Month: June 2021

Somewhere, in a notebook from when I was maybe 12 or 13 which, if the fates are merciful, has gotten eaten by Portuguese rats (last found in the potato cellar at mom’s house, with a ton of my other stuff from that time. In a box. Note I didn’t bring it with me. No complaints) was a phrase penned with great solemnity by adolescent Sarah: The important thing is not to be happy. The important thing is to be useful for something.

Now, look, it wasn’t even a bad idea for a creature caught in a vice grip of hormones to fixate on. I mean, not so long as I only applied it to myself (and I only did.) It gave me something more useful to do than focusing on what made me happy, particularly since at 13 happiness is a moving target, and a thing of passing state of mind. Something that doesn’t last, and has nothing to do with what adult-me comprehends as happiness.

It was also a key to … becoming who I wanted to be. After all to be useful, you have to have practical skills, right? It probably led me into languages, when I could easily have studied something I could do in my sleep, like philosophy. Mind you, languages haven’t been impressively useful in my life, but that’s because I took a sharp sideways turn and chose another fate. If I’d stayed in Portugal, it was a practical and useful degree. (Even if I didn’t like it.)

It also led to things like learning to keep house (more or less in the face of mom’s baffled protests, since I was on a college track and college track means “never having your hands in dishwater.”) and cook, and how to make at least some things.

No, the problem with that maxim is when you take it out of the real of trying to shape your own character. Or of course when you take it to excess. (Excess, me? Don’t be ridiculous. Moderation is my middle name. My very occluded middle name. Spelled in invisible ink. At midnight. In an alien alphabet.) When you take it to excess, you’ll torture yourself trying to be useful, get upset when you have to take a day off because you’re sick/tired/depressed, and generally treat yourself like crap. Maybe it’s better than being useless, but speaking for a friend — a very close and personal friend who shares the space behind my eyes — you’d have to look at it from outside. Because being a neurotic mess who routinely fails at self-care has its own price. As do my occasional total depressive shut downs when the bitch who runs my subconscious decides that writing isn’t important and won’t change anything, and I’m a useless waste of breath, because that’s all I know how to/can do. (And no, the bitch isn’t amenable to my pointing out that on various occasions books — written by others — have saved my sanity and once or twice my life. She’ll just sneer I’m not Heinlein or Pratchett or any of those other “real” writers. They might be good for something, while I’m mostly good for occupying space.)

However the real evil of it is when you turn it outward and start applying it to… well, everything else.

Today I read one of the most shocking headlines I’ve ever read. “What are pandas good for?” And then the entire article went on to evaluate how each species isn’t or isn’t good for the “environment.”

What in the name of holy fandago is that shit? pardon my Scroladian. First of all, when has the “environment” become something away and aside from the species inhabiting it, and some ‘scientist’ or idiot with too much time on his hands and a bureaucratic job gets to decide what is good for it or isn’t? It’s like they imagine themselves priests of the “environment” interpreting its needs.

Which is the other side of this: when you or anyone else in power decides what is good for something, and what is good for nothing, it’s going to end in tears. When the purpose of everything — particularly living things — has to be justified, it means the default mode in your head is non-existence, and everything that exists has to justify its existence.

It means that your “environment” ideally is nothing. Not even rocks, because rocks exist.

At which point I have to ask…. Where precisely do you come from? The void, without form or being? May we request you go back there, then?

The worst regimes of mankind came from people who decided who was useful and what they were useful for.

In the entire sorry history of tyranny, mass graves and suffering caused by such regimes, there is one thing that was never recorded: a decision that made sense or was justified by its results. Unless of course, the results desired were death and “void without form or being.”

It doesn’t matter what they considered useful, or preferable, or what philosophy they used to justify giving someone the power to choose, the result is always death in batch lots, both for those slotted to die, and for those who die later, because those people knew how to do things like raise food, and int he dark ages that come after the massacre, no one knows that.

Utilitarianism has been applied to people for my entire life. And those of us who know history and have more than one functioning brain cell, have screamed against it. Because sometimes, someone’s entire life might seem like a waste, until that crucial moment when their being there keeps a car from running over the much shorter kid they’d never see; or their lending a helping hand keeps someone alive another day, who in turn keeps someone alive another day; or their lending a ear makes someone’s life burden a little easier, and allows the other person to create something that improves lives for millions.

The world and life is a complex tapestry. There is no one who has perfect knowledge of it. And no one who can decide who needs to be here and who doesn’t, who is useful and who isn’t.

Heck, we saw during the covidiocy that the decision on what was essential and who was essential were a comedy of errors. The dairy plants were essential, but the factory that made the essential filter to make that milk legal to sell wasn’t, for instance.

How much more difficult is it to decide if someone should be alive at all or not. And why should anyone?

Over a lifetime of arguing with friends who are abortion advocates, the most hilarious of arguments adduced by their friends is that it’s better for an unwanted baby to never get to be born, because they’d be unwanted, which means unhappy and probably criminal and destructive. (My husband and I would very much like to show you our middle fingers. We have TWO complete sets. Sure our life is not unalloyed bliss, but by and large we do better than most. And better than a lot of extravagantly “wanted” children.) Coming down on “these people aren’t useful because they won’t be happy” is perhaps the most hypocritical weasely position in the history of weasels. Who are you to judge who is happy? Or what leads to happiness? Or even what is happiness for someone else. There have been times when sitting on a sunny chair by the window and reading a not totally repulsive book was happiness to me.

But applying that to entire species?

I’m used to the insanity of applying it to humans. “Humans are bad for the environment” say the half educated morons, as though humans weren’t natural creatures and as such part of the environment. (Yes, natural. Last I checked I’m not even a tiny bit unnatural. No preservatives or colorants went into making me, last I checked.)

But now apparently the crazy idiots (do they still call themselves greens? I don’t think they like plants very much) who want to kill the environment in order to save it are extending this to other species.

I will make a prediction that before another year passes we will see articles on how some species should be “eliminated” to “save the Earth.”

And of course it will be species like pandas which are cute, and relatively inoffensive. Though I suspect they’ll start with apes first, because they’re most similar to humans, and we know these asshats hate humans most of all.

We’re going to swing from “ALL SPECIES AND THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE SPECIES MUST BE PRESERVED AT ALL COSTS” to “ANY SPECIES THAT ISN’T USEFUL MUST DIE.”

I have no idea who they think they are to decide whether a species is needed or not, or whether in the vast, unimaginable panoply of the Earth or even the Universe it might not be a panda, or a naked mole rat, or perhaps a sloth who provides the final piece of the puzzle, be it psychological or physical that propels humans (and with it all of Earth life) to the stars, perhaps filling a desolate and empty universe with life and purpose.

I suggest next time they start intoning in polysyllabic words about how a species is or isn’t “necessary” for “the environment” we take them to the nearest zoo and tip them into the tiger pit, thereby allowing them to attain their highest purpose in life.

And if there is no zoo in your area, a landfill will do. The rats are small but very industrious.

Or at least I suggest we take them to that location and suggest this could be their utility. Make them wake up before it’s too late.

Because the poisonous idea that one person, or even a group of them gets to dictate what person, what animal and what rock has purpose, and what should be destroyed is obscene.

And it consumes everything till nothing remains. Because in the end, in the vastness and emptiness of chaos, nothing is useful for anything.

Sure. Perhaps they are tools, and as such only good for one thing. But anyone else, including pandas has purposes they can’t even guess. Even if it’s (just) sitting in a patch of sun, gnawing on bamboo, while a little kid watches them enthralled.

Before we get off the ground on this post, let’s establish that no, no one creates anything ex nihilo. Or as one of the prime examples of the people we’ll be talking about said “you didn’t build that.” (Turns out he’d stolen that phrase from one of our current afflictions as is, and she’d probably stolen it from someone else. Which is rather a telling point.) That phrase is in fact at the crux of the divide in America and probably a bigger problem than any other, because I think the others flow out of it.

None of us creates anything out of clear nothing. For instance, in my work I use words, and that’s before getting to the computers and networks that allow me to distribute it. Maybe there was a pre-human somewhere at the dawn of time, who made up the words so he could tell a story. Maybe. I find that somewhat hard to believe. Language tends to come by accretion and use. Not “Hey, look, I created a whole new language and you’re supposed to learn it.” (In fact, I’m fairly sure that’s a mental illness. Or a sign of being a very gifted young kid. My sons tried this trick a number of times.) Particularly if there is no concept of language.

But all that is to our purpose nothing. Given that we start out as humans with language, and that there is a fund of stories we were told and on which we can draw for inspiration and structure, there is a vast amount of creativity you can employ in writing a story.

It can be — and sometimes even is — something completely new (if written with no known structure, these are also usually very bad. Not always, but usually.); it can be something that is new of its kind; or it can be a rehashing of a story that’s been told a million times, this time with a big difference; or a small difference; or no difference at all, just told anew.

All of these involve different levels of creativity. There is another level of creativity that is sort of down or sideways from there which is “Assembly story” or “paint by numbers” (though paint by numbers normally refers to following without much inspiration and can result in weirdly compelling stories, so we’ll call it “assembly story.”) This is more like creating a toy from a kit, or embroidering on a fabric that’s marked. There is work but no real creativity involved.

