Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Bob Woodward’s “Fire” is more like smoke and fractured mirrors by  Amanda S. Green

This has been a week. Between personal and professional demands on my time, not to mention the circus that’s been happening in D.C, finding a topic to blog about shouldn’t be difficult. The problem is that anything I chose would see my electronics be put in danger. The accusations against Judge Kavanaugh drive me up a wall. I’m tired of trial by innuendo and conviction by media. I’m sick of watching the DNC sending Beto O’Rourke around the country to build his image for future, nationwide office. The thought of him becoming my Senator scares me shitless. I could continue.

So, when Sarah pinged me this morning to ask where my blog post was, I almost told her there wouldn’t be one. I’d been dealing with a forest fire of the metaphorical kind since I woke. There isn’t enough coffee in the world to get me going this morning, and that includes the Death Wish coffee I’ve been guzzling for the last few hours.

However, I made a promise to her some months ago that I’d do a post a week for her. I’ve let her down a couple of times and she’s been gracious enough to let me change the day I blog on. So, I sat my butt down in my chair and tried to figure out what I could do that wouldn’t send my MacBook Air through the wall.

Mind you, what I decided to do might not accomplish that last. But it should be entertaining. At least I hope it will be for you. I have a feeling I’m going to be looking for booze, much much booze.

To prove I will take one for the team, this morning I downloaded the free sample for Fear: Trump in the White House. No, I won’t give Bob Woodward a dime of my money. Especially after reading the sample.

Okay, buckle up and here we go.

You know you’re in for a hit job—let’s call it what it really is, a hatchet job—when you see the title. But it gets better, for relative terms of better, when you open the book and you get to the epigraph.

“Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”

Woodward attributes the quote to President Trump. Of course, being the “good” journalist he is, he doesn’t give the context for the quote. He only gives time and location. After all, it is soooo much better to start off showing what a power-hungry and, shall we go ahead and say it now, evil man Trump is. (yes, tongue is firmly planted in cheek as I type that.)

One thing about it, Woodward does set the tone for the book and he doesn’t disappoint—assuming that is the sort of book you want to read.

Next up is the “Author’s Personal Note”. The tenor begun with the title and the epigraph continues.

President Trump presents a particular hurdle because of the deep emotions and passions he brings out in supporters and critics. (Fear, Kindle location 45-46)

Wow, he’s written five books about four presidents: Nixon, Obama, Clinton and Bush. Yet it is only Trump he seems to think brings out “deep emotions and passions: in his supporters and critics. I guess he slept through the Obama administration, not to mention Bush’s. Or could it be he has something personal against Trump? Or is he, like so many journalists today, falling back to the age of “yellow journalism” seen in the battles between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer?

But let’s see what else he has to say.

Hmm, we might not get to much of the book with this preview. We have the “Author’s Personal Note”. Then we have his “Note to Readers”. Couldn’t these have been combined or is he padding the book? I know. He had a word count from the publisher that he failed to fill and this was the only way he could do it. Or maybe the publishers wanted to make sure there wasn’t much of a preview of the actual book available—could they be worried readers wouldn’t want to buy it if they saw what the book actually contained—and chose this way to pad the beginning? Oh well, those are questions we’ll never have answers to. So let’s see what good ole Bob has to say to his readers.

Ah, here we have Woodward’s own admission that this is a hatchet job on the President and his administration. He tries to dress it up but he fails. When you have an author, especially someone who is supposedly a well-respected investigative journalist, saying that the book is based on interviews conducted as “deep background”, you know it means he is going to play fast and loose. There will be no specific quotes and no specific context given. Here’s what Woodward himself writes:

This means that all the information could be used but I would not say who provided it. (Fear, Kindle location 59-60)

I don’t know about you, but that alone takes this book from non-fiction to fiction. It is also where I would be sending the book back to Amazon and asking for a refund. Which is why I didn’t buy it in the first place. I have no respect for a writer, especially a journalist, who writes this sort of bullshit and doesn’t have the balls to demand his sources go on the record. Hmmm, could Woodward be the one who wrote the Deep State memo to the Times? I doubt it but that anonymous memo is the same sort of hit job as this book appears to be. Trial by innuendo and conviction by media.

