, in essence, "she changed my life." (One even added, "She got me tenure!") It was wonderful and exhausting and incredibly moving - but not surprising. Lisa never did quite realize just how special she was.

Nor is it surprising that Heinemann would do something like this — the folks there are a class act — but I’m still deeply grateful. Thanks, guys. This was something extra special.

And The Answer Is...

2006-07-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

Three. That’s how many pairs of socks I can knit while watching the Tour de France. One pair in plain stockinette, one in twisted rib (sort of fake cables, really), and a third in Knitty.com’s RPM pattern (knitty.com/ISSUEsummer06/PATTrpm.html). Lisa got me hooked on the Tour four or five years ago, and of course as she was fighting her cancer seeing Lance Armstrong winning again and again was a continual inspiration. (She joked after she got her intrathecal port that she had similar scalp scars — and a similar hair style.) This year was really different: no Lisa, no Lance (except in interview); no Ullrich, either, or Iban Mayo. Bobby Jullich crashed out early, the Discovery guys and Levi Leipheimer messed up (Leipheimer was Lisa’s pick, and she had the Gerolsteiner cap to prove it), and Floyd Landis had two of the most unbelievable days of cycling I’ve ever seen and won the Tour. Watching him lose and regain 8 minutes over those two days, I’m amazed the last sock has a coherent pattern at all.

I wasn’t sure I was going to watch, except that I did want to see what happened. I’m a sucker for long sporting events, ones in which your choices at the very beginning have a profound impact 3 hours or 3 weeks later, but still, watching it without Lisa.... Not the same, particularly with Lance Armstrong still very much present in the commentary. Her heart, her attitude was just as determined — but cancer is like that. Sometimes you don’t win.

And maybe that’s the other part of why I watched, and why I’ve been watching sports a lot this summer. You can fight your hardest, do everything right, and still lose. In sports, mostly, you get to get up and do it again, next week, next day, though the Tour had its share of broken bones that would put riders out for months. I’m not big on the notion that sports is a metaphor for life (though, being a southerner, I haven’t been able to escape the idea, particularly in regard to football). But it has been oddly consoling to see that message spelled out: sometimes the best people don’t win. Sometimes they do, and you treasure those moments, but it’s not a given. When they don’t, you curse and you cry, and you knit ridiculous numbers of socks — and you cheer even harder for the victories.

Summer Reading

2006-07-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, for what are probably obvious reasons. Some of it is work-related, like Shirley Abbott’s Bookmaker’s Daughter and Miranda Seymour’s Bugatti Queen — both of which I recommend highly, by the way. Some have been popcorn books, and I’m not going to admit to those titles! Some were really good: Elizabeth’s Bear’s Blood and Iron, which is one of the most interesting takes on the conflict between this world and Faerie that I’ve read in a long time. She starts with traditional stories, derives familiar rules from them, and weaves that package into a truly original novel. Yes, it’s the first book in a series, but it’s complete enough to be satisfying, and the second book is already sold, to come out next year. Definitely worth your time and money. My father recommended Jason Goodwin’s The Janissary Tree, a mystery novel set in Istanbul in 1836. He said he thought I’d be fascinated (as he was) by the history, and he was right. The mystery itself is a little light, with a protagonist who spends more time reacting to events than acting to stop them, but the situations are interesting enough to carry the book along. It, too, is planned to be the first in a series, and I’ll look forward to the next book.

I’ve also been reading a whole stack of Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion mysteries, which has been a bittersweet pleasure. A few days before she died, Lisa ordered them for me, well over a dozen books, mostly paperbacks, all cheap (we’re not collectors, all I needed was reading copies), and for several weeks after she died, the packages continued to arrive: book after book, gift after gift, reminder after reminder. I’ve been enjoying the excursion into different periods — the Campion mysteries seem to divide pretty neatly into pre-WWII and post-WWII, the latter being especially interesting to me. The world of postwar rationing, Cold War fear, and frightening science (a huge feature not only in Allingham but in Nicholas Blake’s books of the same period) is new to me — it’s interesting to compare the characters’ attitudes toward the future to those in the American sci-fi/alien invasion movies of the ‘50s. But mostly it’s been another, final present, one more thing to get me through this summer, and beyond.

A Happy Fourth of July

2006-07-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

I enjoy the neighborhood where I live. It’s a nice, reasonably quiet place less than ten minutes’ walk from downtown, inhabited by an interesting bunch of people, dogs, cats, and lots and lots of squirrels. Because I’m now the morning dog-walker, I’ve gotten to know a lot of these folks at least by sight (and many of the dogs by name), and I’ve started to notice little things.

Like the fact that the goth girl down the street has broken her arm. (Yes, I know I should call her a goth woman. But she is 20 years younger than I am, and anyway the alliteration is better.) The first time I saw this, she was coming home from the doctor wearing a bright blue sling. The following morning, the sling was black. She rocks.

The neighborhood is also close enough to the park where the town fireworks are set off that I can watch all the displays from the front porch. This was actually something Lisa and I jokingly told our realtor when we were looking for a house: we wanted to be able to walk to a bank and a grocery store, and we wanted to see the fireworks. Amazingly, we got all of what we wanted.

So for the last fourteen years, we’ve spent the Third of July (when our town has its fireworks for the Fourth) sitting on the front steps swatting mosquitoes, oohing and ahhing at the colored lights while the dog barks insanely inside, and once in a while making our presence known to a drunk who thinks the rhododendron provides enough privacy for him to relieve himself. Usually there are more mosquitoes than drunks, but not this year. For some reason, there seemed to be a lot more tipsy people — fewer families, even though the display was at the same time as in previous years, and more young adults who were visibly unsteady. I even wondered if I was just more aware of them because I was by myself this year (and not drinking) but the neighbors on either side agreed: it was a heavy-drinking kind of night.

But not a bad humored one. There weren’t any fights on the street, no shouting (except cheers for the fireworks), not even anybody peeing in the shrubbery. No, this year’s drunks had a sense of humor. I took the dog out on the morning of the Fourth and, as usual, we passed the house of the Neighbors Who Decorate. They decorate their porches for every season and holiday, and this Fourth they’d outdone themselves. They had bunting and flags and sprays of red-white-and-blue tinsel that looked like fireworks, and to top it all off they had a gigantic stuffed Scooby-Doo attached to the top porch, with red-white-and-blue leis around his neck and an Uncle Sam top hat. However, as the dog and I approached, it was obvious Scooby had gone missing. I looked up, saw the Neighbors Who Decorate standing on their upper porch giggling, and before I could ask, they pointed to the driveway.

Someone had very carefully untied Scooby from the porch and set him — unharmed, though his top hat was somewhat askew — on top of another neighbor’s SUV.

Nothing else was touched, not a stitch of bunting or a strand of tinsel.

The Neighbors Who Decorate were going to leave him there until the SUV’s owner had a chance to see.

I like my neighborhood.

Harvardiana

2006-06-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

I went to my 25th college reunion a couple of weeks ago. I was pretty unsure about it, actually: not only were most of my friends from school not going to be there, but Lisa and I met in college, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to cope with being back in our old haunts without her. Her absence in all the places where she had been so vividly present was something I wasn't sure I was ready to face. Add to that the fact that the cheap housing was in the dorms....

On the other hand, we’d gone to my 20th reunion and had a really good time. I didn’t see many people that I’d known, but I’d met new people whom I liked quite a bit. And it was my father’s 50th reunion (he takes full credit for planning this, though he would have had to arrange for women’s admission to the college along with everything else). And, most of all, going back wasn't going to get any easier. I decided to take the chance. I signed up for the dorms, picked the events I wanted to do — and skipped out on Friday night and Saturday, (a) just in case it was too much and (b) so that I could have some time with my parents here at home.

I arrived back in Cambridge during the kind of downpour that makes you really wonder why you bothered, and was promptly taken in hand by a very cute, very sweet sophomore who took possession of my luggage, collected my room key, got me a ride to Hurlbut (a freshman dorm outside the Yard — the only one further from everything is Pennypacker), and made sure I knew how the locks worked. The charm was somewhat mitigated by the knowledge that, yes, she thought I was old — but it was raining hard enough that I wasn’t going to turn down her help.

It was very strange being in the dorms again. For one thing, all Harvard dorms have a very distinct smell, not unpleasant, kind of dry and clean and varnished, and for me that smell is associated with Lisa and our first days together. For another, it was far too quiet, so I was very glad I’d brought my iPod, even if listening to songs Lisa had given me made me cry. The beds are just as narrow as they ever were — we believed that the college deliberately bought skinny beds to discourage student sex, forgetting that all that really got discouraged was the sleeping part of “sleeping together” — but not uncomfortable; sharing a bathroom was about as unexciting as it ever was. It turned out I’d forgotten a nightshirt and shampoo, so I went out in the rain and bought both — the Coop had a bunch of books Lisa edited in their drama section — and then had a beer at John Harvard’s Brewpub, another place it seemed odd to be without Lisa.

It continued to rain. We conclusively disproved the claim that it never rains on a Harvard commencement — the alumni association managers were walking up and down the rows of chairs tossing plastic ponchos to the onlookers. It was a bit like getting peanuts at a baseball game, or like that used to be when I was young. Reunions bring out that phrasing quite a bit, I’ve discovered. My father, who encouraged me to march with my class (and sit out in the rain to watch the ceremonies), stayed in the Science Center and saw everything on the big screen. This is the man who told me I’d regret it if I missed marching.... And actually the procession was the point when I got to talk to two other people who’d gotten married during college. I’d never met anyone else who’d established their main relationship then, and it was nice to talk to people whose experiences were close to my own. So I suppose he was right, though not in the way he’d meant.

It rained some more on Friday, but by then I’d relearned some of the necessary skills to navigating Cambridge in the rain. Managing an umbrella in a crowd is a knack you never really lose.... I got to hear an interesting symposium on narrative (the current head of Yale Rep was in my class, something Lisa would have loved) and the results of the class survey, and then drove into Boston to collect my parents for the drive back to New Hampshire.

It rained Saturday, too, but I’d already made plans for that. Actually, Lisa and I had made the plans back in January when I decided I did want to go to the reunion. There is a historic house here in town that, among its many other attractions, has kept the last owner’s study as he left it, as a shrine to Harvard Class of ‘04. (That’s 1904.) Among the pennants and the other delights is the reunion photograph, taken at the White House because FDR (a classmate) was unable to attend a reunion in Cambridge. Lisa took great glee in picturing my father’s reaction to that, and I was not disappointed. Then Sunday, when the rain finally stopped, I took them up to Kittery to see the tombstone Lisa and I found on the lunch break of an otherwise not very helpful cancer seminar. It’s for the first pastor of the First Church in Kittery, and notes that he was a Harvard man — Class of 1690.

Some things, mercifully, never change.