If you are saying “Ahah, Hollywood” ont he last three (from rehashing a story on) you’re not wrong. It’s also the vast majority of traditional publishing.

There might be a reason for that. And I mean a neurological level reason.

I know I have said that the left are the “Good Boys and Girls.” Understand I say this with derision and not derision at morality. They don’t really have morality. Or if they do it’s not traditional morality. They are guided mostly by “want to fit in” and “want to look good for Sempai.” So, they’re those annoying kids in school who were always “behaving exactly the way teacher said to” even when it made no sense or was annoying. Also, they were the ones who would turn on us when we expressed doubts or asked questions.

I never really thought about it, except for the (understandable for someone of my stamp) desire to give them a good thumping behind the bike shed. Not that I did, unless they really upped their game to tattle telling or physically messing with me or those under my protection. I’ve said it before, what keeps me from being a terror is that I’m too lazy. And besides, the schools never even had a bike shed. But I did sneer at them a lot, with curled lip, and took the opportunity — real, imaginary or created — to slipt he verbal knife in. Not that they cared. They were in it for Sempai. Or virtue signaling. Or self admiration.

What had never occurred to me before is: What if they’re that way because they can’t imagine another way of being? “Can’t imagine” being the operative words in that sentence.

You see, recently — take that as the last three years — I’ve been getting weirded out by one, very particular form of trolling. I see it on this blog, and most recently I saw it at another blog, whose owner, once wrote a novel (though that’s neither his profession nor his main thing in life.)

The attack goes something like this “Why would I believe your analysis. You’re a NOVELIST.”

In my case, they have been known to take that further to “you write fantasy.”

A friend says — and he’s not wrong — that they will use anything to dismiss a POV they don’t like. Yah. Sure, they do. And they have.

But that one is a particularly bizarre one.

Why would the fact that one writes fantasy for a living — or that one ONCE wrote a mainstream novel — mean that one cannot trust any analysis from that person, including number or sociological analysis?

If you dig down, what they’re accusing us of is this: You live in a fantasy world, so you don’t speak from reality.

This is bizarre, because of course we don’t live in a fantasy world.

Look, as most of my fans know, I prefer science fiction, even when it’s mostly so far in the future there is little “real science” because “it’s maybe possible in the future.” BUT that’s neither here nor there. I can write about people who change into animals. That doesn’t mean I THINK I CAN CHANGE INTO AN ANIMAL. I mean, sure we joke about it or play-tend about it in comments all the time, but we are not that. We do understand the rules of the physical world we live in.

Or take darkships. I am quite, QUITE aware we have neither flying cars nor some kind of energy weapon that performs outside known physics, nor anti-grav nor genetic engineering. I mean, dude, seriously. WHY wouldn’t I be.

Sure, I can sit down and spin out a world quite different from our own. And? That doesn’t mean I don’t know what our world is. One could argue I really need to know what our world is, and understand cause and effect really well before I know how to make a world that reads plausible to ANYONE.

And once I started thinking about it, I started remembering other instances of the left not seeming able to figure out what “creating something” means.

Like, you know, the idiot on the left who did a dive into my books and psychoanalyzed it as though my female characters were all me. (And for those who read me, yes, he thought both Athena and Dyce were me. Not to mention Kyrie, who is rock bottom practical.) He then proceeded to deduce what I wanted in a man from it. Like, because Kit and Thena have a telepathic bond, that is REALLY what I want. (Yes, it was useful for plot at that time and in that place. And I usually feel guilty when I use the convenient. OTOH, well. It’s part of the world building and is used later.) Or the fact that Dyce gets involved with a police officer means I really want an authority figure. (Seriously, dude, read some of the genre. It’s a trope.) And I don’t remember what his major dysfunction was about Kyrie, but you know, it was again stupidly based on the idea all my main characters — particularly the ones written first person — are me.

It never seemed to occur to him “why should they be?” or even that these three women are all completely different. (And apparently he couldn’t fit Luce into the picture, so he ignored A Few Good Men. Possibly because my being a six foot six scarred blond male was too much to understand, but it had to be me, right? because no one can make anything up, right?)

Then there was the leftist writer with whom I tried to collaborate some years back who had a collapsofit and became unable to work with me, when I couldn’t tell him about the real people I based my characters on (on account of they don’t exist.) I think he stopped believing me after that, so you know, all understanding was at an end.

Or take the “serious” analysis (Spoiler: it isn’t. It’s part a belief they’re psychic, and part relying on stupid tropes) they do on the Greats books that all assume it’s either “dog whistles” or hiding some deep desire for something or other, or reflecting the author’s life.

At the heart of it there seems to be the certainty no one can MAKE UP anything. That all we can do is spin and recycle, either the work of other people, or things we SEE AND THINK ARE REAL.

This is part of the reason they’re so scared of us, and so convinced we are insane. Because even our casual jokes about lizard people, they think we think are real. Must be, otherwise, how would we make jokes about them so off the cuff.

I want to point out here this has NOTHING to do with intelligence. I was in gifted classes most of my school life (for my sins) some truly aimed at the gifted and not the “notice me Sempai” smart enough to fake it to perfection. And yet, when there was a creative writing or art exercise, I found half of what my classmates turned in was rehashed what we read last week and/or at most a mash up of two things.

Now, I’m not a stunningly creative person. At least I don’t think so. Or at least, I trained myself to work within a certain framework. Part of everything I read is part of me, so it’s part of my work, in a way. But, oh, dear, miles and miles away, sideways and upside down of most people in those classes.

And of course, I get characters for free, and they tend to be their own persons. (Though I mined my kids for Dyce’s son, but that’s partly because I’ve actually not been around a ton of kids, so I lack range, but also because eh my kids were stunningly entertaining.) Not me. They want their own stuff and do their own stuff. I use friends and family for walk ons and sometimes very minor characters because it amuses me and pleases them, but the main story drivers I get for free.

But even this level of creativity renders me suspicious and scary to the left, who think I apparently walk through life having illusions about flying cars and dragons.

Suddenly the run of warmed-up reboots and sequels (“Stunningly different. Now with more victimhood”) from Hollywood make sense, as does the bizarre point-counting of traditional publishing. (One oppressed minority, ten points, one trans trendy character, twenty points, one rape, ten points, three pages of Marxist theory fifty points — I believe this one will get push and win awards!)

It also explains how they come up with their theories of society. You know “we pass a law and bad thing goes away/stops being done.” Or “police cause crime, because neighborhoods where police don’t visit as often have less crime.” Or ‘if we give kids tastless lunches we consider healthy, they’ll eat them and be healthy” or “if we give people mortgages, they’ll become worthy of mortgages.”

I’ll be honest people: these are people not only not capable of rebellion, but only understanding rebellion in terms of cosplay. They think we’re stupid, because we’re not doing exactly what the teacher wants, and there is no possibility that we think the teacher is wrong, because reality is consensus and the teacher dictates it. People who believe/create other things must be crazy and see things that don’t exist.

I don’t know what this means, or how to reach them. Or how they became that way. Perhaps they are the default human, and we’re in fact weird? Or perhaps they were made that way by something?

And in either case, how do we get them to believe we exist: as in we’re a different type of thing, and not whatever they come up with to explain us?

More later. Sorry. I forgot I had an eye appointment. We go to same doctor we have gone to for 30 years, which means Colorado Springs. And the roads are terrible and traffic worse. So I just got home and have a ton of things to deal with I should have done this morning.

Maybe more later, but for now, please forgive me.

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I am on a panel on writing totalitarian societies, and attempting to cause trouble on discord, but everyone else are responsible adults, alas ;)

*I think Frank’s Guest Post has enough validity to be published here and discussed here, but I have some quibbles with it. Not enough to be “disagreements” as such, but serious quibbles, so I am going to list them:

1- True a wall won’t keep TRULY DETERMINED immigrants away. However, most immigrants (unless bizarrely desperate) aren’t THAT determined. Most people — trust me on this — don’t want to go to a strange place and live there. We don’t need an absolute barrier, we need a DISCOURAGING barrier. Which is why Trump’s wall slowed immigration way the heck down. This is the principle of a fence around your house. Or a house alarm. As an alarm salesman explained “The sign alone will stop most would-be-burglars. It might be a fake, but it’s too much work.” This is what we want in place. For one, the people really determined and crafty enough to get in, have already passed a test of sorts.

2- It’s not Mexico. That open border is open to the THE WORLD. we can’t have the world here.

3- Soros wants one world government because he knows it will be a tyranny. It’s impossible to be responsive to everyone in that big a polity. we might already be too big, (but thank heavens we’re ornery.) A one-world-government will be an intolerable tyranny to 99% of it. Also, the most ineffective government ever. So.

4 – I don’t object to your method of making citizens. I would limit the velocity of it. There are problems with having mostly foreign-born people. Ask the Romans. And there is a problem with too many immigrants. TRUST me.

5 – A better solution, in my opinion and perhaps as practicable is to stop welfare to immigrants. ALL forms of welfare and benefits paid for by citizens, including but not limited to schooling and medical care (no worries. Some charitable organization will pay, but with more supervision than the government.) until two years after citizenship. (That last one might not be constitutional, so it can be “till citizenship” and make that a minimum of 7 years, by which point you’ll know if you’re going to want to go back.