To which I call bullshit.

When I have attributed exact quotations, thoughts or conclusions to the participants, that information comes from the person, a colleague with direct knowledge, or from meeting notes, personal diaries, files and government or personal documents. (Fear, Kindle location 61-63)

I don’t know about you, but that statement says to me that he not only accepted but embraced gossip and innuendo more than he did direct knowledge of the situation inside the White House. Frankly, the one thing echoing in my mind—said in a perfect imitation of Governor Ann Richards—is, “Poor Bob, he’s still looking for his next Deep Throat but this isn’t it.”

OMG, we still don’t get to the meat of the book. Now we have a Prologue. Damn but I’m glad I didn’t pay good money for this.

I have to admit, he sets a pretty stage. He paints a scene that could have come out of National Treasure or any entertaining political thriller. It opens with Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic advisor, walking into the Oval Office and crossing to the Resolute Desk. There he sees a one-page letter drafted by Trump to the South Korean president. Cohn then reads the letter and decides he knows better than the President. So he steals the letter. He is, by innuendo, protecting us and the world from our president.

Did Cohn steal the letter or not? No one really knows except Cohn and possibly other members of the Administration. However, if you check the media, you would see no question about it. If you do a Google search, you have to go 7 pages deep before finding anything that might cast doubt on Woodward’s allegation. After all, they have to keep with the narrative, one Woodward is so happy to embrace and do all he can to push.

Does Woodward say Cohn told him about the incident? No. This is one of those “deep cover” interviews apparently. So we don’t know who he talked with. Oh but, Amanda, what about the copy of the letter that good ole Bob released to the media to support his allegations? Again, there is no proof, no attribution of where the letter came from—at least not to my knowledge.

Again, trial by innuendo, conviction by media.

“I stole it off his desk,” he later told an associate. “I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.” (Fear, Kindle location 91-93)

Now we get a bit of a clearer picture. Some “associate”, and who knows who that might be and how far removed from the alleged event, told Woodward about this. Where is the fact-checking? Where is the accountability for the source or for the alleged facts? There is none and I doubt we will see much accountability in the rest of the book.

In the anarchy and disorder of the White House, and Trump’s mind, the president never noticed the missing letter. (Fear, Kindle location 93-94)

Holy hell, talk about bias.

We aren’t even into the meat of the book—hell, we aren’t even into the first frigging chapter of the book—and we get author intrusion so hard and fast it is jarring. We have one incident alleged to have happened but this is enough to prove “anarchy and disorder”. Better yet, Woodward reveals he is also apparently a mind reader. Wow. I guess he gained that power after Watergate. Otherwise, he would have revealed who Deep Throat was, maybe. Who knows what this yellow journalist would have done.

I give up. I’ve never before thrown in the towel on a book for ATH before getting to the first chapter. This is a first. There really isn’t enough booze in the world to get me to read all the Prologue, much less the rest of the book.

Woodward might have once been a good investigative journalist. Now? In my opinion, he’s a hack and I’m probably insulting hacks. This book appears to be nothing but a hit job, violating so many journalistic principles it makes my head spin. No, it makes my stomach turn. My great-grandfather who was a newspaper editor and my uncle after him who was a reporter would have publicly disowned Woodward for this piece of fiction.

Don’t waste your time or your money on this. Seriously, don’t. Unless you want to use it for kindling or target practice. All Fire is is confirmation the liberals are in control of most of mainstream publishing and are doing all they can to push their agenda of making sure there is a Blue Wave come the mid-term election. I won’t even talk about the fact this piece of crap (and I’m insulting crap) came out on 9/11. That is simply the ultimate insult to our country and to our intelligence.

Gawd, where’s the booze? I need booze.

*Get the woman some booze – SAH*

It’s probably as impossible for me to explain to you young’uns what it was like to talk or think about computers in the seventies, as it is to explain what it was like growing up during the cold war “waiting for the hammer to fall.” (Or how convinced everyone was that the communists would win because they were more efficient.)