WisCon

2006-06-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

I’m glad I went to WisCon. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea at first. It would be the first time I’d flown anywhere in more than 10 years. (Lisa and I had 3 or 4 really bad flights in a row, culminating in being struck by lightning on the way out - no, it didn’t do any harm, but it sure was scary! - and heavy, heavy turbulence on the way back, made worse by the fact that Lisa and a friend had had dinner the night before, and were both convinced that they had a premonition that the plane was going to crash. So we stopped flying. Lisa could be a bit of a thoroughbred about such things.) It would be the first convention I’d attended by myself since an Arisia 12 or 15 years ago. I would be seeing all kinds of people who knew and loved Lisa, and who were mourning her, too, and I wasn’t sure how I could cope.

It was truly wonderful. The flights were fine - I may be the only person at Wiscon who could say that, but I got in and out before the weather got thundery both days. The convention was - well, it was WisCon, which meant that I had lots of friends to keep me company, including students from my master class whom I’d never met in person. I’m delighted to say that they were all even nicer in person than they were on line. The writers’ workshop was good. (If there’s any justice, you’ll see some good novels in a couple of years from these folks.) The panels were exciting - I was on a good one on food, and a better one on gender, and I snuck in the back of the best Dr. Who panel I’ve ever attended, and.... You get the idea. And people were just incredibly kind.

Understand, the dealers’ room was full not only of books but of some of the most lovely jewelry I’ve seen in a long time. Elise Matheson was there (www.lioness.net), sharing a table with Katie MacDonald (www.dragonsdenjewelry.com/gallery/), and at that table was a saucer full of tiny - thumbnail-size - medallions. I glanced at them, trying to distract myself from pieces that I couldn’t afford, and saw one particular medallion. It was silver, with a running horse above a tiny star, and on the back was the inscription, “the best hearts are ever the bravest.”

I burst into tears, and had to explain and apologize - and (I think it was Katie) simply gave me the medallion. So it’s doubly a gift: a gift from a talented and senstive artist, and, I believe, a gift from Lisa. One more thing to treasure about WisCon.

Mourning

2006-05-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

As many of you know from other sources, Lisa died 3 weeks ago, very early in the morning of May 2. She was never in pain, and died peacefully in her sleep, with me, her two sisters, and the cats and dog keeping watch. Although it wasn't entirely unexpected - she had been going downhill physically for about a month - I don't think anyone expected her death to come so quickly. (In fact, her oncologist, who had told her that Friday that he didn't think there was much more he could do, also said, "we'll talk some more next week.") Lisa had always said that she intended to fight as long as there was the slightest chance of beating the cancer, and it seems as though it was mostly willpower that kept her going. Not that I fully realized it, strong and positive as she always was! Once she was told there wasn't any real chance, she allowed herself to let go - and, being Lisa, wasn't about to hang around and prolong things.

Our friends have been incredibly kind through all of this, and their presence, the week she died and at the memorial service and just being there afterwards - I can't thank you enough for everything. You know who you are.

The hardest thing has been trying to remember not to say "we." For 27 years, I've been part of a couple, quite happily so. I've thought in terms of both of us - our house, our plans, our dog, our writing, our life together - and now I have to start remembering that there is only me. "We" didn't have 3 inches of water in the cellar during the recent flooding, I did. "We" aren't selling Lisa's car, I am. And yet that's the word that still comes to the tip of my tongue. It hurts me when I realize what I've done, and I see our friends wince when they hear me and remember: such a hard thing.

I know it does get, if not better then at least easier, or so I'm told by other widowed people who've been coping longer. But it is hard now.

The New Learning Curve

2006-04-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

Learning to manage a wheelchair is hard work. Learning to work with someone in a wheelchair is also hard work, and, despite the efforts of the nurses and therapists, we keep running up against things we didn’t know we didn’t know how to do. And, as a result, we’re becoming quite well acquainted with our local EMTs.

Case #1: getting into our car, 1992 Honda Accord, isn’t impossible. We did that last Sunday, on a lovely, sunny day, with temperatures in the high 60s. We drove around a little, the first time Lisa had been out for any length of time, we got a takeout lunch at a favorite spot, and then we went home. And that’s when we discovered that getting out of the car is an entirely different matter.

We didn’t make the transfer successfully. So there was Lisa, sitting on the ground beside the car, which is sitting in the Margeson parking lot because we don’t have any parking anywhere — and, adding to the irony, the Margeson is elderly and handicapped housing — and I’m standing beside her sheepishly calling 911 on my cell phone to see if the EMTs will come and pick her up and put her in her chair. The conversation goes something like this:

Operator: So your partner fell from her wheelchair. Is she injured?

Me: No.

Operator: Is she bleeding?

Me: No.

Operator: Is she conscious?

Me: (looking at Lisa, who is swearing under her breath) Oh, yeah.

The EMTs arrived within five minutes, picked Lisa up, dusted her off, put her back in her chair, and were off again in another five. We went inside, had our lunch, and then I had a small guilty fit about having “gotten Lisa into situation I couldn’t get her out of.” Lisa didn’t have much patience with that, either.

But I do worry. Because I can’t lift her unaided, I can’t risk doing anything that might let her fall, and that in turn makes her nervous, which makes it harder for us to try anything that we haven’t already done, which limits what Lisa can do and makes her feel more trapped…. It’s a nasty bit of negative feedback, and one that the physical therapists are working hard to help us break.

And then, just when you think things are going well, you have to learn something new.

Yesterday, Lisa got a new wheelchair. It’s a lot better than the old one, lighter and easier to move, with arms that fit under a desk to make working easier, and leg rests that offer full support and elevation. But it’s also different, and different these days also means difficult.

I mentioned the chair was lighter. As a result, even with the brakes locked, it doesn’t have the mass to hold firm on a polished hardwood floor when a 150-pound person leans on it, and that meant the old transfer method didn’t work. It was soooo close: she just slid slowly forward and I ended up lowering her to the floor in front of the chair. We had room to move, so we re-braced her legs, grabbed some new handholds, and this time I actually got her upright with her legs under her — and the chair slipped again.

So we called 911. I went through the litany (Bleeding? no. Injured? no. Conscious? Yeah, you should hear what she said a minute ago), the EMTs arrived — the same ones who came last time — and worked their magic, and Lisa was back in her chair with only a couple of minor bruises.

But now getting into the chair was a problem, something to be dreaded rather than something that had become more matter-of-fact. Luckily, this chair allows you to take each arm completely off, so we figured out a way for Lisa to slide from the end of the bed into the chair. It takes twice as long, but she says it feels secure. We had the physical therapist in again this morning to look at car transfers, and we had her look at the new transfer method, too, and she says it’s perfectly safe and workable, so I think, with practice, we’ll get back to where we were with the old chair.

But, my god, the learning curve is steep.

I remember once seeing a PBS show about Mount Everest, and realizing that, once you start for the summit, there is no flat ground anywhere. Everything is tilted at what looked like a thirty-degree angle; you pitch your tents on that slope, you sleep on that slope, you walk bent over, and eventually you climb that slope. That’s what I feel like right now.

It Takes a Village

2006-04-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

Well, we’ve gone, in three weeks, from Lisa’s walking with a cane to needing a 3-sided walker to being in a wheelchair. The effects are a little like the effects of a stroke, but it came on in increments, not all at once, so, unlike most stroke patients, she (and I) aren’t learning to handle everything in the safer-feeling confines of a rehab hospital. She can stand with support, can support herself for about 15 seconds, but cannot walk at all. As I said in my previous post, the problems aren’t so much with either the motor or the sensory nerves — there is strength in her legs, and she can feel things — but in the nerves that control the brain’s ability to understand where her legs actually are.

I probably don’t need to say that this has been scary. We’ve gone from being independent adults to needing a level of help that I’ve never experienced: home health aides, visiting nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists to help us figure out how to rearrange the house, and social workers to expedite permits and all the other processes.

But what we have also had is help from our friends. I mentioned before that we needed to move the bedroom downstairs and my office upstairs. With the wheelchair in place, we also needed a ramp to the back door, a doorway widened, and a closet altered. Over the last two weeks, our friends have done it all.

First Lisa’s sister Noralie and brother Bruce came up and moved my 2000+ books from old office to old bedroom. (OK, Bruce brought his Airedale puppy, Hamish, who did chase our oldest, fattest cat — this is the cat who couldn’t move fast enough to get out of a falling window, and lost the tip of his tail. With sufficient incentive — and Hamish was good incentive — he not only made it from living room to kitchen in record time, but he got his 19+ pounds halfway up a kitchen curtain. Once we were sure he was all right, it really was pretty funny. Imagine a black cat about the size and roughly the same shape as a basketball clinging spread-eagled to a black-and-white toile shade….)

(Did you know that the Wizard Earl of Northumberland had about 2000 books in his private library back in the 1580s? Neither did I, but I bet he never had to worry about moving them.)

Then Lynne and Victoria and Amy came over and did most of the painting in the new bedroom. This was a giant help, because when I decorated my office, I painted the trim a deep rust-red. Lisa said, “You know, if you ever change your mind, that’s going to be hell to paint over.” I said, “I’m not going to change my mind.”

Let’s just say she was right.

But the room is now a creamy yellow with deep gold trim, and looks beautiful with our sage-green bedspread.

Then, over the next two days, they moved us. First they spent a day boxing and moving stuff out of both rooms so that the furniture could be exchanged. (I think Alan got the worst of it, because he arrived in time to empty my office closet. That’s the one that held all my supplies, plus 14 years of unsorted junk from the last move. I am still grateful that all he said when I apologetically opened the door was, “Oh. My.”) The next day, in five hours, they swapped the rooms completely, and altered a closet that was going to block wheelchair access. Steve and Denise and Leigh and Lynne and Melissa and Nathanial and Maura and Danny did construction, moved furniture (heavy furniture!), cut apart and rebuilt bookcases that wouldn't fit up our stairs, moved boxes, got books into shelves and files swapped from one computer to another — oh, yes, and Maura and Danny brought coffee and bagels, so there was time to eat and chat and feel less stressed. We had expected to take another day to finish, but at the end of the five hours, we had a bedroom we could sleep in.

It was an amazing, miraculous experience. We’re just so lucky to have friends like these, skilled people willing to give up a few days to help out.

Oh, and a postscript. Tuesday, while it was snowing the kind of snow that feels like thick, cold rain, Steve and Brett attached the (rented) ramp to the back door. We asked if it was possible to remove the doorjamb in the kitchen to make a little more room for the wheelchair to swing. They looked at it, pried at a couple of boards, then took down the door casing. We gained about 4 inches, which is more than enough to make the transition easy. Like I said, amazing people!

Aargh!

2006-03-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

OK, here we go again, only this time the rollercoaster is a little weirder....