That’s my quibbles and counter-proposal. – SAH*

How to Solve America’s Immigration Problem (and Save the World as a Side Effect) – by Frank

America has an immigration problem. Even those who want the world to have unfettered access to America recognize that our laws do not allow it, so we must either change our laws or change the circumstances. Unrestricted immigration advocates like George Soros would do away with the nation state in favor of a one-world government. How that government would be organized is an open question, so that is hardly a solution. Changing the circumstances is more difficult, but could go hand-in-hand with changing the law.

My wife, the chemist, explains that the root of the problem is entropy. If you pour a tea kettle of hot water into a bowl of cold water, pretty soon you have a bowl of lukewarm water. Putting a barrier (like a border wall) between the hot and cold water only slows down the exchange. Canada and America have very similar levels of economic opportunity. Hence there is no great rush of Canadians to America or Americans to Canada even without walls or even rivers dividing most of the 1900-mile border. The 1900-mile border between Mexico and the U.S., despite numerous lengths of wall and many law enforcement patrols along it, proves a much less hardy barrier. The economy and job creation level in America is just so much stronger than that of Mexico, that America proves an irresistible draw to much of Mexico’s impoverished population. Even at the lower rungs of the American economy, the opportunity is so great that Mexicans living in the U.S. sent 26 billion dollars back to their families in Mexico in 2017.

So how do we solve the root of the problem? Well one solution only proposed by those most impervious to criticism is to invade Mexico and fix it by reconstituting their government along American lines. No one who’s been there can realistically deny that if the Gadsen purchase had included Baja California, that region would be an American Riviera filled with huge hotels and resorts and positively booming with economic activity, rather than the lackluster backwater that it is. But changing the culture and mores of a country is not something that can easily be imposed by an occupying army. The former British colonies around the world show what a spotty record results despite a century or more of trying.

Demonstrably, more people want to come to America than currently live in America, and certainly more than the vast majority of Americans are willing to accept. So how do we change our immigration laws to, as President Trump suggests, let the right ones in? Sure we could just let in the doctors and engineers and such, but what about those poorer immigrants who have later so enriched our country? Do we want to close our doors to all of them? How could we convince ourselves that those we let in want to continue to support the great American experiment even if they aren’t credentialed yet like Anheuser and Busch or Carnegie? Well, we already have laws on how to become American citizens. What if we require that any non-American who wants to move to the U.S. learn English and pass the citizenship test before ever coming to our country? To facilitate this process, we will have to turn our embassies and consulates into training centers in English and the Constitution. Once a would-be immigrant has passed the citizenship test, he would be added to the list of eligible immigrants. At that point those on the list would be allowed in based on the order of their seniority of having passed the citizenship test and on how many immigrants America decides to allow each year. Maybe we could even make a big live TV show of the list announcement like the NFL draft. Of course we would have to be vigilant to make sure the citizenship test remains valid and fair and not allow lowering of the standard. Nobody said it wouldn’t take constant vigilance. Heinlein’s concept of requiring military service as a prerequisite to full citizenship might be a step too far, but how about requiring even native-born Americans to pass the citizenship test to be able to vote. They might be forced to learn something other than anti-Americanism in high school.

But, you object, there would still be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions who would go through the training, take the citizenship test, but still have to wait for years to get into this country. Exactly! And what would they do while they waited? Would they become impatient with the governance of their own country that led them to want to emigrate to America in the first place? Would they seek to make their own country run more like America in the respect of the rule of law over tribal and familial relationships or raw exercise of power by those holding government positions? Might we create a cadre of millions of wannabe Americans armed with the knowledge of how America came to be a country better off than theirs? Might it not occur to those people that they would prefer to make their government and economy in the likeness of ours while continuing to hold onto all their own cultural heritage? Wouldn’t it be great to have a world still made up of many diverse nations, but where everyone had the opportunity to be prosperous?

We were all drafted into wars we didn’t begin*. A war, that if you’re a believer of certain religions, might very well have started with a serpent in a lush garden, either literally or metaphorically.**

We are born into a place and time we didn’t make and our life will be influenced by decisions taken by others, far away and long ago. ***

Things are certainly not what your parents would want for you. Judging by myself and what I want for my boys, that’s flat out impossible, because I want them in that garden without defect, walking with perfectly compliant animals amid the lush and perfect vegetation. (And older son would lecture those poor animals on biology. no really.)

We are all born into terrible and imperfect times, and with our own imperfections, of mind body, and yeah, spirit. At least–

Okay, so when I was twelve, I used to yell at my mom “I wish you’d never have had me.” That didn’t last because mom is more appalling than I in frankness, and she would yell back, “I didn’t want to have you and when I wanted to correct the mistake, your dad stepped in. So, go yell at him.”

It was appalling — also truthful — but it stopped me on my tracks. What it didn’t address was that my argument was stupid and flawed.

Yes, I grew up in…. difficult times. I’ll be absolutely honest, being an Odd there were no good times to live in. **** Particularly since I was born in an extremely conformist country where sticking out from the norm gets treated like the nail that sticks up and will be pounded down, but also because compounding the issue, my Odd parents didn’t think I was supposed to be taught the norms, but expected me to respect the norms which I suppose were meant to emerge spontaneously from my naturally virtuous nature as their daughter. *****

But you probably know I don’t do things by half measures, so I was born under a National Socialist (but not fascist which is a very specific thing, and certainly not Nazi) system, and then it transitioned, suddenly and to my 11 year old eyes unforeseeably to international socialist with vague shades of Mao (and the Maoists in control for six months) and violence and atrocities. *⁶

Which is a terrible thing to do to someone who was born fighting, and has no intention of doing as told.

Yeah, I made my peace with it, and found my own way to a place where i could be free and not live in fear of transgressing the rules I couldn’t divine. But– Now they’re trying to take that away from me, and I don’t know what to do about it. Or I do. But I can’t get anyone to listen to me.

Recently a young friend said it’s not fair to have children now. They will be unwittingly recruited into a war not of their own making, even if it’s just a culture war.*⁷

I wouldn’t say anything, except that I expect that there is a lot of that generation worrying along those lines, at least on the conservative side. ^*8

It’s really just a more sophisticated version of “you shouldn’t have had me” but because it’s “altruistic” it might convince what are at heart good kids, who have been handed a very raw deal as to the time they’re born in. ^*9

The thing they don’t realize is that we are all handed raw deals when we are born, and some of us manage to make good things out of them.

Look, I’m not beating up on the young ones. Heinlein himself fell for this. His reason not to try for children with his wife before Ginny ^*10 was that “who would bring a kid into this fucked up world?” If he had had children then, they would be now in their nineties, around my dad’s age. And yeah, if still alive and having inherited a don’t tread on me disposition from daddy, they might be very worried about the road we’re on. But they would have lived through the age of greatest American prosperity, and have had the ability to make a very good life for themselves.

It’s still just a sophisticated version of “why was I born”. It assumes you grew up in the worst of times, with the worst of possible paths ahead, both of which are demonstrably flawed if not outright crazy ideas.

Look, I said above, I was born under national socialism. I was. It’s a fact of life. I found, later, I couldn’t live under international socialism, so I suited myself.

BUT here’s the thing: my parents were born under national socialism. Their parents were born during a brief Anarchists in power interregnum (I think all of them.)

They all had good lives. Okay, the lives might have been distorted by those in power above them. There was a reason grandad worked abroad most of his life, and frankly, I don’t know how long till mom started screaming if the revolution hadn’t happened. (Probably not long. She screamed under international socialism, even though they were — trust me — more crazy and intrusive than under national socialism.)

But beyond the distortions, all of them had good lives, and had kids, and raised their kids. Now, I don’t think I could have tolerated either regime as a grown up. But I’m me, and I fit weirdly anywhere. And mind you, I’m not complaining. Well, I am complaining, because the ranks are forming NOW when I’m old and unsuited.

In point of fact, the times I grew up in were much worse than now. But we survived. And I even have some very good memories.

You can’t know. You can’t know ahead what your kids are being born into. No one can. The one things we know is that they aren’t being born into paradise. (D*mn it.)

My box of regrets is full of things like ‘if I’d kept my mouth shut and written leftist, the kids would be so much better off.” But on the other hand, I wasn’t ready to sell my soul, even for them.

The thing is, any kids you have will be born into a war. So it was since the beginning of time. But here’s the thing: they’ll have to make their own lives, live their own choices.

None of my fans will like to hear this, but your kids might very well decide to be statist drones. ^*11 (In which case, it will really suck to be them, but that’s on them, not you.)

All you do is give them life, give them the opportunity to choose. Ultimately, they will make their own choices, and yes, some will be things you wouldn’t make UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. This is something that’s very hard to fit in your heads, until the kids are in their twenties or so, but every parent since that garden and that serpent has had to face that.

But why give them life if it’s not going to be perfect? Or at least good?

…. Because it’s the only thing that gives life meaning, in the long run.

No, I’m not saying that childless people have no meaning in life, though I think a lot of them think they don’t.

What I’m saying is that if you care passionately about anything: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, say, even if you’re not religious (particularly if you’re not religious, because if you’re religious you view this life as a short preamble) you must have kids to invest in the future. (Or get close to the kids of others and hope to influence them. Which is harder. And it’s about to get massively harder for the left.)