I grew up reading stuff like Martin Cadin’s God Machine, and RUR’s robots, so of course I knew that machines could achieve full consciousness and rule us all.

It wasn’t till computers started being bought by private companies in Portugal in the seventies, and the excuse “it was a computer error” came in, that my brother (an electrical engineer) pulled me aside and explained how insane this all was.

But people my age and older than I fail to get it, still.  I was jaw-dropped when one of the luminaries of science fiction, on a panel, said we should have kids raised by robots to eliminate bias in their upbringing.  There walks someone who has never heard of Garbage In, Garbage out.  The bias would be baked in.

Some — many — of the younger people fail to get it too, aided along by the insane depictions of AI in movies and media, and expect computers/robots to be our saviors, to bring about that famed post-scarcity society.

Others think that machines will run people out of their jobs in droves, and we must therefore stop the machines before they make humans obsolete.

In regard to machines, particularly “thinking” ones (they’re not.  Actually “thinking” still eludes us.  What we have is a very sophisticated version of arranging virtual gears and things) I like to misquote Shakespeare “neither a Luddite nor a credulous acolyte be.”

Sure, computers will become more sophisticated and better, in the next 100 years or so. There might be a limit, sure, but we’re clever monkeys, and always get around those.

Will they ever be truly sentient, or define themselves as opposed to us?  I kind of doubt it.  Heck, some people doubt WE are sentient.  But even if they did, they’d be our “children” i.e. human in all but externals.  Because they would be built like us, who else would they reflect?  So they’d be about as troublesome as humans always are to each other.  Rule us?  Maybe.  But how much worse could they be than what we’ve done to ourselves in the past?

Then there’s the dream of the pure “planning” and “thinking” machine, which was part of the attraction of communism.  The dream shall always be with us, and always unattainable.  Not only would the machines be in our image and semblance, but who can believe planning everything and ruling over chaotic humans would create a better society?  Ultimately planned societies/economies, MIGHT work great for some alien, but I’d trust our chaotic nature and the improvisational smarts of the cleaver and tinkering monkeys we are against all the planning in the universe.

As for running humans out of jobs, bah.  Humans are really good at inventing new jobs for themselves, which is why almost no one these days does our original jobs of hunting and gathering.

For the same reason there will never be post-scarcity.  Why?  Because we’re better at inventing new “needs.”  Get sent to the middle ages — or my childhood in the sixties — and you’ll find out how many things you “need” don’t exist.

By medieval terms we’re already post-scarcity.  You notice any of us lying down and letting the grapes fall in our mouths? (well, some.  Even our welfare recipients live better than medieval man, but that’s a talk for another day.)

And this is good, because humans are also striving monkeys.  We were born for strife, and without it we wither and corrupt.  Which is why “no demands” charity destroys people.

So, be not afraid of the machines, but use them as we use a ladder: to reach somewhere we couldn’t get before, and learn new and interesting things, and discover even more, bigger and more confusing problems.

Here’s to humans.  The chaotic rebels they are.  May they always be so.

Among the many moral precepts I failed to heed, mostly because I could make neither heads nor tails of it, was the “woe onto him who gives scandal. It were better for him if he were tied to a millstone and thrown into the sea.”

The illustration on that page of the cathecism was amazing, with all the vivid emotion of a Victorian lithograph, showing a man having his neck tied to the millstone, which of course led young geek me to stare at it and go, “Well, no worry throwing it in the sea.  The minute they throw it anywhere his neck will be broken.”

At the same time, at my time of life, and the place where I lived, this seemed like a truly overblown reaction to the things my grandmother and her cronies called “scandal”: wearing your skirt a little too short; kissing your boyfriend; having loud parties.

In retrospect, these, and their slightly more serious cousin — getting knocked up before marriage — were indeed scandals, to an extent and in a way, but the scandal is to my mind more what we’re seeing unroll in Washington (or Rome): something that unmakes the rules of society and the world.