Since the middle of last week, Lisa has been feeling, well, strange. She’s complained of increasing numbness in her left foot, weakness in her knees, and went in the course of three days from using a cane occasionally to needing a three-sided walker. Naturally, we went to her oncologist, and, equally naturally, he ordered an MRI to see what the remains of the tumor were doing.

The answer is, apparently, nothing. What has happened is that she has suffered radiation necrosis: part of the (formerly) healthy brain tissue has died, and its death is causing swelling that is affecting more healthy but endangered brain tissue, and could eventually cause that tissue to die as well. Right now, the problems are in the cerebellum and around the big nerves that allow the brain to perceive where the body actually is. In other words, her right brain no longer knows what her left foot is doing. If she looks at it, and concentrates, she can put it where she needs it to be, but not any other way.

We knew this could happen. We knew that the chances were greater the more times she did radiation, but it seemed to be a reasonable trade-off, given the location of the tumor and its inaccessibility to conventional surgery. But it sure ain’t fun.

Right now, her doctor has her on steroids again, to reduce the swelling and hopefully minimize any further damage. Since it’s not safe for her to go up and down our house’s stairs any more (and those who have visited will understand!), we are in the process of moving our bedroom downstairs into what used to be my office. My office will go upstairs into what used to be the bedroom - that’s about 2000 books, two filing cabinets stuffed with papers, the desk top, two chairs, several boxes of notes, etc. (you remember the boxes I pulled out of the attic? now I get to take them back upstairs again), two guitars, a (small!) amplifier, all my office supplies, my sewing machine and boxes of fabric, all of which have to be pried out of their niches in a 12 foot by 13 foot space and carried up a steep flight of stairs. Oh, yes, and two bookcases have to be chopped in half, because they won’t fit any other way.

In return, we bring down the two twin platforms, the king-sized mattress, the television, at least one dresser, and all Lisa’s clothes. Oh, yes, and the several hundred books that live in the bedroom. And the videos. And buy Lisa a laptop (and us a wifi hub) so she can work wherever she happens to be.

And at some point, we need to find time to paint at least the new bedroom, because we are not going to make this purely utilitarian. Yes, we have to do this, just as we had to install handholds on the toilet and buy a laptop so she can work where she feels most comfortable. But we are also going to make it as pleasant and positive as possible.

Cat Darensbourg, or, Why I Hate (Love) Boskone

2006-03-12T08:28:00.000-08:00

I think I mentioned, back when I was obsessing about the Knitting Olympics (and no, the sweater isn’t finished yet, thanks for asking...), that I’d had a rather good thing happen at the autographing at this year’s Boskone. (OK, two good things, because Ken MacLeod knew who I was. But I digress.)

The Big Good Thing came about in a totally unexpected way. As many of you may know, I wrote a trilogy back in the late ‘80s about a starship pilot named Silence Leigh, her two husbands, and their quest to find the lost planet, Earth. It was set in a universe where neoplatonic magic had turned out to be an accurate understanding of physical laws, and in which a profoundly patriarchal society controlled human space, the latter being a logical consequence of the assumptions behind traditional alchemy. (The books are Five-Twelfths of Heaven, Silence in Solitude, and The Empress of Earth, also collected by the Science Fiction Book Club as The Roads of Heaven; they are, however, out of print.) I’ve been asked many times if I was ever going to do anything more with Silence, and have had to say no. Understand, I’ve tried. I’d come up with an idea that looked promising, start sketching, and feel it fizzle out. Although I’m reluctant to grant too much autonomy to my characters, it really felt as though Silence, Denis, and Julie were living happily ever after and declined to be disturbed. (Or, alternatively, the most important problems in their lives had been met and resolved, and anything else would be an anticlimax.) However you defined it, though, I couldn’t seem to write about them.

So when Cat Darensbourg came up to me at the autograph table, and asked if there would be any more Silence books, I pretty much had the answer down pat. But then she said it.

“Have you considered doing any more books in that universe? Maybe about how the systems were developed, how the first keels were tuned, and the people who explored the new science?”

I’m still not quite sure what it was that clicked. I think it was mentioning the people who make the ships, and who developed the systems, and that somehow clicked into a very different idea that I’ve been mulling over for a while. (I wrote a short story called “The Sweet Not-Yet,” which you can find in Imagination Fully Dilated: Science Fiction, which is about a man who lost his memory in the adjacent possible, the sweet not-yet, and it’s been trying to become a novel....)

“Oh,” I said, with great intelligence. “Oh, wow. Please don’t take this wrong, but I think I hate you....”

Because I knew that I was condemned to spending several hours in the cold, dusty attic, digging my old box of Silence notes out from behind not one but two dead air conditioners (don’t ask), and I had another idea I’d been working on, and a short story I needed to finish, and the last thing I needed was a new story that was going to obsess me completely....

You get the idea.

But I got the notes (the air conditioners were exactly as heavy and unwieldy as I remembered), re-read them and some other material, and started sketching. I have a working title - The Queens of Glasstown - protagonists, several secondary characters, and the beginnings of a plot. I know what the world feels like, and where I want the story to end.

So, however belatedly, thank you, Cat - I think!w

The End of the Olympics

2006-02-27T17:28:00.000-08:00

I didn't finish.

Well, I did finish the back of the sweater, which is one-third of the whole thing (if you don't count the side-seam gusset strips that I'm going to add because there isn't quite enough ease after all - did I mention I didn't do a gauge swatch?) - and I did it during the closing ceremonies, so I will at least claim bronze.

You know what? I really love knitting. I also love knitters, who think up things like this - although Stephanie (http://www.yarnharlot.ca) is surely unique!

I've also learned a lot from the project. There are a bunch of practical things, like paying attention to the notes at the beginning of the book. (Yes, the color change does want to tighten up on the right side of shadow knitting. Don't pull the slipped stitch to make it look neat - ever.) Or like my aversion to colorwork: what I don't like is doing more than one color in a row, and that may be because I've never learned to do it properly. But I also don't like wearing too many colors at a time, so the shadow knitting, in three closely related shades of grey, is perfect. I will definitely try more shadow knit patterns. I've also learned (1) always do the swatch - which you think I would know, considering that my ganseys are all based on swatch measurements - and (2) a tunic in my size is going to take more than two weeks and three days. No matter what.

I've learned a couple of other things, though. I've said for years that I knit because, being a writer, I spend years working very hard to produce what is, in the end, a stack of paper. It is also a novel, a story, a world, but what I have to show to myself and the world is a compact disk and a stack of printouts. There's at least a year between finishing the manuscript and having a book to show off, and by then, I'm on to something else. Knitting produces something tangible, usually useful and sometimes beautiful, something that I can fondle and wear and point to as an actual object. Now that knitting has become popular again, I don't have to justify myself quite as much as I used to (and I feel more comfortable taking my knitting everywhere - though that may just be that I'm getting older and care less what anybody thinks), but it's still as much about the product as it is the process for me.

In her book of meditations for women who knit too much (who, me?), the Yarn Harlot asked what you would do if you were stranded on a desert island and finished your knitting project. Would you rip and reknit it, just to have knitting, or would you put it on and go looking for grass to spin for the next project? I was amazed at the strength of my reaction. Absolutely, I would go find fiber and start something new. The idea of ripping a perfectly good object to reuse the yarn just so I could knit makes me shiver.

And that explains what I knit. I knit socks. I knit ganseys. I knit hats. I knit things I know I, or Lisa, or somebody, will wear and use. I don't really knit things that are pure experiments, just to try a new technique; I try a new technique because I like the way the fabric looks or what I think I can do with it.

Frankly, this is a surprise to me. In most of my writing, the process is as important and enjoyable as the product, and, as a writer, I've more than once done the equivalent of ripping the whole thing back to yarn and cast on again. In fact, my favorite books have all started that way. I write about 120 pages, realize I need to change something, and start over from beginning. The changes aren't that big, but they make a cumulative difference, like being half a stitch off in gauge. I'll do a hundred pages of notes and sketches, try and discard a style, a voice, sometimes a character - heck, I once wrote myself out of a novel - but I won't do that to my knitting.

And that's another reason I love knitting.

Days 14-16: Staggering to the Finish

2006-02-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

I have completed 29 inches. I will finish the sweater-back tomorrow....

Of course, that leaves the front, two sleeves, and a possible side-seam strip to do. The side-seam strip isn't in the pattern, but I may add it any way. Partly I'd like a bit more ease than I think I'm going to get (this has something to do with the lack of gauge swatch back at the beginning) and partly the hems and cuffs are done in 2 inches of garter stitch in the medium shade of grey, and I think it would be pretty extended up the side seams and down the sleeve seams. I think I'll have enough yarn to make it....

Actually, I've really been enjoying this, even if I'm not nearly where I expected to be on this next-to-last day of competition. You think Bode Miller was overconfident? Try this on for size: a 33-inch long, long-sleeved, tunic-style sweater in an unfamiliar stitch that, despite its basic simplicity, regularly messes me up so that I have to unknit anywhere from three to 40 stitches to get back on pattern. Planning to finish that in 16 days was probably overambitious.

My new goal is to finish the sweater before it gets too warm to wear it.

And to pick something smaller for Beijing!

Days 12-13

2006-02-22T13:02:00.000-08:00

OK, I think we’re getting back to normal. Lisa has been checked out by her regular oncologist, who seems unworried by the whole episode, and has signed up for physical therapy again.

(The dialogue between her and the doctor apparently went something like this:

Lisa: I was standing on one foot, and I fell over and hit my head.

Doctor: Hm. Well. Don’t stand on one foot!

This is actually good, because if he had the slightest concern, he wouldn’t be making even a mild joke.)

Unfortunately, though I’ve been knitting away in the times not occupied by work, and we have moved into the medal rounds of the curling, the *#%& sweater-back is only 23.5 inches long. I have nine and a half inches to go. Maybe I should shorten it? Heck, a 24-inch sweater is nice and long - but I really did want a tunic.

And there are other projects waiting, becoming more seductive all the time: a sock, in a new self-striping colorway from Lang Yarns Jawoll cotton jacquard - it’s brown and grey with highlights of pink and blue. And it’s about half done, and will be finished a lot faster than this sweater. There’s a crocheted jacket in 4 shades of Reynolds’ Caviar, bought on sale at the local yarn shop, that just needs a couple more rounds on each sleeve to be totally done. (OK, plus weaving in the ends, which is daunting enough that I might rather stick to my sweater.) I’ve promised Lisa a gansey to replace the one the horses nibbled, felting the ribbing beyond the point of ripping and reknitting. (This is what comes of volunteering for equine rescue: the rescuees aren’t always well-mannered.) We bought the yarn for that on sale, too, and it’s lovely, Harrisville’s New England Shetland in a deep rust-orange . I have some forest-green lace-weight that I want to try in an ultra-simple lace pattern. Spectacular multi-colored Norwegian yarn called Eskimo (and Noway’s in the gold medal round for curling), plus pale blue baby alpaca, both for hats. Four more balls of sock yarn! A fingerless glove pattern and the hand-painted yarn to work it in! A new KnitPicks catalog....