Because in the end, those kids you “draft” “unwillingly” are the only ones that can win the war of human liberty. Or life. Or the pursuit of happiness.

You’re not going to win it in the present. And if you leave the reproducing to people who want government to care for them like a mother or a father forever, then liberty is going to go down for a count (it will come back up, because genetics aren’t all) because the kids will be raised with that. Yes, some of them will defect to our side, like some of us will defect to theirs. But on the main, temperament and disposition have an influence, and they will tend to go the way of the family, in the majority.

So if you care about the future, you’ll have kids. And you’ll do your best to raise the little sh*ts so they don’t defect, and don boots, and go stomping on human faces.

Because that’s what your ancestors did. And your ancestors before them. World without end.

The alternative….

I was tallying how few people in my generation, that I KNOW have grandkids. Even those with enormous families have maybe one or two grandkids.

I can’t begin to emphasize how this is not normal. I’ve preached about population dearth, but this is population crash: assume the position and kiss your *ss goodbye.

And we don’t know what comes next. I don’t know what comes next, and neither do you.

I know a ton of you were propagandized that on the other side of this there’s rainbows butterflies, and we’re all rich. They’re idiot Marxists. Wealth isn’t something to be endlessly redistributed. It needs humans to create it.

Times of population dearth are hungry and horrible times. And that’s not what we’re looking at. It’s 10x worse than that.

Add to that all the people who are going to find that most of their age group has no kids and gives no fucks; that the majority of their age group believes neither in G-d nor man, nor anything beyond them, and it’s too late to do anything about it. ^*12 And a lot of them are going to flip into end-times bacchanalia and crazy.

Which will be biblical and epic. After which the Earth will go very silent, as the children (particularly adult children) who depended on others looking after them die. Those that survive such “end times” will start again, if we’re lucky not from pre-historic conditions, but that depends on how ugly things get as they come apart.

It won’t be very far up from that, though, because it can’t be. Because we’ll have enough (maybe) for small bands of people, dotting the landscape. How long can one keep tech going? When in the end times the hedonists will insist 2 + 2 = infinity and teach that to the scant children?

“But Sarah, if we bring children into the world, they’ll just have to deal with that.” Maybe. Or maybe there will be enough of them, and enough of them will be sane and functional to keep us going over the very rough spot, so that we can emerge on the other side, still civilized and functional.

“But I can’t ask that of them!” Every generation asks that of every other. Each generation has it in their hands to end civilization. Not having a generation, or having a generation that’s 1/10th of the past just guarantees that the few that exist will fight in vain against the fall. The more we have, the more likely we survive this.

No, we are not overpopulated. We never were. That’s a big government statistical lie. It’s possible for humans to be overpopulated. That usually leads to invention and expansion to other areas.

But we can get under populated. And like the cooling of the planet being a much bigger danger than the heating of the planet, under-populated can destroy humanity, or send us back to living in hunter gatherer counts for a very long time. (I believe this has happened before. Maybe many times. Hence it being built into every language that our ancestors were much, much better than us.)

No, I don’t see communism as the future, and I don’t see communism in the US. I think the current crop of arrant idiots, quite the dumbest set to ever run in possession of Marxism and red crap, will try. They will TRY. But they’ll fail. I expect chaos and almost for sure violence. (Yes, I expected the beginnings this month. I’m not sure we’re not seeing it. There have been a few events… Besides a sitting (if illegitimate) president threatening us with nukes. And since this is the second on their side to do so, you know it’s what they really believe.) I think the violence only hasn’t happened because our proportion of young people (real, not statistical) is low, and low enough they were taught a culture of safetyism. (Because they were the precious few.)
But I believe violence will come, because humans are not tame, and this bunch is cornering us.

But even if we don’t rebel communism is designed on Malthusian and other completely insane assumptions. We don’t have enough people for us to pretend it even works. And if they take out the country that feeds the world, there will be no one to subsidize the pretense. (Yes, I’m sure the idiots think China will, but I’m not at home to Communist delusion.)

So, whatever you think you’re having kids for, it’s not that.

What is it? Bobbed if I know.

My parents couldn’t have foreseen the fall of Communism. They like every conservative in their era thought communism would win in the end, and that the only virtue lay in resisting it as long as they could. Their parents might have thought the children they were having children for was endless European wars.

It turned out much better than they could have hoped. No, not perfect — duh — because it usually does.

The truly horrific things — the black plague — tend to be absolutely unforeseen. And unplanneable for. They just happen out of clear blue sky, unforeseen.

Yes, tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow the sun could go supernova, and what if you drafted — DRAFTED — a child to the unforeseen end of the world?

I hate to say this, because I realize it’s a retroactive rebuke at Heinlein. It is also a rebuke on the new agey pamphlet that I was handed when older son was born:

We ALL have children for uncertain times. The total idiots are those who think their kids’ lives will be lived out in candyland with sparkles.

And yes, for some it will turn out very badly. Contrary to the stupid pamphlet, you can’t CONTROL your kids forever into the future, and if you could it would be terrible.

For some it will turn out very well. Better than you could have expected. Or do you think that Leonardo DaVinci’s parents, having an illegitimate son in a dirty-poor village expected him to die in a royal palace and be admired four hundred years later?

The real question is: Would you rather not have been born? Do you know anyone who would rather not have been born, unless they’re mentally ill, or 12 years old?

We can’t even CONCEPTUALIZE not existing, because the essence of life is to live, and pass life on. It’s the most basic thing.

Do the thing, if you can. Pass it on.

The doom of civilization I foresee is probably wrong, as all foreseen dooms, but it has a better chance of happening than “We’re going to be fighting them from the Gullags FOREVER.”
There’s not that many of them. They’re not that powerful. They are a terrified minority, fighting like cornered rats.

Be not afraid. And if you can, bet in the future. Bet in the future in the only way that matters.

The future might not belong to those who show up. But if no one shows up there is no future.

Only silence and emptiness.

Forever.

(** Metaphorically and by modern interpretation, it always starts with a serpent in a lush garden. See Leonard Cohen “It is in love that we are made.” — and yeah, I woke up in a weird mood, then the day got weirder, and you’re inevitably going to have to put up with it.)

(*** BTW, I’m not going to whack the regular who preached this at me, because regular. But there are another three comments on this that I DID NOT approve, to the point I wonder if my post yesterday got posted on one of the whacker “Christian” sites. So, for the record, “You were beautifully and fearfully made” is true. It’s also true “G-d doesn’t make junk.” (And incredibly vapid.) That doesn’t mean that humans are perfect machines, or that they have to live with everything they are born with.
I, thank heavens, I was raised in a religion that whatever its other issues understands that creation is still subjected to the effects of sin, starting with the original sin, and that G-d respects the free will of humans, even free will that distorts his plan. He obviously respects the free will of other creatures because by the time we became humans we had some very interesting ancestral systems that work at cross purposes. Take my auto immune. Your immune system is forever on patrol against different proteins. This is how most cancers we get (and we all get like 2 a day) never survive and grow. Because your immune system whacks them. HOWEVER either mine is insane (possible) or I express proteins that are different (I’m above the highest for Neanderthal genes!) So mostly it whacks me, leaving me at danger for cancer and making me scratch my arms raw. But I’m just an extreme example.
I’m not being heretical. There is still a miracle there. My older son says it’s a continuous miracle that humans continue living and don’t self-destruct any of the million of ways we can at any time. So, that is a miracle too.
I do realize people are uncomfortable with treating things that if you squint and look sideways can be considered moral failings. Which was the whole point of my post. Sometimes you have to. They are not moral failings, but have their origin in well-defined physical issues.
I have said I’m “still at large” on depression because, unless something unforeseen occurs, I DO have it under control. The worst I got was when Hypothyroidism fought on its side. I try not to have to take treatment for THAT because I want to make sure what I think with is mine.)
HOWEVER I wouldn’t be here without medical treatment. I’d have died in early childhood. And the ADD? I had a choice. It is severe enough that I could not get anything done the rest of my life, now I don’t have editors calling and demanding work (i.e. I’m not exernally regulated) or I could be productive. I choose to be productive. Some people manage ADHD fine. Because they don’t have as severe a case, or because they’re better at managing it. I can’t.
To anyone demanding one manage everything without drugs because “you’re beautifully and fearfully made”: I have a distant cousin who has warring mental illnesses the least of which is schizophrenia. When he’s well, he’s around and doesn’t take his meds. And then things go wonky. He watches himself all the time, and when he thinks he’s at risk for killing someone, he commits himself and gets the treatment. Yes, he’s beautifully and fearfully made. It’s not his fault HIS ancestors married their first cousins more than mine did, and gifted him both a brilliant mind and a severely flawed brain. And he deals with it the best he can. And in eternity his CELESTIAL body will be free of those flaws. Or would you rather he accepted G-d’s will and killed people, starting with his very beloved mother? I don’t care if your crazy interpretation of the Bible says. My branch doesn’t engage in biblio-idolatry. G-d might be a pantser and have plans to rescue everything into His plan at any minute, but he’s not a puppet master and you’re not a meat puppet. He allows free will to run in the world, and that means the free will of your ancestors affects you too. And if that’s not what you believe too bad, so sad, but you’re not going to convince me by shouting at me.)