What I’m trying to say is that I keep hearing people who pay attention and seek their news beyond the media (because the way the media is behaving is a scandal) keep saying that, oh, the conspiracy of our State Department and the FBI against (at the time) a presidential candidate was a scandal.  What is going on with Kavanaugh being accused of being a poopie head at an undisclosed location, with no witnesses when he was in high school, and the thing being taken seriously, or the accuser being praised for courage is a scandal. (At least half of the #metoo accusations and the way they were taken was a scandal.) For that matter the way that Benghazi was willingly covered up by a compliant and partisan media was a scandal.  The entire Russia investigation nonsense is a scandal. The way conservatives (and more generally males) are treated in our society is a scandal.

A scandal is — as I see it, and I want to point out I’m no theological expert — an action or statement that so fundamentally breaks the rules on which the society/church/science/interest is based on that it unravels the thing upon which it stands.

So, were those kisses in public, the short skirts, the parties scandals?  Definitely and to an extent.  The pregnancy was more so.  But they were little scandals.  They were indeed breaking the rules of the society, and if you flaunt enough such breaks, the rule becomes dead letter.

Now, I happen to think a good many of these rules, in Portugal, when I was a kid, were in great need of being broken, or at least softened.  Stuff like the skirts, or kissing your boyfriend, or even going out alone at night fall.

But I would think that, wouldn’t I, born in the early sixties and coming to age in the seventies, “let’s demolish oppressive rules” (particularly for women) was THE rule to follow.  Of course where it led is not what we expected.  We’ll leave it at that.  I’m not someone who can judge it, particularly since I’m now acculturated to a culture where the rules were never as oppressive.

I still think the whole millstone treatment is a bit much for a quick peck with your boyfriend, or even a pre-marital pregnancy, but then again, I’m not good with rules.

On the other hand, the kind of scandal we’re saying, and coming closer and closer together, and unreported and thereby unpunished is dismantling the very underpinnings of our society.

You can’t have government trying to discredit a candidate without causing people to doubt all elections.  You can’t have the vast amount of fraud we have without removing the underpinnings of our trust in elections.  You can’t have “believe all women” without removing our judicial system, in which the accused is always presumed innocent, even if you found him with the smoking gun in his hand (he might after all have just picked it up after the murderer ran off.)  You can’t have trial by rumor and innuendo without undermining our entire system.

It’s impossible. If without witnesses, without corroboration, with an history of false memories (she blames her therapist for her having thought that there were four attackers before) if Kavanaugh’s accuser is allowed to derail his nomination, a fundamental thread will have been pulled out of our social fabric. Hell, if she and everyone who is putting a man and his family through hell aren’t PUNISHED in fact, or in deed (by having their every shady moment brought to light) society has suffered a death blow.

“But Sarah,” you say.  “Wouldn’t that intimidate some woman on coming forward, after suffering some assault?”

Sure is.  If she comes out thirty years later, has no proof, has no witnesses and is demanding an FBI investigation of something that EVEN IF TRUE is NOT A CRIME.  (Drunken groping might be boorish behavior, but it’s not assault or a crime.  At least not depending on the severity, etc, which frankly, her being obviously drunk out of her gourd at the time is impossible to determine.)

Women are not gods.  We never were.  Just because we say something is so, it doesn’t mean it is.

Women lie.  Just like men lie.

And beyond that, when you talk of something that long ago, women might believe they’re telling the truth, but there’s no guarantee they are. EVEN if they told their friends/parents — which this chick didn’t — women have often been mistaken/have hallucinated it/are not quite all there/recovered memories under therapist or not, which are largely fabrications.

Not only does the insistence that we believe some woman’s unprovable, vague recollections insane, the insistence that, even if they were true, they should derail the career of a man who has never had such an incident again, amounts to destroying everything we believe in.  There is a reason that juvenile records are erased, and again, this is not even something that would warrant a record.  Heck, I’ve been groped and pinned to walls by guys whose names I don’t remember (fortunately I was never drunk in public unless I was with my family, and even then just on the tipsy level.  So most of those men got knee in the groin or hat pin ditto) but I would blush to derail even a job application by one of those guys, even if I knew who they were.  To be a teen is to be uncouth.  I suspect most of those men would now shy away from groping a total stranger with no encouragement (particularly if they remember the knee to the groin.