Not to mention that I desperately need to re-do my website, and work on the new idea someone gave me at Boskone. (More on that after the Olympics.)

It’s a good thing there’s curling on tonight. It gives me discipline.

Days 10-11

2006-02-20T18:22:00.000-08:00

Well, day 10 was actually productive, though I have to give at least part of the credit to the Daytona 500. There's something about a 500-mile stock car race that makes me want to knit fast - and there was a free in-car preview, though it didn't work very well. Seems the helicopters that re-transmit the pictures and team audio were grounded by thick weather.... And then, since Lisa and I both had today off, I stayed up and watched the Olympics until midnight. (Wasn't the ice dancing scary??)

My results? 20.5 inches total! OK, I'm still on the back, but I'm in sight of the end. Or maybe it's just lap 1 around the stadium.

This morning, however - and now I have to be serious for a bit. Lisa had a fall. She's had balance issues since the surgery last June, because the original tumor was in the cerebellum, in a balance center, and cutting around in there causes problems. So, as she was getting up, she was standing on one foot, lost her balance, and fell into the corner of the dresser, hitting it with her head. No cut, but there was a dent in the skin that felt soft when I touched it. She was otherwise OK, so I got her up and sitting on the edge of the bed (which is about two feet from where she fell), told her we were going to the emergency room - and she blacked out. That's a scary, incredibly unmistakable moment: her eyes were open, and there was no person, no presence, no intelligence there.

So I called 911. You hear a lot of bad things about service in emergencies, but I have nothing to complain about. The dispatcher got the vital information, told me what I needed to do to check on Lisa (who had resumed consciousness almost immediately, and was sitting up and wanting to put on her shoes), and then told me what I needed to do to get the animals out of the way and get the EMTs in the house. They were here within 10 minutes of the fall, checked her out - she was fully conscious, not in any pain, and as much embarrassed as scared - and said she still ought to go to the hospital because of the cancer history and the loss of consciousness. Or maybe it was in the opposite order....

In any case, they put her in the ambulance and took her to the emergency room. I walked and fed the dog (wishing we'd trained her to defecate on command), grabbed a book for Lisa and my knitting, and headed to the emergency room.

Where she was sitting up, answering questions (I was the one who got her age wrong), and otherwise showing no ill effects. She didn't even have a headache. There's a lump on her head, a tiny red mark where she actually hit the dresser - all of which you can see because she still doesn't have any hair - and the beginning of a bruise on her shoulder. That's it.

So we are basically fine. We weren't even at the emergency room long enough for me to do more than a row and a half of my sweater-back, and the examining doctor said she really wasn't hurt. But we are both just a tad stressed.

She said I could use this as my excuse for not finishing if I needed it, but that would be cheating.

Days 8-9

2006-02-19T10:32:00.000-08:00

Knitting and SF conventions don't mix. Well, actually, they do - there were lots of people knitting small, portable projects in the halls and in the audiences - but large sweaters using multiple balls of yarn are not, perhaps, the ideal choice for a project.

I got a decent amount done in the hotel Friday night. The Olympics were on, nobody knew we were there, since we'd gotten the room last minute to avoid having to get up at 6 AM to drive down and get registered in time for my reading, and we had a lovely, cosy room with a large comfy bed and a well-placed television. We did visit a bookstore, so there were distractions (it's hard to read a trade paperback and knit at the same time, no matter how prehensile your toes), but I felt that, on the whole, I'd done my Olympic duty.

Did I mention that the whole point of this trip was to get a good night's sleep? At 1:43 AM, our next-door neighbors returned from drinking - at least 4 of them, and possibly 5. Alan was the loudest and the drunkest, and he and Denise were having a fight, during which she insulted his manhood, and he called her "nasty." Their friends tried to shush them, and, in the way of the drunken, they were eventually distracted and I thought maybe they'd go to bed.

Unfortunately, a few minutes later, there was a thump and a drumming of heels on the connecting door between our rooms, and Alan announced, "hey, I can do a handstand!"

I called the front desk.

They sent up a cop, and the group quieted down almost immediately. However, it was 2:15 in the morning, and I was angry enough that it was hard to get back to sleep. Adding insult to injury, my internal alarm clock was set for 7:00, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I thought about calling room 533, asking for Alan, and telling him that I thought his girlfriend was absolutely right, but we weren't ready to check out just yet. Instead, I knit another couple of rows, drank a cinnamon latte, and watching some more curling.

I knew Saturday was going to be a low-productivity day on the knitting front, and I was right. I did manage to get two rows done in between talking to people at the autographing, and again in a lull between panels when I was supposed to be eating lunch, but mostly the sweater stayed in my purse. On the other hand, I was wearing an odd shawl-with-sleeves I made from a Lion Brand pattern (knit in two shades of blue Homespun), and kept having to take it off (or put it on, or put it on other people) so that they could see how it was made. That was gratifying, if not exactly what I'd intended.

I knit some more after we got home last night, but when I measured, the back (the only part) is just 17 inches long.....

Day... 7????

2006-02-16T19:05:00.000-08:00

I am so far behind.... If this really were the Olympics, the measurement of my sweater back would be posted in red, and the commentators would be shaking their heads.

"Really nice pattern, nice tension, good choice of colors, but she's just not getting the pace she needs to finish."

"Dick, she should have chosen a smaller project."

"But this plays to her strengths. Her coach mentioned that she considered lace -"

"Which would probably have been more sensible - something like a scarf. It would have qualified as a challenge -"

"Yes, I have seen the shawl she's been working on at practice. Just one 30-stitch panel, and she's certainly experiencing difficulties."

"A small piece of lace would have been much more managable."

"I'm afraid so. Well, we'll have to wait and see how she comes back in Vancouver."

I guess I'll just have to wait and see how the judges score this one.....

Day 6

2006-02-15T17:45:00.000-08:00

More curling today.... Cassie Johnson and her sister are quite beautiful, with lovely skin — but the Dane Denise Dupont has a great sense of style! I like her hair (heavy blond bangs, two wider pieces falling to frame her face, the rest drawn back in a ponytail), her great big star earrings, and positively punk eyeliner. Extraordinarily cool for the average athlete!

Unfortunately, despite the length of the average bonspeil, I still only have 13 inches of sweater-back complete. I’m aiming for another 2 inches tonight, and, between the Olympics and Mythbusters (a truly guilty pleasure!), I should be able to get at least close. I’m not all that excited about moguls (mostly because I don’t understand all the criteria), but luge and short track skating are neat to watch.

I was sorry to have missed some of the men’s short program in figure skating last night. I confess, I kept switching back and forth between the Olympics and Westminster, and the dogs won.... (And Rufus, the colored bull terrier who took Best in Show, had a fabulous head!) I’m most sorry to have missed Johnny Weir’s program, though I did see a quick shot of him leaving the arena. He was wearing what looking like a furry glittery scarf (further inspiration for the knitters among us), or perhaps a shaggy boa, and waggled his fingers at the camera as he passed. This is the man who, when asked about his hair the other morning, complained that he was having a princess moment....

It’s so amazing to me that this is possible. I remember the fuss that was made about Rudy Gallindo not that long ago, the trouble that he caused by being just a little less than perfectly straight-acting — and now we have Johnny Weir. Who stands in second place just now, so it clearly hasn’t hurt his athletic ability. I guess progress really does happen!

Day 5

2006-02-14T18:35:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that last night we watched Westminster more than the Olympics. I’d blame it on Lisa (or Vixen, our sheltie/whippet mix), but both of them fell asleep early on, so I could have changed the channel. Still, I got a bit of knitting done, and more this morning while I watched the men’s biathlon and more curling (also men’s), but on measuring, I only have 11 1/4 inches finished. Of the back. Which has a finished measurement of 33 inches. And then there’s the front, two sleeves, and a cowl neck to go.

I’m beginning to worry. This weekend is Boskone, which means that I will be spending all day Saturday at the convention. I have a reading, autographing, 2 panels, and a kaffeeklatsch.... Should I bring the sweater, and therefore a bigger bag, or just the sock that I started before the Olympics? Will I have time to do anything, particularly a something involving two balls of yarn, between panels, or should I just give up the day? After all, Sunday is not only the Olympics, but the Daytona 500, and there’s nothing like a stock car race for getting a lot of knitting done. (Last year’s first batch of gift socks was worked primarily during Lisa’s radiation treatments and the last few races. I can complete the leg, turn the heel, and pick up for the foot during a 500 mile race — but how does that translate to a sweater?) I think I need to fall back on my college athletic days, such as they were, and try to put the whole thing out of my mind. I’ll do what I can, and that’s enough.

Mind you, I’m learning a lot. I have never liked colorwork much. I like the results of both intarsia and stranded colorwork, but I hated doing them. I didn’t like mosaic stitch at all, though that may have been the project I tried. Shadow knitting, however.... It’s only two balls of yarn, only one color at a time, and seems to work really well when you use 3 related shades, like the 3 greys I’m using. All of that really suits both my work habits, and my taste in clothes. So, if nothing else, I will have learned a new technique that I’m likely to use....

But I’ll be really bummed if I don’t finish!˘

Day 4

2006-02-13T18:04:00.000-08:00

I have to say, I’m really enjoying the yarn I’m using. It’s “Palette,” a 100% wool fingering-weight yarn from KnitPicks, and, at $1.79 for 50 grams/231 yards, it’s a deal. It’s not as fluffy as some wools I’ve used — if anything, it’s a little crunchy, both in the ball and as it’s knit up. Maybe some of that is the shadow knit pattern (3 rows of stockinette, followed by a right-side purl row), but, whatever the cause, I like the texture. It’s a little lighter than the yarns I usually use for ganseys, but I think I’ll try it for my next gansey. (After I finish Lisa’s, that is. I promise!)

I got quite a bit done today while watching curling, a sport which, despite the announcers’ attempts to explain, I don’t really understand. But there is something fascinating about watching the careful release of the heavy stones, followed by the frantic use of the broom.... It also contains some of the longest time outs I’ve ever seen in a sporting event (at least, the longest not caused by injury), with all team members standing around, leaning on their brooms, and discussing how best to either remove an opponent’s stone, score a point, or, preferably, both. Needless to say, I don’t appreciate the fine points at all, but it was fascinating to watch. The men’s world championships is actually going to be held only a couple of hours from here — and are advertising heavily on local tv — and I might consider going. I wonder if there are any clubs around here....