***** And people wonder why Jean Jacques Rousseau is first on my kill list as soon as younger son builds the long-promised K’nex time machine.

^*6 Though you won’t find that in any history books, not even the mass graves found decades later. Hell, I don’t know if people in Portugal know about them. I don’t know how mom found out, though I verified it sideways and weirdly.
When I was telling a friend who worked for the State Dept. under Reagan about this stuff I started with “you’re going to think I’m crazy.” And he said “Oh, heck no, honey. We knew. We just couldn’t get anyone to listen.” And it was SUCH a relief.

_*7 Spoiler, I don’t think it will just be JUST a culture war. It’s been delayed due to the aging of the populations, but the blue model can’t go on. Their ultimate model, communism, has shown what it is almost half a century ago, and we’re running out of denial. And people are getting angry. It’s not a coincidence the FICUS wants to nuke us. They know. In fact, they’d never have cheated this blatantly or done the crazy things they imposed on us for a year and a half if they weren’t terrified out of their corrupt little minds.

^*8 The liberal side is still trying to figure out: what kind of genitals they have; what kind of genitals they want to have; what kind of genitals they’re attracted to; how to make babies in the middle of all this mess; whether the sacrament of abortion is more important than making babies. So, we’ll leave them out of this.

^*9 One of the things I like about Budhism and other religions that believe in Re-incarnation (The Mormons believe in Pre-incarnation, and I might or might not have known this at one time, but I no longer remember if they believe this particular thing) is that they believe the baby chooses the time and place to be born into ^*9*1 which absolves parents of that particular anxiety and responsibility.)

( ^*9*1 I don’t believe in that, but let’s suppose I did: did I have to choose such a strange time and such a backward place. If I believed that, I’d go around randomly whacking myself in the back of the head for being a dumb ass.)

( ^*10 Yes, she was a lush. But people have had children with lushes, and all of us have ancestors who are/were lushes. And yeah, he was sterile, in his fifties, when tested. MAYBE.
Because, look, they weren’t that good at determining that. We still aren’t. My best friend not someone to play around and besides her oldest is the spitting image of his dad was told her husband was basically sterile. She didn’t know it but when those results came back, she was pregnant with their first child. At any rate, due to Heinlein’s health issues, this might not have been true EARLIER.)

( ^*11 If only to piss you off or to be different. I mean, you guys know not all of my family is conservative. In fact none of them is for liberty, because they’re Europeans. But some of them are on the other side.)

( ^*12 For women there is a very specific end. Surveys suggest every woman who hits it childless wishes she’d had children. But hell, even women who had as many children as they planned, when it becomes impossible to have more, eat their own hearts out. Even those who tried to have more. Trust me on this. The saddest words in language are “it might have been.”)

Sometimes it’s important to know why you’re failing.

No, seriously. And it’s important to admit when it’s something, if not external to you, so intrinsic to you that you can’t do a hell of a lot about it.

Not as an excuse, but as an engineering problem. And so that you can figure out how to go back and this time not fail.

I have problems with this. My kids have problems with this. My husband has problems with this. Most of my friends have problems with this. This is why I decided to talk about it, even though it’s a bit cringey and it feels like I’m making excuses. I’m not. You need to admit what is making you fail, before you can do the thing and not fail. And even when it sounds like an excuse, it isn’t. It’s just a factor most people don’t have.

It’s been a shock to me as I get older to find that a lot of the issues I’ve struggled with since childhood are either physical or really bad training at a time when I couldn’t do anything about it.

It’s even harder to accept it.

Look, there are two problems here: one is that I often forget I have a body. My mental image of myself is fairly disembodied. I even think of physical tasks without taking in account the fact of my size, height or age. And feel vaguely guilty when I can’t reach the high shelves, despite that being something I can do nothing about.

Admitting that the body has other, more nebulous limitations: like ability to pay attention, or a quirky brain that scrambles digits between seeing them and writing them down …. that’s even harder, because I feel like I’m making those issues up and that I am at some level giving myself stupid excuses not to be perfect.

Nobody is perfect?

Well, that’s the second problem. I never really expect ANYONE else to be perfect, but I get very upset at myself for not being so.

And damn it, I know I’m smarter than the average bear. So there was never any excuse for not having perfect grades, when I was in school. Except that of course, I did all my studying and school work in short little intervals, followed and surrounded by vast oceans of time in which I roamed around in my own head. This might involve physical stuff, like taking notes, reading on something that I had no business reading on (up to and including rabbit holes of finding all the books by x in the house, and finding out if his characters all looked alike, as I vaguely remembered) or simply sitting with my brain doing the equivalent of having too many tabs open.

It wasn’t till 57 that I got treatment for ADD. Mostly what convinced the doctor is husband’s explanation that if I’m in line at the grocery and it takes more than two minutes, and I didn’t bring something to do, I’ll wonder off randomly, and leave the cart there.

This drives him — and me — insane. And all my life I thought I SHOULD be able to control it. Only of course, I couldn’t. Will power only goes so far, and as older son puts it “Mom, you’re not ADHD. You’re ADHD AF”.

Taking meds — which I hate, btw , but that’s life — gave me the range, and helped me see the difference between being on and not. This means when husband is trying to get me to choose something he’s showing me on the computer, or whatever, and I space out in the middle of his sentence I can point out the meds ran out, and I don’t want to have caffeine late at night. It’s not that he’s not interesting, or I’m not interested. It’s that my mind is flitting around like a cat on LSD. I CAN’T keep my attention on it, no matter what I do.

Is this an excuse? Well, I could use it as such. But what I actually found is that now I know what I was doing wasn’t normal, and where normal is, I can fake it for a time after the meds run out. And get stuff done. Tiredness though, means my will power goes to pieces, and that’s fine. At that point I can’t do serious, intellectual a follows b work, be it writing or buying something I need, by evaluating three different models. It just won’t happen. And if pushed, I revert to bad habits from when I was vaguely aware I wasn’t normal, but was trying to hide it, and pointed at one thing and bought that. (Don’t go there. No, really, don’t.)

Now I know it wasn’t normal, and I couldn’t make it normal by will power, though, I can work around. It’s like any other physical disability. You work around it.

Some disabilities are easier to deal with. Once I found out I was mildly dyslexic and PROFOUNDLY digit dyslexic, it started being easier to control both, and I worked out a great deal of tricks so I don’t confuse digits, or don’t measure twice and cut– Oh, hell did I do that again?

Sometimes knowing “thing” is there and working around it is all it takes.

The weirdest thing is finding out at 58 that a lot of the things I thought were moral failings are actually and for real physical issues. I could no more will myself to pay attention to something not fascinating to me for hours at a time than a deaf person can will themselves to enjoy symphonies.

There are other things, too. Weird food dislikes or avoidances that turn out to be the fact I have an issue with that food, and/or with a texture. And other minor stuff.

It’s a relief to stop beating myself and going “I have to try harder” and instead go “Oh, yeah, that’s because of x. Can I work with it? Do I want to?”

Does it make life easier? Yes. Is it a cop out? Oh, no. If I still want to do thing y I have to come up with a way to do it, despite and besides x.

But it means the reasons I fail are no longer “mysterious” given my status as brighter than the average bear. And it means that I can try again, in a different way, avoiding the definition of madness.

And sometimes I can even fake normal for long periods at a stretch.

Now do I wish I’d known this … oh, let’s be generous… 40 years ago? Damn Skippy I do. I’d have got so much more done with the time I’ve been given.

But you know, better late than never, and at least now I KNOW. And I want you to know as well.

Forgive yourself for what you can’t help, and work with, over and around things too. And yes, that also means your body’s sudden, irrational “I don’t wanna.” Find ways to bribe it to do what you want. Or get someone else to do it.

You’re not a floating brain bubble. And the ape must be appeased. And when you learn to appease it, the brain can reach much further.

Now stop beating yourself up, and figure it out. Even if it involves doing that ickiest of all things: forgiving yourself.

You know what garages are like. You keep things there. Things like weird old stuff, old car parts, empty computer boxes, chainsaws, corpses….

Okay. Probably not corpses. Except mouse corpses, which weird out younger son.

We still haven’t found a place to move to. We have found places we might/could but only if we have to. and we’re giving it till the fourth of July for the perfect house to come up before we settle for one of those.

But it’s time to get the h*ll out of Colorado — and good Lord, it hurts to write that. I’ve left a place I loved beyond and beside reason before. It’s not good — and we know it. It’s time to get this house ready to sell.

So far we’ve been going through the areas where things were so piled we couldn’t get into them, partly to clear storage space to put things in them while — emergency plan 5 — we move our essentials to a rental and look for a place to buy from there. (As you guys probably still remember, we’re BAD at buying real-estate, mostly because we’re Odd and live in the houses Oddly, so they have to fit OUR purposes. Strangely, this is fairly normal for writers, who tend to buy bizarre houses. (If I could find one of those poured cement diners, in the shape of turkeys or apples or Shrimp, I’d buy it in a heart beat, if it were weather-tight and cheap, at least. Alas, no one has offered one for sale.))