But there is something far more important than our judicial system at work.  There is civilization as we know it.

Exaggeration?  Not by much.

Already in every day life any man is held hostage to any woman.  A woman, in our colleges, in our work places, in most de-facto living arrangements can end a man’s career by saying that he hurt her/abused her/failed to listen when she said (whispered/muttered) that she was uncomfortable.  Most of our institutions don’t pursue investigations.  They get rid of the man because it’s easier.

This is already causing males to be afraid to date, or be alone for any reason with a female.  In the work place, this makes any type of cooperation between males and females risky and fraught.

These new rules as practiced are already hurting women (even women like me, who’d never make those accusations, because we’re not that neurotic.) And they do hurt some select men very badly indeed.  Destroy many of them.

If we go on, if we keep assuming women are beings of light who never lie, never make up stuff, and whose word shouldn’t be checked, this goes one of two ways: the bad and the very bad.

The bad is where after a while people rebel.  Look, the rules of cutting extra slack to women are there for a reason: we’re weaker; for a part of our lives we’re impaired by hormones and pregnancy; we have a disadvantage in working outside the house.  So, some extra slack is cut and our path is eased (well, at least some of ours.  I’ve never noticed it.)

The unspoken condition is that we don’t abuse that extra help, that extra protection (things like the fact that a woman wears provocative clothes or having a checkered past not being brought in on rape cases for instance) by using it as a cudgel to get our way and destroy men just because we want to destroy them, because we disagree with their political stands, or because they’re ugly and their mothers dress them funny, even.

Now this has been abused a long time everywhere else.  Like the middle school trying to kick younger son out for kissing a girl against her will in the lunch line, while they had footage of him spending the whole time talking to his Spanish teacher.  (Yes, they did say “maybe it was another day. Women don’t lie about this sort of thing.”  Consider this and consider the unmaking of the world already in that assumption.)  Yes, liberals (of all sexes) have tried conservatives by wholly made up rumor forever. Witness idiot last week who decided an anti-Marxist article was anti-racial-subgroup of the day.  And the rumor goes forth, and the left believes it, because it’s convenient to believe it.  This has been going on a long time, because they need to believe everyone who disagrees with them is a villain.  Or that designated “evil” people like males are villains.  It makes the inevitable purges and gulags of Marxism seem justified.

But when it happens this publicly, this obviously, this nakedly, this in-the-public-eye?  The scandal is magnified twenty fold.

When women do things like that, and do that publicly and openly enough, and experience no punishment, society — if it still has enough cohesion to save itself — will turn against us.  With a great convulsion the “make the way easier for females” will be cast out.  And we’ll be cast in the same position as women in Muslim countries.  Our word will be worth nothing, and we’ll be sexual and emotional playthings of men.  If you think it can’t happen here, you’re not aware of both the great anger building up, and the foundational nature of the crime against everything this society is built on taking place.

That’s the bad result.  But there’s a very bad one.  Which is that this is allowed to continue and every woman is allowed to be a tin-pot dictator, capricious and irrational like the wind.

In that future — and we’re almost there — humanity doesn’t survive, because men simply disengage from women.  There are other sources of pleasure, and they’ll just stop risking playing kissy face with the alligator.

So, what can you do?  You can make sure this is the scandal it indeed is.  Make a great noise.  Point out how this is unraveling all of our system.

And vote.  Vote against every ass clown who is howling for a man’s blood based on a crazy  accusation of non-crime.  And vote against everyone of the same party who doesn’t immediately and vocally disavow the ass clowns and all the madness they stand for.

Because if this is allowed to stand, it were better for them if they were tied to a millstone and cast into the ocean.

And for that matter, us too.

*Worry not.  I am all right.  But taking two days of doing bloody nothing this week left me with two days worth of what Dan calls “administrivia” in both house and business to do, which means I’ve spent te morning running around like a port-wine drunken turkey with its had cut off (a story for another time.)  So…. Thank you to Christopher Chupik who doesn’t mind my putting his post up late. – SAH*

Leaving Your Mark

By Christopher M. Chupik

I open the book and see the name inscribed in neat handwriting on the end paper:

“Irene M. Montgomery”

I smile. We meet again.