There was also one lovely bit of trivia, revealed during a long time out. It seems that curling began in the 16th century — which means that one could join the Society for Creative Anachronism as a fanatic curler.

The only bad part is that Grendel, the formerly feral, mostly-Siamese cat we acquired about 5 years ago, also seems to like curling. Normally, he isn't all that interested in knitting. (That bad habit is reserved for Pretty Boy Floyd, whom I have not been able to discourage from chewing on yarn.) Grendel and the others lie next to me on the couch, when they can be bothered to join me at all. However, today, as I settled in with my knitting on my lap, I was stopped by a solid tap on the knee. I looked up, removed Grendel's paw, turned back to my knitting — and received the entire cat in my lap. I removed him. He returned. We repeated this twice more, and I surrendered, instead rearranging my knitting to accomodate him. He stretched out, purring — the sort of purr you don't hear, but feel through your kneecaps — then stopped and yowled. He was lying on a marker, and apparently it wasn't comfortable. I moved the offending corner of the sweater; he shifted so that he could see the tv, and there he stayed. We reached the finish (the USA lost to Norway), he hopped down, and hasn't been back in my lap since.

I'm not sure what this means.

Day 3

2006-02-12T15:22:00.000-08:00

We have a nor’easter today. It’s snowing hard, but it’s so windy that it’s almost impossible to tell how much snow has actually fallen. The parking lot behind the house is literally bare in spots, but the part where our walk enters the lot is slightly more than knee deep right now. Yes, I measured the hard way. It’s definitely over my knee, and snow got up under my jeans and into the top of my calf-high boots. I then transferred that snow, plus more, to the inside of my car. You see, we don’t have off-street parking, but we wanted to wait until the city declared a snow emergency before putting the car in the municipal garage, because that way we get the $3 per emergency rate as opposed to .75 per hour. After they finally said, OK, we want cars off the street, I went to clean off mine, and there was about 2.5 inches of snow stuck to the windward side, much of which fell into my car when I opened the driver’s door. The downwind side was completely clear. Also, my car had provided a windbreak to Lisa’s, parked directly behind mine, so, while I brushed several inches off the roof, she had only a dusting — until the stuff I cleared from mine blew onto hers. (Yes, I could have opened the passenger door, gotten out the scraper/brush thingie, brushed off the driver’s door, and avoided bringing in at least an inch of snow into the car. But I didn’t think of it, and if you would have, I don’t want to hear it.)

And, to add to the fun, the front storm door blew out of my hand when I went to get the paper, and I think it’s bent or broken a hinge, because I can’t get it to close properly any more. I am now attempting to prove the adage that anything that can’t be fixed by duct tape can be mended with twine.

So you can imagine how glad I am to be back inside and knitting! I’ve completed about 3 inches of the shadow pattern section, and it’s starting to show the vertical striping. It’s subtle, but definite, and I really like it. Canada is thumping Russia, 8 - 0 in the second period, in women’s hockey (and at least one Canadian player is a member of the Harvard women’s team), and I think I’ll settle in for a while.

One thing, though. A lot of sports provoke the reaction “that kinda looks like fun,” although in my case sanity very quickly prevails. But there are moments when I think that I might like to try downhill skiing, or cycling (OK, not cycling, not often), race car driving (quite often!), or curling, or pick up tennis or fencing again, mostly because I’ve seen someone doing it so well and effortlessly that I want some of that competence to rub off on me. Cross country skiing, though.... A sport where the drool of effort freezes to your face is not, I think, for me. e

Knitting Olympics, Day 2

2006-02-11T17:31:00.000-08:00

Today is the first time since college that I’ve watched hockey. It’s a sport that (as you may have gathered from my post about ice skating) I didn’t grow up with, and so never really learned to watch. I went once with a college boyfriend — a Flyers fan, he took me to a Bruins-Flyers game, at the old Boston Garden, which probably wasn’t the best introduction to the sport. But today, watching women’s hockey and knitting away merrily, I’m kind of getting into it. And it’s also been cool hearing how many of the women playing for the US (and several other countries) are from the Harvard women’s hockey program. My freshman-year floormate was one of the founders of the program, and a stalwart of the team for four years. And look what’s come of it!

As for the knitting, I’m making progress, though not perhaps as much as I’ll need to finish by the end of the Olympics. (I feel a bit like one of the guys looked in the cross-country part of the Nordic combined: I’m knitting and knitting, but I don’t seem to be getting anywhere....) I’m doing the long tunic in three shades of grey from Vivian Hoxbro’s Shadow Knitting, though the greys I’m using are lighter than the ones in the book. The book recommends placing a marker every time the pattern changes, which led to another Jamaican bobsled moment. I needed 17 markers for a 10-stitch repeat over 170 stitches. After scrounging through every single box, needle case, and stray unfinished object bag I own, I came up with 18. I don’t think I’ve ever used this many markers in any project, and, given the very light-weight yarn, they feel really awkward. It’s like holding a handful of marbles. And I’ve only done about 5 inches. Hopefully I’ll get used to it soon!

Of course, tomorrow there’s supposed to be a nor’easter, so I should be able to get a lot of Olympic watching and knitting in between sessions of shoveling. 20 inches to go on the back, then a matching front, and a pair of sleeves. Right....

The Knitting Olympics

2006-02-10T18:26:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know that I’m a knitter. (Lisa says this is a bit like Lance Armstrong saying, “I kind of like to win the Tour de France,” or Imelda Marcos saying, “I have a few pairs of shoes.) Be that as it may, after an orgy of Christmas-present socks, I’ve succumbed to the latest suggestion from the Yarn Harlot: the Knitting Olympics. Basically, the idea is that you should choose a project that is an achievable challenge, cast on during the opening ceremonies, and have it finished by the time the olympic flame is extinguished. At first, I thought it was fun and funny, and then I realized that, since I was going to be watching the Games and knitting anyway, it might make sense to participate. Then Lisa brought me home a book from her company’s book swap, called Shadow Knitting, which looked as though it made really interesting fabric. And then I found out about Team Wales, for which I qualify on several counts.

So I had to do it.

I ordered my yarn from KnitPicks last week, and despite my failure to use expedited shipping, it arrived yesterday. I didn’t get the faster shipping because KnitPicks has always gotten my orders here in about a week, despite their warning it could take 14 days, so I figured it would be fine. But, of course, I didn’t think about the other 3299 (and counting) people doing the Olympics and probably ordering yarn.... Then this morning I checked the pattern again and realized that the sweater is knit on US1 and US2 needles, not US2 and US3 as I had thought. So I hustled right out and bought the US1s that I needed. For fellow knitters, this means I haven’t done a swatch, and am just going to cast on and wing it. The motto of Team Wales is “the Jamaican bobsledders of the knitting world,” and, so far, I’m living up to it.

I cast on for the back at 2 PM, about when the opening ceremonies were happening. Then I knit, oh, about 30 rows while we watched the pre-opening ceremonies (OK, we actually mostly watched a special on Lance Armstrong, but that has to count). The gauge looks good — that is, it looks as though this piece is a reasonable side for the back — so I think I’m on my way. And now I’m taking my yarn and my needles and going to bed.

More from the Knitting Olympiad later....

An ex-historian gets cranky

2006-02-10T09:34:00.000-08:00

I admit that I follow fashion, at least in the sense that I like to know what’s currently in style, and, when it fits my shape, to adopt the cooler pieces. And right now, I’m enjoying the trend that’s most commonly labeled “Victorian.” I like the styles a lot, and, frankly, many of them look good on me. There’s just one problem.

They aren’t “Victorian.” They’re Regency, with a strong nod to the Napoleonic armies.

Note the Empire waistline (so-called because it was popular across Europe during the reign of Napoleon — the First Empire). Note the adorable little jackets and cropped tops, commonly called shrugs. Around 1800 — which would be the Regency, not the Victorian era — they were known as spencers, and they did a great deal to make an unforgiving cut palatable to the fuller-figured women. (They’re doing the same job admirably today!) Look at the quasi-military jackets, with their horizontal rows of trim and loads of brass buttons. Anyone else think of Napoleon’s hussars, or Wellington’s staff? In fact, I just bought a cropped jacket with a stand collar, deep cuffs, and braided trim that — bar the color, too faded to be fashionable — could pass for a spencer cut a là militaire. I love the full-sleeved shirts with their high collars and lace trim; I like the velvets and the saturated colors and the deceptively prim lace trim.

Damn it, they’re just not Victorian!D

Remembering Hector

2006-01-30T11:38:00.000-08:00

This is another memorial post, one I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to write. Hector Diaz died a little more than a week ago, and I’m still not sure what I want to say. Hector was another really good person, an artist, a writer, the man who founded the local SF and comic book store, Jumpgate, and somebody I was proud to call a friend. He died of colon cancer. His diagnosis put our (very fledgling!) book group on indefinite hold, mostly because we couldn't imagine going on without his input. When Lisa was diagnosed with breast cancer (and the book group went into permanent retirement), Hector and Sharon were among the first people to step forward with help, advice, and support. Hearing from Hector what chemo had been like — unvarnished, but never unhopeful — was incredibly helpful to Lisa, particularly the little, practical things, like the suggestion that she put lavender or some other strong scent on a handkerchief to help override the hospital smells that made her gag. Because we were all going through hard times, I fell out of touch, surfacing now and then to send an email, half afraid to find out what was happening — but I will never forget Sharon showing up (in an incipient blizzard, too!) right before Lisa had to go to Dartmouth for yet another radiosurgery, to bring us soup and chili for when we got back. We almost overlapped at Dartmouth the last time, too, when Hector was admitted for a new treatment protocol, but our schedules got shifted, and we didn’t see him.

The thing everyone talked about at the memorial service was how Hector was a teacher. He worked with kids, he worked with adults, he worked with anybody who was willing to take the chance of being creative. He ran a writers’ night at the bookstore (and one of my most serious regrets is that I worked Wednesday nights for so long and couldn’t participate). And about 5 years ago, he asked me if I’d like to try writing a comic script, which he would illustrate; it would have to have something to do with a “jumpgate,” and the resulting comic would be sold through, and for, the store. I said sure, I’d be interested, but I had no idea where to start. So Hector showed me. He loaned me comics, showed me scripts, talked about how they connected; we bounced ideas around, and I went home to write. I gave him an outline, and he did some sketches, and then it was time to try a script. I read some more comics, and some more scripts, tried and failed and tried again to get my mind around what I was doing. I knew I needed to give Hector room to draw, but I also had to tell him what was in my mind in the important scenes, and at least give him something to jump off from.... And finally, I got it — it was almost literally a lightbulb going off, or a switch being thrown. I started writing, and it worked. I finished the script, and Hector said he could work with it. Oh, there were the usual revisions, and I’d given him a real challenge by making the main characters masked Censors who dressed in near-identical robes, but he said he liked it, and could work with it. Seeing the first few pages fleshed out, laid out in proper comic book style, was one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened to me. I’d gotten it, gotten the technique down well enough to communicate the story. He’d gotten it, taken my words and turned them into something I’d only partially imagined: it’s a kind of collaboration I’d never experienced before.