Anyway…. The garage mostly contains empty boxes, parts for cars we no longer own, tools to fix cars we no longer own. Tools for me to do house remodeling (Younger son: Mom, do you really need forty hammers? And no, they’re not specialized. The movers in the last two moves packed them and– Okay, later.) LOTS of copies of my books, a few of which are water-damaged beyond repair. (Younger son had a good idea for those. Because the last book sale was a mess due to the need to keep track of who ordered what, and different postage and such. So he said we should sell “boxes from Sarah’s Garage”: like three signed books — if you have them, you can use them for gifts — and a signed con program, cover flat or piece of art. And put them at a price about the same as the cover price of the books, including postage. Flat fee.) Look, I don’t do that many cons. Administering a sale is time-expensive and I’d rather be writing, and younger son has more important things to do, also, so– And how many boxes do I have/ Well, enough to take up a 5×5 storage unit. which we’re not going to rent just so we can continue dragging boxes around the country.

So– Sometime in the next month there will be “Boxes from Sarah’s garage.” And we won’t include a mouse corpse. Unless your cats REALLY want them. (We have a 400 acre natural preserve behind us (around that size anyway) so mice are a given.)

But meanwhile, after son, in an heroic effort, had dug and dug and dug, and filled the back of my car with donation stuff….

We found at the very back (near the mouse hole) a stack of oh, probably five by ten boxes, which were apparently stashed in there by our movers, when we weren’t looking.

Here, I’ll interject that I hate moving. I’d done it precisely once by the time I got married, from grandma’s house to mom and dad’s new house (now 52 years old.) We moved in an ox cart (it was about a mile, and the ox cart was a loan from the farmer) and well, that was it.

Mom and dad haven’t moved either.

However in the eighties, and with Dan in computers, it became obvious we were going to move a lot. Before we had kids we moved every two to three years. Then we moved to Colorado when older son was 1, and we’ve moved four times since. That is, if you compress the last move into “one time” which it kind of was, but not.

Because we got it in our deranged minds to buy THIS house which was on a short sale, it took us six months to buy this house.

Since we were renting while getting the other house ready for sale, we ran out of lease waiting for this one to come through and we moved to another interim apartment before moving here. In the meantime, Older Son moved away to school and–

Well, all in all we had five more or less complete moves in a year, which is kind of nightmare scenario for me, since my own particularly “neuro ATYPICAL thing” is that I hate having my cheese moved. I will endure the most bizarre arrangements, just so long as I can keep my daily routine intact. When the routine is in flux, I get grumpy and depressed and out of sorts.

By the time we moved into this house, almost exactly 5 years ago (the short end of the time we expected to stay here, but we didn’t expect the state and the country to go howling insane, honest) I was not only grumpy, but also very ill with a combination of ill-treated thyroid, and sleep apnea. The combination is bad for me, let’s say.

We had once before had things packed for us. Well, once and a half.

When we moved from South Carolina, we packed as much as we could, to save time/money, but we had a week’s notice that Dan was getting the job and, oh, yah, must start in two weeks. So we didn’t sleep for a week, but we still had the movers finishing up packing the kitchen and the bedroom. (Which is why I got to experience Dave Barry’s “They packed a coffee cup with the coffee still in it.” Yep, they did. They also packed the contents of the bedroom TRASHCAN which is why 6 years later, unpacking the last box, we stared in horror at a USED fossilized (more or less) infant diaper….)

Then we had people pack everything in Manitou Springs, when we moved to Colorado Springs. This was needed because it was early-years of Dan’s career, relatively speaking, so he worked 19 hour days, and I had two school children full time, plus a nascent writing career (three books a year, that year.)

So we had someone come and pack, and because they were packing and transporting in increments, I had to go to the new house and leave them to pack.

NEVER do that. NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER.

We were fortunate in the fact that they were really bad at identifying what was actually worth money, but I lost some tools and weirder stuff. (This was the move in which the weaponized umbrella left my life.)

It was however even weirder in the non criminal “What the hell” portion of it.

You see, they had given us an estimate for boxes that I thought was way too high, but they assured us that if the boxes came in under that count, they would — of course — only charge for what they used.

I was somewhat weirded out the boxes were the exact right amount, and I thought “they padded”. But I thought they padded by doing things like extra cushioning on dishes.

Oh, that would be rational and make sense, which is something I’ve found movers just.don’t.do.

The china was left half-wrapped, so we could lose irreplaceable parts of our tea sets, of COURSE.

No, in the boxes towards the end of it, what I found was that they had done things like fill entire, large boxes, with ONE SHOE and a lot of padding.

Though perhaps my favorite… You know those plastic lids you buy for cat food cans? The ones you use to cover the can, if you’re only feeding the cat half the contents (a violation of feline rights, but what can I say)? Yeah. Three of those in a large box. And a lot of paper. And the box was marked and delivered to… Master Bedroom.

So, we didn’t want to have movers PACK again, but I was very ill, and most of all very tired for two of those moves in a year. I was also dealing with stuff in my professional life that was taking ALL my attention and creating a shitton of stress.

So, husband convinced me to go with a packing service. This wasn’t part of the moving, but separate, and it has good reviews.

Okay……..

I knew there was trouble, when the lady doing the packing had a “hole” in a box and went looking for things the right size and shape to fill it. Sure. it saves boxes and money, but having kitchen cups in the middle of my office stuff is going to cost me time and aggravation on unpacking. I told her not to do that, but by then it was already too late (I’d been working instead of watching her.)

Then the movers did their thing. And you know movers, right? Regardless of what is marked on the actual box, if you turn your back for fifteen seconds, it will get put in the room or place nearest the truck.

Over the years, as we rearranged the garage, I’d found kitchen appliances, and — mostly, because they’re heaviest — boxes of books marked “library” (which is in the basement.) In fact, the library boxes were amiably distributed all over the house, as though they had no idea what a library was. (It has built-in floor to ceilin– Never mind.)

But we’d never made it to the most distant corner of the garage, partly because we THOUGHT those were all boxes younger son had abandoned with us when he moved. And because over time things that we were using to fix and improve the house (pallets of flooring, for ex) got in the way.

So, son has been making HEROIC efforts and clearing it up. There is still an entire array of shelves for Dan to go through, but yesterday I had fifteen minutes, so I went through and said, let me see anything that’s mine, and let’s see what’s in your boxes and if we can donate some.

…. The boxes clearly marked — by the movers — with son’s name…. well, no wonder he felt he had everything he needed and could leave them behind….

They contain my stuff, Dan’s stuff, some of older son’s stuff. Oh, and cat care stuff. What they don’t actually contain is any of younger son’s stuff.

Though one contained probably my entire “cleaning closet” and the mice had got into that, and… well, I hate to throw away swiffer pads and a hundred rubber gloves, but I’ll be d*mned if I’m going to try to use them with mouse poo and pee on them.

However, the two boxes that — so far, the day is young and we haven’t got to the storage room in the basement yet — take the absolute cake.

One of them says office supplies, and as far as I can tell, having opened it and looked in, it contains a table top water fountain, curlers, some projects in clay the kids did in kindergarten, and a proofread manuscript (which to be fair, is “office” broadly speaking.)

But the one I opened this morning was marked “Younger Son’s Room.”

Inside were… A Rex Stout novel I was re-reading at the time of the move. A portion of my silverware drawer, that I assumed had been stolen (including one thing with sentimental value and no particular value otherwise, but it looks good.) My good table cloths, including the Christmas ones, and the antique, embroidered and lace one that I normally use for Easter and hadn’t been able to find since the move (DUH) though I have all the (12) napkins. Stuff from my art room (art paper, mostly) and a package of printing paper. Some broken pastel crayons. …. Clothes pegs? AND the content of my card box where I kept story ideas, and which arrived empty. There’s a rubber band around the cards, so this was intentionally packed that way. (The box was in another box, natch. I gave up the cards for lost years ago. I glanced through them this morning. This is the Short-story-ideas file, so I might use a bunch.)

AND the entire contents of the “reservoir” of the pencil sharpener (which was not in this box and was unpacked in the first batch) evenly distributed to a one inch depth over the bottom of the box.

Honestly, I don’t even know what to make of that, or why she thought that should be packed. Or, if the pencil sharpener container fell out, why she didn’t just shake that into a trash bag. I mean, it’s jaw-droppingly insane, okay?

Onward towards our destination. I’m going to finish those boxes today, and hopefully start in on the library. And Bowl of Red is getting finished. And Rhodes will be on preorder soon.

And I promise not to send anyone any chain saws or corpses. Though at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if I find some of those in some boxes in the garage!

Yesterday I recorded one of the pre-recorded panels for the virtual Liberty Con (next weekend.)

I must warn anyone who sees me, I’m not a zombie and I didn’t suddenly age 40 years. Mostly there was a confusion with the time of the panel, so I was on 4 hours of sleep after a very crazy 2 days. (Yes, I stopped coloring my hair. I planned to wait till I was 60, but the stupid covidiocy made my hair turn white, or would if it hadn’t been white since I was 28. So, whatevs. I do however look ANCIENT. I don’t know if this happens to other people when exhausted. It does to me. I first noticed it when I was 40 and wrote a book in three days.)

Anyway…. So there we are — (I have a headache today, so meandery) having the panel when Peter Grant noted every panelist had a multicultural background (I think they’re now called 3rd culture people) which makes you (he thinks) better able to write different genres.