Over the past fifteen years or so, I have purchased a dozen books which used to belong to Irene:

Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn by Gardner F. Fox, Prince of Peril by Otis Adelbert Kline, Three Against the Witch World by Andre Norton, The Legion of Space and The Legion of Time by Jack Williamson Lost Worlds and The Years Best Fantasy Stories volumes 1, 2, 4 and 6, all edited by Lin Carter.

From time to time I find people’s names in books I purchase used. One person even had a personalized stamp for his name. Some used bookstores stamp their books. But this is the first time I’ve ever run across the same person’s name again and again. And it makes me curious about the person whose books I’ve inherited. Just who was Irene M. Montgomery?

Googling brings up an Irene M. Montgomery who died in 1917. Clearly not her. Of course, “Montgomery” could well have been her maiden name and she is now listed under her married name. But I have no way to know. So I am left to judge her from her books.

And what can I deduce?

For one thing, she took very good care of her books. These are in great shape considering their age. For another, her reading tastes dovetail very closely with mine. It’s clear Irene had a passion for both the Planetary Romance and Sword and Sorcery subgenres. Likely she was one of the millions who discovered Burroughs during the reprint boom of the ’60s. I can relate, having discovered him myself twenty years later. Many of my ERBs are Ace editions, with Frank Frazetta covers, like the one Pirates of Venus sports.

The popularity of ERB prompted Ace to reprint authors like Otis Adelbert Kline, ERB’s chief rival during his life time. Now, OAK wrote about Venus first, back when ERB was writing about Mars. When ERB wrote about Venus, OAK switched to Mars. Legends of a “rivalry” between the authors seems to be just that — legends. As to the book itself, well . . . Prince of Peril isn’t that great, I’m afraid, but it’s perhaps not entirely OAK’s fault. Despite the “complete and unabridged” which adorned every Ace reprint, Ace did in fact abridge novels, the works of OAK included. Paizo’s short-lived Planet Stories line reprinted OAK’s Martian novels unabridged and while they are a slight improvement, Kline still comes in a distant second to Burroughs.

OAK’s biggest flaw was that his alien worlds never feel as exotic as they should. His names lack the same ring of romance that ERB brought.  There’s a nagging feeling at times that if you took out the alien animals and advanced technology, they could just as easily be taking place in some far-off place on Earth. OAK’s most important contribution to the field was being the literary agent of Robert E. Howard.

When Ace ran out of older authors, they started publishing pastiches by contemporary authors like Norton, Fox and Carter. Fox’s Llarn novels are fairly standard Burroughsian fare, but with some interesting twists. Fox was a pulp veteran, and one of the most prolific comic writers of all time, creator of the Flash, Hawkman, Adam Strange and many, many more. Norton’s Witch World series is too big a topic for this post, but I will note how the series starts off in Burroughsian territory (Earthman transported to other world) and gradually shifts into Fantasy over the course of the first six books.

I can also tell she was a big reader of DAW during its yellow-spine days, back before they courted respectability. It’s not a surprise that Irene was a big reader of Ace and DAW: Donald A. Wollheim was editor at both. Wollheim was a big Burroughs fan, and one of the first publishers willing to take a chance on Fantasy back when SF was king. The early DAW leaned heavily into Sword and Sorcery, the subgenre created by Robert E. Howard during his short but prolific life.

Carter’s Years Best Fantasy anthologies are interesting. While Lin Carter may not have the most sterling of literary reputations, there’s no denying his enthusiasm. The man loved Fantasy, especially Sword and Sorcery and made no apologies for it. While his own works varied from decent to hackwork, his work as an editor is better regarded. Though one is not sure whether to be galled or amused by the audacity of Carter always including one of his own stories in with the year’s best.

Looking through his table of contents, I see a number of familiar names: Charles R. Saunders, Gardner F. Fox, Tanith Lee, Jack Vance and Karl Edward Wagner. There’s even an early story by George R. R. Martin, back when he was still writing (I kid!). It’s a pretty impressive lineup.