And then the cancer. And then Lisa got cancer. And somehow the comic never got finished. But when I think of Hector, all my memories will be illuminated by that glorious golden “wow” — the moment when I saw my words and his drawings merged into one story and realized I’d learned a new language.

You’ll be much missed, man.,

Ignorance and bliss

2006-01-23T12:03:00.000-08:00

The things you wish you’d known sooner....

The other night, Lisa and I were talking about childhood activities, and I mentioned how cool I thought it was that kids actually ice skate on the pond in the cemetery at the end of the street. She agreed that it was wonderful that the pond froze so reliably, and that the cemetery owners welcomed the families who come there, and I agreed - but what I thought was cool was that people really do ice skate on frozen ponds. This was something I read about in books, or saw in Currier and Ives prints, and here were kids from around the neighborhood, out there in their pink and lime green parkas, ice skating not in a rink but on real frozen water in the middle of a snow-covered field.

Lisa: that’s just “skate.” You don’t need to say “ice skate.”

Me: But then how do you know I don’t mean roller skating?

She gives me The Look. I try to remember not to say “ice skate” next time.

Lisa: Have you ever actually been skating?

Me: Yes! Twice! Once even at Rockefeller Center!

I was on a high school trip at the time, about 30 kids and chaperones on a bus trip from Little Rock to New York City over the Thanksgiving holiday. It was an adventure, for sure, but it’s not germane to this post.

Lisa: So what kind of skates did you wear?

Me: The ones they rented me....?

This is when I found out that there are two kinds of ice skates, hockey skates and figure skates. (And I may still have this wrong, so bear with me.) After cross-questioning, it was determined that I had been given figure skates, because they had the jagged teeth at the front of the blade. Hockey skates don’t. So, I asked, how do you stop on hockey skates?

And that’s when I had the real revelation. The little teeth on the front of a figure skate blade aren’t at all like the button at the front of a pair of roller skates (which are the brakes, at least on the old-fashioned, out-of-line variety). They really are for figure skating, for kicking off into those fancy jumps, and pivoting in spins, and stuff like that. To stop, you turn the blade sideways and slide to a stop in a spray of ice chips - which isn’t showing off at all, or at least not much, despite how cool it looks. You don’t tip your foot forward and drag the teeth in the ice. Doing that results in falling, usually flat on your face.

I just wish I’d found this out twenty years ago.

Conspiracy Theorists

2006-01-09T11:29:00.000-08:00

This morning, as I was walking the dog, I noticed a car (SUV, actually) parked in front of one of the apartment houses that fill the first block of our street. It had been ticketed - a miracle in and of itself, except it had probably been there all night - and as I smirked to myself, two guys and a girl come out of the apartment.

Girl: Omigod, we got a ticket!!!

Boy #1: It says, parking in a no parking zone. When did this become a no parking zone???

(All three look at battered sign on telephone post directly opposite them. It says, "No parking either side.")

Boy #2, with great confidence: They put up old-looking signs so you can't protest the ticket.

Honest to god, that's what happened.

The Best Presents

2006-01-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

I got a great present from my parents this year: the 2006 calendar published by in and support of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. (http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net if you’re interested.) Now, this is cool in a lot of ways, not least because the January photo shows a rabbit from the I.Q. Zoo in Hot Springs, a place I loved when I was little. This was a piano-playing rabbit, as opposed to Henry the Home Run Chicken, my personal favorite, but it dated from the time when we were going there a lot. (About Henry: you paid your money, a bell rang, and Henry came out. A ball came from somewhere in the innards of the machine - that whole set-up was a lot like a giant pinball machine, really - and Henry worked a lever that swung a bat. If he hit the ball, which he mostly did, he ran around the bases. If I remember correctly, there was information on how the animals were trained, which was on the reward system rather than with punishment, but I was more interested in watching Henry hit that baseball.)

There’s a lot more in the calendar that I remember in the same vague way. For example, the entry for December 4 reads “State Speaker of the House John Wilson stabbed and killed Representative J.J. Anthony on the House floor, 1837.” Now, I seem to remember that when my 7th grade civics class toured the Territoral Restoration (now the Historic Arkansas Museum), we were shown the room where it happened, which was the second floor of a tavern becauase that was where the legislature met, and were told that the legislature adjourned, reconvened downstairs as a court, and acquitted Wilson, though I don’t remember why....

And then there were all the things I’d never heard of, like the fact that Craighead County was founded on February 19, 1859, and named after the senator who opposed its establishment. Or that a “bazooka” was first of all a musical instrument invented by an Arkansan; the anti-tank weapon and the bubble gum were both named after the instrument, not the other way round. (Makes you wonder what it sounded like, doesn’t it?) Best of all, there was the Paragould Meteor, which fell to earth February 17, 1930.

I’ve already mentioned the project that’s growing out of my short story, “Mister Seeley,” which is about bootleggers in the 1930s, and the more I find out about the meteor - which exploded into three parts somewhere over Paragould; two parts were found, the larger of which sold for $3600, and the third disappeared completely - the more sure I am that the meteor has to feature somewhere in the novel. I don’t know how yet, exactly, but the unearthly quality of it, and the money to be made from it, seems to make it a perfect choice. And, as Lisa said, doesn’t “the Paragould Meteor” sound like a car??

In Memoriam

2006-01-01T07:42:00.000-08:00

This has been a tough week, beginning with the death of a good friend’s husband, and ending with his funeral. There are a lot of reasons to grieve here, starting with the simple fact that Walt was a really, really good man - Ren Faire costumer and performer and Klingon extraordinaire, and that just in his off hours - and ending with the selfish regret that he never had chance to convince me that Attack of the Clones actually was a decent movie. Plus there’s the fact that he and Barbara had been married only two years. Even the priest who officiated at the funeral acknowledged that this wasn’t fair.

Barbara did him proud at the wake. She brought in photos, hundreds of photos: Walter at various faires; Walter in Klingon garb; the two of them at their wedding, in beautiful formal wear and red clown noses; Walter as a Klingon grinch; the pair of them in Walter’s trademark Hawaiian shirts. She also brought in some of his costumes, and the prizes he’d won, and the acknowledgements from all the faires and conventions and groups he’d worked with. They filled the room, and so did his friends. The funeral was standing room only, which was as it should be.

Walter died waiting for a liver transplant. There are no guarantees, of course, but you can't help wondering. I’ve known at least two other people who had a liver transplant, and they’re both fine now. There just has to be a liver available. And there’s a shortage around here. At one point, they were even thinking of taking Walt to Florida where his odds might be better, but he got sicker, and that was no longer an option.

So I got out my wallet yesterday and made sure my driver’s license said “organ donor.” I told Lisa for the umpteenth time that if anything happened to me, make sure the hospital took any usable parts. And, since I’m not in a huge hurry to donate the irreplaceable bits, I went to the Red Cross site and found the next blood drive in the area. I figure it’s something.

Supersizing

2005-12-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

I’ve been somewhat skeptical of the recent fixation on “supersized” fast food meals. I mean, if you haven’t figured out that eating more of anything increases your caloric intake, you haven’t been paying attention… and if you choose to ignore that correlation, well, that’s your business. (I also don’t think you should be able to sue advertisers for seducing you into eating, but that’s another matter.) But I was taken aback a few Sundays ago, when Lisa and I went to a Friendly’s for breakfast for the first time in years.

Thing was, because of the Thanksgiving holiday, Lisa had radiation on a Sunday morning. So we figured we might as well treat ourselves to breakfast out, and decided to stop at the Friendly’s on the way home. It was a pleasant experience, frankly: the kids who were waiting tables and working the counter were nice, the restaurant was busy but not overwhelmed, and it was clear we were welcome to take as long as we liked. Plus any place that sets a pot of coffee on the table (good coffee, at that) just to start things off is my kind of breakfast place.

But what really startled me was the basic breakfast plates. All but one of them featured three eggs. Three eggs! Now, I’ll have a three-egg omelet for supper once in a while, but three sunny-side up eggs, plus sausage, toast, and home fries is a LOT of food, and all the basic breakfast plates had some variation on that three-eggs-plus. Lisa, being a better menu reader than I, finally found the two-egg version. The menu emphasized it as two eggs, two sausages (or bacon or ham), two pancakes or two slices of french toast, plus home fries for fifty cents more, but if you looked closely you found that you could get two eggs, two sausages, two slices of plain toast, and home fries, and still get the combo price. That was more what I had in mind, but, because I didn’t read as carefully as Lisa did, I got the three-egg version. With four sausage links. I love sausage.

Now, to be fair, I doubt those were jumbo eggs, or even large - my guess would be medium at best. Which means that (a) the restaurant probably saved some significant money and (b) three eggs wasn’t as enormous as it seemed. But it was still a lot of food, fine for a Sunday brunch, but not something I’d want to do every day.

As I said, I’m not all that excited about supersizing. But it does strike me as strange that, given the national fixation on obesity, a popular restaurant chain can increase the number of eggs it offers in a standard combo plate — and can do very well for itself by doing so. Clearly, people want and enjoy the larger plate (and I’ll agree it was darn tasty) and either they’re not the people who are obsessing about their weight or they’re the people that are being obsessed about. Because there seems to be a correlation between class and weight: “those people” don’t eat right, don’t cook right, are raising our insurance rates by actually needing health care, which of course they wouldn’t need if they were like us and lived right.

Part of me says I’m making much too much of this. The folks who go to Friendly’s are mostly like Lisa and me: this is an occasional treat, and three eggs once every few years, or even every few months, probably isn’t going to hurt anyone. These breakfasts are probably healthier than a lot of fast(er) food outlets’ offerings, anyway, and they taste good and the restaurant employs a whole bunch of unusually pleasant people. But another part of me worries that this is a kind of set up: you’re encouraged to save money by buying more food at a better price, but you’re stigmatized if you do it too often and get fat. And the thing that worries me most of all is that the people who are doing the judging — the people writing the ads and casting the popular TV shows and movies — wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like that, and that attitude factors into their judgement. Sure, they’ll sell you three eggs, and write the menu that makes that seem like the only choice, but they’ll make fun of you for it, forever.

E pur si muove, or, Revenge of the Reservoir

2005-10-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

Among the many joys of dealing with cancer is the pleasure of becoming acquainted with new bits of medical technology. Since Lisa’s diagnosis, we’ve met the various infusion pumps (and the formulae used to program them), the port or VAD that made the first chemo _so_ much easier, not to mention multiple MRI machines, including a portable version accessed via loading dock — try that one in New Hampshire in January! — CT scans, bone scans, a thalium scan (the tech was really good at explaining that one), plus a host of things like butterfly needles and sadistic blood pressure machines that won’t do their job on the first or even the second try. (Those things squeeze really, really hard....)