He might be right at that. I don’t know, because I’ve never written single genre (not even before I was published) and I never consciously thought about it, but he might have a point that being keyed to evaluate people’s expectations gives you a leg up when writing a new genre, since each genre has different expectations. (Aka reader cookies.)

But I do know that being “third culture” or whatever is actually a serious problem for identifying cultural mind sets. I just — for instance — read a book by a friend in which a character is supposed to be subtly cued as black. This went COMPLETELY over my head, because it was a set of small cultural hints, which are not part of my brain-programming. (To be fair, I’m a complete dork about race anyway, which led to interesting things like my making a cover and the client being very upset because the character was ethnic. The character in fact looked like my second cousin. Then it hit me, that this is because Latin officially isn’t a race, but it’s perceived as race in the US.)

I know there are things about Heinlein books, mostly sub-culture hints, which I didn’t get till I’d come to the US and lived in three different states.

So it got me to thinking — look, it’s a disease, or a bad habit or something, okay — about the left’s obsession with multiculti and how crazy/bizarre it is.

First of all, let me get this off, right up front: America is multicultural, and always was. This has absolutely nothing to do with skin colors. It has EVERYTHING to do with the fact we’re a continent-sized country with a variety of environments, which was colonized recently, and where people as a routine spit on our hands and no, not get ready to cut throats, that’s just you Sarah, adapt to circumstances.

I’m forever somewhere between annoyed and confused when Hollywood movies, or some other “cultural spokesperson” talks about the uniform and unvarying culture of America. In what parallel universe? No one who has lived in more than a couple of states can think that. And if you’ve lived in different regions of the country, it hits you even harder.

Look, sure, whatevs. We’re Americans. At least WE are, the least said about TWANLOC the best, and so we believe in life liberty and the pursuit of happiness as well as equality before the law, the last of which has Earth Shattering implications for how we relate to each other and everyone else too.

So. Yeah, we’re all Americans. But in the minutia of culture, for instance in how we perceive an overdressed person coming into a building, or for instance, in personal distance observed, not to mention what is polite to say to strangers… Well…

If you think the entire country is the same, I invite you to live for a year in the deep South and then move to NYC and then go to the Mountain West.

Dear Lord, people, you have no idea of the freedom of coming to Colorado, and stopping being asked at every grocery store and casual meeting “Where ya’ll from?” Because…. yeah. No, my accent hadn’t gotten any lighter, and I probably still give subtle “outsider” vibes anyway, even now. But EVERY time I opened my mouth, from restaurants to grocery stores, to– ANYWHERE. In the South I got “Where y’all from?”

Sure, okay, they’re just being friendly, maybe. Some weren’t but that’s besides the point. The point is that every time I had to ask for a pack of gum I got reminded “Y’all not from around here.” And keep in mind I was in a large city full of outsiders. But the culture is more SOCIAL so it’s okay for people to ask things of total strangers, tell total strangers their dress is a weird color (I swear. Often) or grab your hands in a public bathroom and “heal” you because your arms are having an eczema outbreak. (Yes, I do realize that my arms are OFTEN freak-show bad, but let’s talk about it, okay? That’s bizarre.)

It was a relief to get to Colorado and find no casual comments on my hair, clothing, accent, or — Well, strangers pretty much left you the heck alone, which is good and bad. (And don’t take me wrong. I love the South which is still my spiritual home, but the places I lived in were a wee bit crazy, I guess. I don’t get that level of crazy in TN when I visit, for instance.) And I think over the last 30 years I’ve been asked where I’m from 3 times, one of which was when I was speaking French to my older son so he could practice for his final exam.

As for NYC, whenever I have to head thataway (though Atlanta is about half as bad, coming from the West) I find myself singing under my breath “don’t stand, don’t stand, don’t stand so close to me.” Even the restaurants have tables, what is considered here in Denver “on each other’s lap.” Even at a restaurant in downtown Denver on New Year’s Eve, we have more space. And dear Lord, people in my groups at least, stand in a parking lot, three to four feet apart to talk to each other. Not social distancing, you get? In Colorado that’s considered close friends. In Portugal people would be shoving their way between each of us, and asking why we were shouting at each other from a distance. In NYC probably also.

Anyway, so America is multi-culti at base line. When people move between states, they either adapt, or they get treated as profoundly weird, and if they’re engineers they probably don’t notice. Which btw, is another sub culture. As is science fiction writer. Hell fiction writer is. Science fiction writer is small, insular and we change very slowly. Whenever I look at pictures of science fiction conventions Heinlein attended, I’m struck by how I could move in that room, and know exactly how to act to be left alone, to join a group, to make friends. And some of those are near a century ago. It’s a small, insular culture, it changes slowly.

Now, you’re going to say every country has those sub-cultures. And you’d be kind of right — ish. For instance the culture in the North and the South of Portugal used to be very different pre-highway. But–

But that difference was buried under a thick layer of conformity that governs every day things.

One of the unspoken things about America is that it accepts weird more than most places. It’s the first thing that struck me. All the funny posters teachers put up. Classrooms were very individual. In Europe these people would have been out-there insane. Here they’re normal. And the same goes for ways of dressing and the leeway in how you behave. (Though you might get asked “Where ya’ll from.”)

America is large enough that there are enough people in your subgroup. (I think that if I tried to join a group of professional SF writers in Portugal, it would be me and maybe 2 people. And I’m not sure of the standards to admit those two people. Certainly not making a living from it, unless it is by grants and such.) And America gives a bit of leeway on how weird you can get before someone goes and sniffs your koolaid. Sure, that gives us some crazy-ass groups, but it mostly allows the creation of a ton of small sub-cultures. Science fiction people, makers, people who are into scrap booking, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

So to an extent we’re all more multi-cultural than the rest of the world. Which, yes, does confer some advantages, in that all of us move between one or more subcultures on the regular. It also confers disadvantages, in that subcultures can drastically misunderstand each other, and in the case of regional subcultures, moving between them is a pain. And sometimes, like Scotland, we’re a country in relentless conflict with itself.

It does confer some advantages, because we’re all at bottom and baseline American. So the variations and the ability to adapt to them keep us from getting too hidebound on the irrelevant details. “You must wear your pflark on the left side, and tie your hair on the right. It’s the fashion this year.” That’s not a thing in America, thank heavens.

But does that mean that more diversity is beneficial.

Well…. Where y’all from?

It annoys the living daylights out of me, yeah, but I know why people ask it. They hear the accent, and they’re afraid of traipsing onto no-man’s land, where a smile or a look can be weirdly interpreted, or where I’m going to take offense because their voice is too high/low or they met my eyes, or failed to meet them.

Even living aside the cheerful customs of cultures that are never mentioned in pushes for multiculti: turning women in slip-covered furniture, dropping walls on gay people (or dropping them from tall buildings, whichever), considering women whores if they are alone with their boyfriend for five minutes, considering women/other races inferior/not quite human (and trust me, it’s almost like that’s the norm in the rest of the world) different cultures have a variety of traps and stumbling blocks that won’t be obvious to the naked eye, or to people on either side of the divide. And some of them are, to American eyes, stupid-crazy and will impact one’s ability to make a living. For instance, I spent years feeling like I was being put down because I worked retail for a year. Stupid right? But it was considered “low class” where I grew up and I didn’t even realize that was there till I realized it was bothering me. (Once I realized it I got over it, and found it funny, but then I’m a little more self-aware than the average bear, for various reasons.) And keep in mind the culture I came from was solidly Western.

Is there an advantage to importing other cultures and treating everyone as equal?

Well… it’s expensive in time, money and stress. Because, look, 90% of human society is monkey ape games. Because we are built on basis of social animals, the social animal has to be appeased before whatever common purpose can be pursued. So there’s a ton of dominance/hazing/etc. in everything. People from different cultures do these differently. And the wrong cues are going to gum up the works like nobody’s business, even if they don’t result in mass shootings or something (and sometimes they do.)

This is annoying to those of us who aren’t quite human don’t read social signals well, or neglect to read them because we’re so busy pursuing whatever “the thing” in our heads is. But it’s still true and part of humanity. As is part of humanity that culture shapes these games. Which means different cultures interacting has bad side effects.

So it really has to have a big advantage.

The only advantage I can see is the chance to import the best from all over the world. The other countries brain-drain is our brain-gain.

But honestly? That’s only under the condition that those who come in are the BEST in whatever we need. And I want to point out as much as illiterate third world peasants might want to come in, and as much as we might be beneficial to them, the work and expense of integrating them make them not worth it.

“But Sarah, some of the illiterate peasants might have tons of potential. Or their kids might have, with proper nutrition.” Maybe. Look, we’re more and more out of work they can do. Contrary to what the left thinks this isn’t the thirties, when most work required neither literacy nor a familiarity with concepts of hygiene and exactness. So most third world peasants get trapped in welfare, which I’ll be honest is not beneficial to anyone, generationally. But yes, there is the occasional very bright person who was held back by their circumstances and whose family will take off like a rocket in America. The problem is finding those. And figuring out if they’re willing to work hard enough. And figuring out how not to trap them in welfare. And once we figure that out — of course, I’m one of those hard hearted Libertarians who’d cut it off, cold — let’s do the same to those people born here who are trapped in the same place. And let’s work on giving them a way out of where they’re caught. Because, look, it really, really, really, doesn’t require a high IQ to get out of the flat spot economically and culturally. It requires being allowed to and a change in culture. Oh, and incentive. And if we’re doing that, let’s do it for our fellow Americans first, and then consider how to “save the world” shall we? (And yeah, I know I’m day dreaming, because cutting off welfare will require a near-extinction event. Even though it’s needed and more than needed.)