Lost Worlds was a very influential book for me. When I first signed it out from the library back in the early ’90s it was the first time I was exposed to Carter, as well as Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith.

I don’t have anything of hers from later than 1980. Since her tastes ran towards two genres that had almost died out by then, it’s not hard to imagine why. Despite the success of the Milius Conan film, Sword and Sorcery was on the wane by the ’80s. Marvel’s Conan comic was limping along and most of the literary output in the genre was in the form of Tor’s decidedly uneven and repetitive Conan pastiches. Planetary Romance was also gone, save for Kenneth Bulmer’s Dray Prescot novels and John Norman’s — shall we say controversial? — Gor series. And I think that Irene wouldn’t have been interested in that. Both series were published by DAW and came to an end in 1988. Of course, it’s entirely possible she did continue buying new books and I just haven’t bought any of them. I’d like to think she still found things worth reading.

My hometown once boasted six used bookstores and now has three — and one of those is closing. Almost all the new bookstores belong to the same chain. The experience of walking into a bookstore and running across some unexpected rarity from another decade is becoming a lot harder.

Not all hope is lost. The e-book revolution has brought many older works back into electronic print. Gardner F. Fox’s Llarn series, for instance, has been reissued as part of an initiative by his estate to reprint all his works. And while scrolling through Amazon lacks the romance of browsing bookstore shelves, sometimes you can still be surprised by what you find.

All used books once belonged to someone else. But it’s rare that we’re reminded of that fact. Without Irene’s name written inside, I would have never given any thought about the person who owned these books before me. Because she did, I am reminded of her each time I open them up.

Irene M. Montgomery, you have not been forgotten.

Last week, Foxfier mentioned vocations.  I don’t tend to use the word because it’s too fraught with religious meaning, (being a specific thing of many religions) and also fraught with the meaning of predestination, destiny, fate, and things you are “meant” to do.

It’s also fraught with crazy, because all of those invoke crazy in our culture.

There are a lot of strange thoughts in all our heads, un-examined, about vocation and “what you were born to do.”

Forgive me if these sound erratic and odd, but I’ve been up since 3 am doing preparation for minor surgery*, and there are the remnants of anesthesia in my system.  By 4 am I was actually hearing voices, awake in the sleeping house.  (Voices of people who weren’t and couldn’t be here, like younger son.  None of them saying anything earth shattering btw.  More like “oh, there you are.”) This has happened before when extremely sleep deprived, but not with that clarity, so keep in mind I’m in a semi-altered state.

In the religious sense vocation is probably easiest to define.  A vocation is a calling; specifically what G-d is calling you to do.  This removes a lot of the crazy from it, because if He created the world and knows all its pasts and futures through all its permutations and potential infinite universes, then it stands to reason that He knows what you should be doing.  If you’re a believer and He tells you you should be doing something, LISTEN.  (Of course, distinguishing if what you’re hearing is His voice, your wish, your parents’ desires and expectations, etc. is a whole other ball of wax.)

But it’s long since escaped the confines of religion to cavort the secular world.  Where it often doesn’t call itself “vocation” but “what I’m meant to” or “was born to” do. (Also many religions believe you can have secular vocations, from marriage to specific careers.)

Here’s the thing though: people often adduce to that that if you’re following your vocation, your “one true path” it’s easy.  It’s “the path of least resistance. That you’ll feel happy doing it than anything else in the world.  That it will be (a least if secular) financially rewarding, and that it’s the equivalent of following your bliss.

As someone who probably has a vocation (secular? sacred? who knows? who cares?) to do what she does, and also because misery loves company has read an awful lot of stuff about people similarly afflicted, including those with traditional religious vocations…. uh.  No.  None of the above.

Even people who in retrospect truly were called to do something, often fought with it tooth and nail; fought to make a living/stay with it.

I could say that doing it is easier than not doing it.  That’s about it.  And even then sometimes it’s “depends on what you mean by doing it.”