However, the device currently causing extra fun and games is the Selker reservoir through which Lisa’s intrathecal chemo has been administered, and from which cerebrospinal fluid will be sampled. Now, her primary oncologist wanted an Omaya reservoir, which seems to be the most common variety of port used for intrathecal chemo, but for some reason, the neurosurgeon at Dartmouth-Hitchcock inserted a Selker reservoir instead. (Actually, one of the nurses mentioned that the Selker is lower profile than the Omaya, which does make a cosmetic different when it’s in your temple.) We’re not totally sure that he communicated this fact, either.

What he definitely didn’t communicate was any of the specs on the Selker, so that, for five treatments, Lisa’s primary oncologist had trouble accessing the port. (Imagine being repeatedly stuck in the scalp with a needle.... Not fun.) The first week, she was sent to radiology to be accessed under flouroscope, and the oncologist marked the spot with indelible marker. However, the next week, he still had trouble. Once we got home, Lisa commented that she thought the thing had shifted — it felt to her it was in a different spot — but I said, oh, no, that surely couldn’t be the case. We both agreed that didn’t seem likely.

And yet.... The primary oncologist, who deals with these things every week, kept having trouble finding it. The more I looked at it, the more I thought the bump was a little different. Lisa said she was almost sure it had shifted. Greg the nurse kept shaking his head when he prepped it. So after we had to move treatment by one day because they couldn’t find room in radiology to access the port, all the doctors independently did further research on the Selker.

And guess what? It does move! Unlike the Omaya, it’s not stitched into place, but shifts every so slightly on its tether. This is the first thing that has made me slightly queasy in Lisa’s entire treatment, though we are assured that it can’t actually come loose. So the access point is different every time.

Of course there’s a solution: Lisa will go to radiology, get the reservoir accessed, and then go to oncology for her main appointment. This does involve walking through the halls with a needle sticking out of her head (literally!), but the radiology folks have gotten good at disguising it with a bandage. (The first time, though, they didn’t cover it, and poor Lisa had to walk through a waiting room full of horrified people, smiling and saying, “don’t you love my new punk jewelry?”) And it is much, much less painful.

I suppose it’s really ungracious to complain. After all, the reservoir, Selker or not, moveable or not, is doing its job. The methotrexate has worked: there is no sign of cancer in the CSF, and the chemo has been discontinued unless and until the cancer comes back. For now, the Selker will be used only to take samples of CSF, and it’s one hell of a lot easier than a spinal tap.

But who’d expect the thing to move??

Cultivating Serendipity

2005-09-05T14:10:00.000-07:00

I’ve talked before (in my non-fiction book Creating the Heavens: Writing the Science Fiction Novel) about the idea of cultivating serendipity - the notion that writers should place themselves in the way of possible ideas whenever they can. And I also have to admit it can be hard. After all, how can you know where a good idea will come from, so that you can get to it — and if you do know, you’d already be there. So I talked kind of vaguely about being willing to try new things, to experience stuff that doesn’t immediately appeal to you, and I think that still applies.

However, a couple of weeks ago I experienced a different kind of serendipity — the next step in the process, if you will. We were in Saratoga Springs, NY, visiting friends who are involved in racing and therefore seeing lots and lots of horses (and famous jockeys, trainers, etc., which was extremely cool). Lisa, knowing that I’m less involved in the horse scene than she is, kindly checked out other options, and found that there is an Auto Museum in the town as well. (Hey, it’s all horsepower, right?) We went originally hoping to see Shirley Mulrooney’s dragster, which the website said was on exhibit. When we got to town, we found out that there was a huge Bugatti exhibit just opening.

In many ways, this was even better. I had just sold a short story called “Mr. Seeley” (to the Haworth Press collection So Fey, coming out at the end of 2006, last I heard) which involved bootleggers, the Seelie Court, and a car that might be magic, all in 1930s Arkansas, and I’d based the car in part on Bugattis I’d seen in photos. Plus the short story is in the process of turning into a novel — maybe minus the magic entirely, maybe shifted more into the magical-realist school — so this was on-going research rather than worrying about what I might have done wrong.

The Bugattis were indeed wonderful. They are amazing beautiful cars, as much works of sculpture as a means of transportation. And, yes, there was one that was probably a better sculpture than it was a car: it had the most gorgeous rivet-studded fin, like the crest on a gladiator’s helmet, running down the middle of the hood and top and falling down over the trunk and off the back bumper. Unfortunately, the back window was too small to see out of, the side mirrors were impossible to see, and the camber was so severe that the car was hard to steer. Not terribly practical, but lovely to look at. It looked like something out of a ‘30s sci-fi serial, or Aquaman’s helmet: fabulous visual inspiration.

Then we went upstairs. And there, between a 1960s short track race car and a wood-wheeled car built in New York state, was... a Franklin. A 1928 Franklin Airman, to be precise, one that had been owned by Charles Lindbergh himself. That’s cool enough, but.... When I was working on “Mr. Seeley,” I had to give Joe Farr, the older bootlegger, a car of his own: a good car, something a bit fancy, preferably a name that evoked the period better than Ford or Buick or Oldsmobile. The Franklins looked and sounded good, they were expensive but within his means, so I gave him a Franklin, and implied it was late ‘20s. I’d never seen the interior of a Franklin, or even a good shot of the nose; the only photo I had was a small black and white side shot. And here was Joe’s car, ready to be explored.

I must have spent 20 minutes, maybe longer, just walking around the car, peering in every window, jotting down every detail of the dashboard. I sketched the delicate pinstriping that ran along the edges of the hood and door (Joe’s car had that pinstriping, but I hadn’t known real Franklins did), and the boxy trunk — a real trunk — strapped on the shelf above the back bumper. I craned my neck to see into the back seat, sniffed hard to catch the smell of the cracked leather, checked the choke settings and the funny levers that opened and closed the upper part of the windshield. The people I was with gave up and went downstairs to sit at the picnic tables outside. I kept looking and making notes until a woman from the museum asked if she could help me. I told her the situation, but unfortunately she didn’t have any more information on the car.

So, finally, I went on downstairs, leaving Lindbergh’s Franklin — Joe’s car — sitting where it could look down on the Bugattis. It wasn’t on the website, and it was pure luck, pure serendipity, that I found it. It was even better luck that it was the car I hoped it would be.

Oh, yes, and in the gift shop, I found, marked down to $1.95, a catalog of all known cars built between 1909 and 1929. No pictures, but all the makes, models, and variants, laid out with the original costs and equipment supplied.

Serendipity.

Seeing Kokopelli

2005-08-26T06:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, I had another optical migraine. These are essentially harmless - well, I’m not quite sure what to call them, but I’ve been assured that they are harmless. They’re a bit more than an optical illusion, and less than a full-scale hallucination. This latest one was pretty typical: a C-shaped curve made up of tiny overlapping triangles that fizzed and shimmered like the fillament at the center of a light bulb. It was thicker at the top, thinner at the bottom; it hung in front of my eyes for about twenty minutes, then slowly drifted up and out of my field of vision.

The first time I had one of these, I was alone at a part time job. I stared at it for maybe a minute, admiring the Art Deco pattern of the little triangles, impressed by the shimmering, electric colors, and then realized that it wasn’t going away. In fact, it was getting bigger and brighter, and I couldn’t see my computer screen through it, so perhaps a call to the eye doctor was in order. Fortunately, she has experienced them herself, and was able, after a quick exam, to reassure me that this was nothing to worry about.

These days, in fact, I kind of look forward to them. Since they tend to appear at the end of periods of emotional stress, I think of them sort of as a reward for getting through whatever has been going on, and, as long as they don’t interfere with driving, I tend to bliss out and watch them float by.

However, I’m also a bit curious about the whole phenomenon. Right after the first one, I googled “optical migraine” and found a definition on an eye health site that showed a drawing that was practially identical to what I’d just seen. (There’s a lot out there, including this site, http://student.santarosa.edu/~aanderso/midterm/alex%20migraine%20art.htm, which shows paintings done by various well-known artists that include images that could have come directly from an optical migraine. The one at the very bottom of the page is closest to the ones I see.) The more I read, the more it seemed that everyone sees something quite similar, and that it’s a biological manifestation rather than a mental one, so I immediately began to wonder how people had described it in previous periods. For example, to my modern eye, the shimmering colors look like an electric light; what would someone living before electricity compare them to? You’d have to call it some kind of supernatural vision - even knowing what they are, they feel weird, wonderful, and a bit otherworldly. Ezekiel’s chariot? Constantine’s crosses? Who knows?

But this last one.... As I stared at it, I realized that in shape it was very like the now-ubiquitous Kokopelli of Southwestern myth. The curve, the thickness at the upper end, the trailing edge that could suggest legs, even the way the shape breaks as it floats away, everything could be interpreted as being Kokopelli. Of course, I’m not arguing that this is the origin of the Kokopelli shape or myth, it’s just what the shape looked like to me.

And that’s what I saw, this time. The hunchback fluteplayer, drifting across my vision, calling attention to himself and to the things outside the norm. May I see many more!!

Back on the Roller-Coaster

2005-07-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

When Lisa was first diagnosed with breast cancer - was it two years ago? three years ago? - the first thing the mental health nurse said was, "this is going to be an emotional roller-coaster, so you need to prepare yourselves."

Well, there really isn't any way to prepare - it's more a case of bracing yourself, kind of like a roller-coaster, when you come to think about it - but we muddled through somehow. Lisa had chemo, then the bilateral mastectomy (just in case the healthy one decided to go bad), then radiation. The chemo worked: pathology showed complete pathological resolution. We felt - not safe, but pretty good.

Then she started having trouble with her vision, eventually traced to what was believed to be a sanctuary site metastasis nuzzling up against the brain stem and pressing on a vision center there. She was deemed a perfect candidate for stereotactic radiosurgery, so we trekked up to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and did the procedure. It's very sfnal: the first day, they do mapping MRIs and other tests, the second day the computers plan the surgery while the patient goes and does tourist things, and the third day the machines zap the tumor - the last of which takes about 40 minutes, half of which is a dry run to make sure the machines are moving freely. Again, the radiosurgery worked - for a while.

This December, the tumor grew again. It was re-treated with radiation, delivered this time in multiple fractions, and again it seemed to shrink. However, at the beginning of June, the MRI showed that the tumor had grown again. This time, it had moved slightly, so that it was surgically accessible. Yep, it was time for brain surgery.

(Oh, yes, and in the middle of all this, the sight in her left eye started to fade. First the color vision went, then vision in general, sight darkening from the bottom up, like water filling up a pool. We consulted opthamologists, but didn't get a solid answer, not even whether it was connected to the cancer or not.)