I don’t care how, though, or how it’s determined, but to be worth the price of integrating different cultures, we have to pick people who in themselves or their descendants have a ton of potential. (And not just for captive welfare recipients who vote for the welfare givers.)

AND note that “integrating” — because if we have to live forever with encysted foreign cultures in our midst, there’s no enough pay off to offset that, EVER — the second thing that makes admitting members of other cultures worth it, is having them welcomed with an intransigent “FIFO”. Fit in, or F*ck off.

Because if we keep talking like multi-culti-tutti-frutti and keeping your “sacred” culture of origin intact are the goals, we’re just going to shatter into a million pieces.

Then the new comers won’t do well. And neither will the people who are here.

And we’ll have destroyed the one culture that matters: American culture, with its promise of freedom from the old shibboleths and crazy of historical humans.

So in the end, no matter where you came from, once you’ve been here four or five years (it takes that long, even if you’re educated/aware/trying) the answer to “Where y’all from?” should always be “America.”

Because tutti frutti is a lousy flavoring for gum, something that never existed in nature. And in cultures, it won’t exist for long. That’s the law of nature.

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM CYN BAGLEY: Tiny Joe and the Green Knight Terraforming Co.: Cases 1-3

Most customers are extremely satisfied with the job “The Green Knight Terraforming Co.” does to refurbish their planets. However when there are customer complaints, then the human Joe called Tiny is the person who solves those problems.

Joe’s backup muscle, Donald is there for the occasional times when Joe touches before he looks. Joe, Donald, and the lab animals troubleshoot those problems that need a delicate touch with a hammer. There is a one hundred percent guarantee that this group can fix any customer problem– or fix the customer.

A collection of short stories

FROM JULIE PASCAL: Traditional by Accident.

Can you say yes, if it’s impossible to say no?The encroaching Solaran empire has gobbled up Svana’s world. Svana fled her planet with the first wave of refugees, swept up with members of a different clan. Space is vast and she finds herself on a space station, alone, waiting hopelessly for her own family to arrive to save her. Thomas is from her world and similarly adrift. He offers to save her, and it’s an offer that Svana can’t refuse, but that doesn’t mean that letting him save her is the right thing to do.

Unless, perhaps, they can somehow save each other.

FROM MARGARET BALL: A Tapestry of Fire.

Thalia Kostis is a budding magician (depending on how you define it), but she has a theoretical mathematician’s grasp on socialization and people skills. When pressed into spying on a rival magician’s company retreat to find out where kidnapped coders are being held, she expected things to go completely sideways.

She didn’t expect to end up mistaken for her rival’s fiancee…

Now she has to juggle her own impending wedding, her cover, her magic, and company politics that might turn out deadlier than anyone expected!

FROM BLAKE SMITH: The Hartington Inheritance.

Almira Hartington was heir to the largest fortune in the galaxy, amassed by her father during his time as a director of the Andromeda Company. But when Sir Josiah commits suicide, Almira discovers that she and her siblings are penniless. All three of them must learn to work if they wish to eat, and are quickly scattered to the far reaches of the universe. Almira stubbornly remains on-planet, determined to remain respectable despite the sneers of her former friends.

Sir Percy Wallingham pities the new Lady Hartington. But the lady’s family will take care of her, surely? It’s only after he encounters Almira in her new circumstances that he realizes the extent of her troubles and is determined to help her if he can. He doesn’t know that a scandal is brewing around Sir Josiah’s death and Almira’s exile from society. But it could cost him his life, and the lady he has come to love.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Manx Prize.

Charlotte Fisher lives under colliding skies.

It’s the second half of the twenty-first century, and mankind has reached Earth orbit but not much farther. Orbital debris is a by-product of the industrial activity, and it’s dangerous both to everyone up there and the bottom lines of the corporations offering a prize to get rid of it. Charlotte heads up a team chasing the Manx Prize for the first successful, controlled de-orbit of a dead satellite. To win, she and her team must out-think and out-engineer a cheating competitor, dodge a collusive regulator, and withstand the temptations offered by a large and powerful seastead.

The sky’s not the limit. It’s the challenge.

If you like hard science fiction, impossible odds, and a touch of romance, you’ll love Laura Montgomery’s Manx Prize.   Buy Manx Prize to join the race for space today!

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Family Law.

People love easily. Look at most of your relatives or coworkers. How lovable are they? Really? Yet most have mates and children. The vast majority are still invited to family gatherings and their relatives will speak to them.

Many have pets to which they are devoted. Some even call them their fur-babies. Is your dog or cat or parakeet property or family? Not in law but in your heart? Can a pet really love you back? Or is it a different affection? Are you not kind to those who feed and shelter you? But what if your dog could talk back? Would your cat speak to you kindly?

How much more complicated might it be if we meet really intelligent species not human? How would we treat these ‘people’ in feathers or fur? Perhaps a more difficult question is: How would they treat us? Are we that lovable?

When society and the law decide these sort of questions must be answered it is usually because someone disapproves of your choices. Today it may be a cat named in a will or a contest for custody of a dog. People are usually happy living the way they want until conflict is forced upon them.

What if the furry fellow in question has his own law? And is quite articulate in explaining his choices. Can a Human adopt such an alien? Can such an intelligent alien adopt a human? Should they?

Of course if the furry alien in question is smart enough to fly spaceships, and happens to be similar in size and disposition to a mature Grizzly bear, wisdom calls for a certain delicacy in telling him no…

The “April” series of books works from an earlier time toward merging with the “Family Law” series.

FROM DAVE FREER: A Mankind Witch.

To the North of the Holy Roman Empire are the pagan Norse-lands. It is here that Prince Manfred of Brittany, and Erik, his Icelandic bodyguard, must venture in the dead of winter to a mountainous land of trolls and ice to find a stolen pagan relic, the arm-ring of Odin, something so magical that it should not be possible to move it beyond its wards, let alone take it away. It is gone, and unless it is recovered before Yuletide and the re-affirmation of truce-oaths, a new Viking age will be born. King Vorenbras will lead his berserkers in an orgy of killing, rapine, looting and destruction, across the Empire’s unguarded North-Western flank.
Princess Signy is the King’s older stepsister, and everyone believes her to be the thief, a witch and a murderess. Everyone, that is, but Cair, her stable-thrall, a man plucked from the ocean, with a hidden past. Cair doesn’t believe in witches or magic, let alone that Signy could steal and murder. If he has to drag the foremost knight of the age, and his deadly bodyguard kicking and screaming though the entire Norse nine worlds to prove it and free her, he’d do it. No Kobold, dwarf, or troll is going to stop him, or his scepticism. Not the wild hunt. Not even a Grendel. He doesn’t believe in this superstitious rubbish. He’s a man of science and learning, and he’s used that to fake his way into being feared as a magic worker. But for Signy, he’ll be all of mankind’s witches.
He’ll have to be, because that’s what it’ll take to defeat the dark magical forces which are marshalled against them.

FROM MICHAEL HOOTEN: We Are All Enlisted

Peter Wright joined the Navy thinking that he could do his time in a nice, quiet billet somewhere on Earth. The Navy had other ideas. When the asteroid miners claimed their independence, Peter finds himself getting sent to space on a warship headed straight into the combat zone. He has to get used to everything: zero gravity, standing watch, and being the only Earth-born in his crew. And he has to be ready for the biggest battle the solar system has ever seen.

FROM J. L. CURTIS: April Fool.

Sean ‘Mac’ McCampbell just wants to keep his head down, avoid the riots, and finish his Linguistics PhD before his GI Bill runs out. But when the professors are promoting insurrection and the cops won’t contain the violence, Mac finds trouble won’t leave the people and places he loves alone.

There’s only so much hurt you can inflict on a man before he decides to do something about it.

The Long March is about to get a real surprise on April first!

FROM JEFF DUNTEMANN: Dreamhealer.

By day, Larry Kettelkamp keeps ancient PDP-8 computers alive in a collapsing industrial bakery. By night he wages war on nightmares, and has been waging that war for thirty years. As a young man, Larry discovered that he could enter other peoples’ nightmares, end them, and then vaccinate the dreamers against that nightmare with an ancient symbol that alters the relationship between the two hemispheres of the brain.
For nightmares are not random concoctions of our dreaming imaginations. Strange creatures called archons living in the subtle realms of the collective unconscious craft horrifying dreams to drop into sleeping minds, and then feast on the terror those dreams evoke. This scheme goes back 15,000 years, to the dawn of human history. It was created by a sort of super-archon who claims to be the Demiurge of ancient Persian myth.
Once Larry learns how to destroy archons instead of merely banishing them from dreams, this architect of all nightmares hunts Larry down and demands that Larry stop destroying the monster’s archon servants. Thus begins an escalating conflict that draws in a bored title-search agent, a witch and a lightworker, two teenage prodigies, a modern-day cult practicing ancient Persian death magick, dream mechas a quarter-mile high, and a very very large number of dogs.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: ILLUSTRIOUS