So, June 27, we went back to Dartmouth-Hitchcock for the surgery. My mother came along, as well as Lisa's sisters, and we all sat in the waiting room for eight and a half hours - 6 1/2 of that Lisa was actually under anesthetic - until at last the surgeon (head of neurosurgery - we can't complain about the level of care!) came out to give us a good news/bad news set of results.

It turns out that the tumor by the brain stem wasn't cancer at all. It was a benign meningioma, and had probably been there most of her life. Most of it was successfully removed, scraped off nerves that control swallowing and hearing, and the remainder could be left alone, as it probably wouldn't grow large enough to be a problem for another 40 years. However, on that morning's MRI, they found a second, tiny tumor - luckily on the same surgical pathway. It was a breast cancer metastasis, but they'd removed it completely. Things were looking good again, even if Lisa's recovery was slowed by recurring nausea caused by messing around in the part of the cerebellum that controls the gag reflex. (Yes, that's probably as nasty as you imagine.)

And then... The last test came back, showing cancer cells in the cerebrospinal fluid. Nothing anywhere else, just in that one - kinda crucial! - area. And that means intrathecal chemotherapy, chemo (methotrexate, in this case) dripped directly into the brain's ventricular spaces, the part that I've also seen called the arachnid space. This meant, in turn, a second brain surgery in less than a month, this one to install a port to allow the chemo to be injected without requiring a spinal tap. (The first bit of good news in the whole mess was that they could also take samples of the fluid using the same port - no spinal taps required at any point!)

So, back to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and, what with one thing and another, we had what is probably the worst week in the entire cancer saga. Lisa was still throwing up, got dehydrated, felt awful - two hours from home, in a hotel 15 minutes from the hospital - and still had to have the surgery. Once it was in, and she'd had a few liters of IV fluids, she started to feel better, and we managed a couple of good days before she started chemo.

It is true that intrathecal chemo isn't as bad as general, whole-body chemo. However, it's still not a lot of fun. (Plus the folks at Dartmouth didn't bother to inform her primary oncologist of where they'd actually put the port: not a moment to inspire confidence in any of us! She had to make a quick detour to radiology to be sure of where it was.) The process involves lying very still in a quiet, sterile room while the chemo is very slowly injected into her brain. Then she lies quietly for a little longer, presumably to give the drug a chance to migrate evenly along the spine, and then she goes home. Then she waits to see if she needs anti-nausea meds (yep) and/or something for a headache (yep again). Plus she's still throwing up now and then from the original surgery, which isn't exactly healed yet.

And she'll do this once a week until either the cancer cells disappear or the drug stops working.

(Oh, and the vision thing? That probably is the cancer. It seems that, if you look very, very closely at the last MRI, you can see something on the appropriate optic nerve. It's so small the radiographer didn't call it, but the neurosurgeon thinks he sees it. The chemo should kill it, if it is a lesion, but there's no knowing whether the sight will return.)

So we're back to where we were in the beginning, wondering if the chemo will work, waiting to get the next test results to find out if it's working, waiting for what we hope will be the right answers.

The Fast and the Gratuitous

2005-05-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

I was reading Jayski last week (doesn't everybody?), and ran across an review of a book called "Against Time and Death," by Brock Yates. (See the review at: http://www.racingstalkers.com/Pages/Opinion/Matt/MM_5-17.html) It's about open-wheel racing in the mid-1950s, a particularly fatal period for the sport, and, frankly, it sounds like an interesting if flawed book. Except for one thing, I might have bought it, and that can't be blamed on Yates.

This is the review's last sentence: "Because of Yates’ credentials, Against Time and Death ought to be available in most good bookstores, even the ones managed by tree-hugging, granola-munching, Starbucks-sipping, pony-tailed, Birkenstock-wearing poetry majors in Yankee-Land."

Now what the heck was the point of that? As an expatriate Southerner, living up here in Yankee-land, all it did was make me decide not to buy the book. And that's the ultimate in bad reviewing! It doesn't say anything about the book, it isn't particularly funny, and all it does is annoy anybody who isn't just like the author.

Which I guess probably IS the point. (Though it's possible, I suppose, that it would be funny if I read the site regularly.) It's a classic "if you're not with me, you must be against me" statement, and it seems to me that there's waaay too much of that going around right now.

I work part time at a hair salon, and a young woman came in last week upset because of what had happened on the way in. It was a rainy day, she was wearing a Yankees cap, and some kid - college age, certainly old enough to know better - had walked across the street to step in front of her and say, "You suck! The Yankees suck, and you suck!" As she said, you kind of expect that if you wear a Yankees cap to Fenway, and you're ready for it, but not just walking down the street, even if we are in an outpost of Red Sox Nation.

At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, when did this level of aggression become acceptable behavior - even common discourse? I'd like to blame it on the current political climate. After all, you can argue that the Senate rules debate is about essentially the same thing: we are right, you are wrong, and there is no place for actual debate (as opposed to rhetorical posturing, like Sen. Santorem comparing his colleagues to Hitler) or nor any need for compromise. I think that talk radio probably bears a portion of the blame, since ranting and raving seems to bring better ratings than sober discussion. Being an old-school Democrat, I'd like to blame the Republicans in general, but that would be as gratuitous as anything I've complained about - and one can legitimately point to some of the '60s leftists as displaying exactly the same attitudes.

In fact, when you think about it, this aggressive hostility forms a consistent strand of American political life, from McCarthy to Prohibition to the Know-Nothings and the Klan through writers like Upton Sinclair and all the way back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where - to protect the people of God in this fearsome and hostile new world - dissent could not be tolerated, but had to be actively sought out, confronted, and the offenders chastised or expelled from the polity. That's part of the history that led to the whole concept of the tyranny of the majority, and to the American enshrinement of protections for minorities and dissenters, and the tension between the two points of view is part of what has made American politics so peculiarly dynamic over the last 200+ years.

Politics aside, though, it feels as though we've made a big shift toward aggression and away from what used to be called common civility. We seem to be losing the understanding that other people are not necessarily us, and that it's OK for them not to be.

I'm not sure where this comes from, but as an SF writer, I can't help looking at the changes in personal technology. With the advent of cellphones, iPods, personalized services of all kind, each one of us moves in an expanded bubble of self: this is MY phone, that connects ME with MY world. This is MY music. This is MY blog, MY favorites list, MY website. Characters in novels are defined by what's on their iPods; sharing music becomes as much as an expression of who we are than as it is a gift of something someone else might like. We play games in which we can't always tell which players are real and which are computer generated, and for the purpose of the game it doesn't matter, so you can treat them all the same - and do whatever you have to do to win. And when that bubble hits something that deflates it, it hurts, because we've gotten so used to moving in that world of total agreement that we no longer expect dissent. And hurt people sometimes hit back.

It's one thing to discover, say, that your best friend absolutely disagrees with your deeply-felt stance on abortion or the Iraq war. That is scary, because here's someone you know and respect who challenges your deeply held belief. You can't not listen, or if you can, it changes everything between the two of you. Even if you do listen, it still changes everything. Hurt is almost inevitable.

It's another to be so shocked by the sight of a Yankees hat that you have to come over and insult the wearer.

And it's still another to attack readers of a book review. Yes, I'm sure the reviewer assumed that no one in that category ("tree-hugging... poetry majors in Yankee-land") would read the review, but that's exactly the sort of assumption that gets you into trouble. In this case, he lost a sale for a book he admired. Not a big deal, in the grand scheme of things, but not his intention.

Remember Hitchhiker's Guide? The galaxy is really, really big. Maybe, just maybe, we all need to remember that this world is big, too.

Sunday Services

2005-05-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

We went to the Church last night, for the first time in 2 years. Not church with a small "c" but THE Church, the Stone Church in Newmarket, one of the best clubs in the area. It was Jon Nolan's CD release party, the first CD released by any of the former Say Zuzus, and to add to the good times, Cliff Murphy, the other Say Zuzu guitarist and vocalist, was the opening act. The music was great (Tim McCoy on bass may look like he wandered in from some other band, but he's exactly what the sound needs), the CD was definitely worth the money, and it was great to see old friends. And even better to be getting back to some of the things we used to do.

But there have been a lot of changes. The last time we were at the Church, it was about a week before Lisa was diagnosed with breast cancer. There were rumors that the Church was going to close: the old management was tired, or maybe not making enough money; somebody said the neighbors were complaining, and somebody else said they were going to develop the property. But for that one night, everything was the same. The music was good, the crowd was appreciative, and the Church was the same dark, dingy, cozy dive it had always been, at least in the 3-4 years I'd been going there. It stank of smoke, of course, and if you asked for wine the cute dreadlocked waitress had to go dig it out of somewhere in the back, but it was the Church, and that was that. They booked good bands, of every possible variety - Say Zuzu, of course, and Diesel Doug and the Longhaul Truckers; Genderfits and Scissorfight and Spirit Varnish and lots, lots more, including ones you've probably even heard of - and that was what counted.

Since that night.... Well, first there was the cancer, which meant that we didn't have the energy and then, later, the money, to go out much. (Even with excellent insurance, the stupid disease is expensive!) And then the Church closed, to reopen as.... The Stone Church, again, but different. No smoking. A kitchen - a good kitchen. 7PM shows on Sunday nights. Windows, for god's sake! Three big windows that actually let in daylight! Why, come midsummer, there's going to be light still coming in when the opening acts start! Hell, you can even buy advance tickets on line for the big events.

These days, I'm not much for change. We've had a lot of changes lately, and a lot of them have been negative. So when I found out that I couldn't afford tickets for Ralph Stanley last month (yes, that Ralph Stanley; I told you you'd have heard of some of the bands), I wasn't all that upset. I wasn't sure I wanted to see what had been done to the Church, despite the fact that Jon was now the booking agent, and he swore it was all good. But last night, with the CD release, we had to go.

And I'm glad we did. Yeah, it's different - I still can't get over the windows! Or, for that matter, driving home at 10:30 instead of 1:30. But, you know, it's nice to be awake this morning. It was nice to get a good meal instead of eating a bag of potato chips to kill the 2 AM god-I'm-tired muchies. It was nice not to reek of smoke when I got up this morning - and nice not to have to take extra asthma meds, something I'd forgotten about until Lisa reminded me! I didn't visit the bathroom this trip, but I understand I can do that now without fear that the plumbing will stop working - or, worse, have already stopped working without anyone putting up a note....

The main thing is, the music is still the same. It's strong, loud, unapologetic; it's sweaty, hard-working, danceable, and it's the reason for the Church. Everything else... yes, that's changed, but the Church is still there. The music is still there. And, by god, Lisa and I will be there, too.

Say amen, somebody!