And rather than bringing with it bliss… well… there is a feeling to when you’re doing the thing you were born to do/feel compelled to do: it’s akin to when you are tuning a radio and finally get a station with perfect, clear, crystalline quality. It feels like you’re doing what you should be doing, that’s about it.  If you’re not, the dissatisfaction and resentment can grow and eat your life.

But no one promised you a rose garden.  Even if you think Himself above set you this task or this avocation it’s easier to think of it (also reconcile it with free will) by thinking “He set a hundred” (or a million people) “this same task, because humans are fallible and fragile.”

It doesn’t absolve me from doing the best I can.  But it means that though it’s my vocation, I might not be the most perfect fulfillment of it.  Or  might lack the luck/positioning/contacts/ personality to even reach enough people with it (if it’s something like writing.)  Doesn’t absolve me from doing it, but it means it can be a very frustrating experience as well as anything else.

But “you have a vocation” is not “follow your bliss.”  It’s more often “you drew the short straw, you luckless fool.”

And yet, if you — like me — fight against it, you just hurt yourself.  And what peace and fulfillment you get is from doing it.  Even when it’s not fulfilling in any way but psychological.

Which is when you must shut your ears to the idea that not all vocations are rational — imagine you were born to be a perfect interstellar explorer right now — and that it’s quite possible this is just a defect in your nature and hope beyond hope that there is a rhyme or reason for it and someone is keeping score.

But all I can tell you is that following your vocation hurts less than not following it.

*Hopefully it stays with this bout of minor surgery, and doesn’t become major surgery, a life-roadblock or worse.  I find out in a week.  I’m hoping for column a, because too much of my life has already been devoted to illness.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike & Sunday Book Promo

*First, a brief announcement/forewarning: if I don’t put out a post tomorrow morning, do not be alarmed.  I have a fairly harmless and routine procedure at 8 am, which will necessitate leaving the house at something like 6 am.  Now, because I’m very slightly nervous — I always am — I’ll be up probably in the VERY cold light of dawn. So I might put a post up.  Or I might not.  There is no telling.  It’s also possible I’ll put a post up later, or just sleep.  The doctor tells me I’ll probably just sleep. But I never react normally to things.  So…  If you don’t see me here tomorrow, rest assured nothing catastrophic has happened (probably) and I’m likely all right just asleep in the easy chair in front of British Mysteries, which I understand are bad for you, but are my main form of  video entertainment – SAH*

Sunday Book Promo

*Note that these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com.  One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM DAVID L.  BURKHEAD:  Roaming the Universes.

Epic journeys through space and time

Whether exploring the solar system in the near future or venturing to worlds of magic and mystery, these fifteen stories take you on a journey to other universes.

Included are stories from the FutureTech Industries series, from the Knights of Aerioch, and an assortment of stand-alone tales.

The stories may be short of length, but they are not short of wonder.

So climb aboard and see what these other worlds have to offer.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Imperial Magic: Merchant and Empire Book Three.

*From the author: More than anyone really wants to know about… fur. Good fur. Bad fur. Falsified fur. Exotic fur. I wonder if the merchants in Novgorod ever got tired of inspecting squirrel pelts? that was Russia’s greatest export in the 1100s-early 1400s. (Yes, I know, now I want to read it too – SAH)*

The Great Northern Emperor Returns!

Ewoud Rhonarida needs experience, or so his father insists. Tycho sends his son east, to the trading center of Kehlibar vlee. There, Ewoud must learn to balance deference with duty. When he fails, it costs one man his life and endangers more.

But Ewoud attracts the attention of the Great Northern Emperor. This could be a boon. Or it could signal the undoing of the Galnaar family.

Tycho labored to remain unnoticed. Will his son’s fame be the family’s ruin?

(Also, will the author please stop being goofy?  72k words is NOT a short novel in today’s parlance.  That’s 50k words and under.  72k words is a novel-novel.  Heck, it was even in trad pub.  I had a friend who consistently delivered novels under 70k.  The publisher sighed, made her print slightly bigger and added some bonus stuff at the end.  Seriously.  over 60k no one will argue is a novel.  You indie kids are driving me bonkers.  Also, get off my literary lawn.  Or rather don’t.  I like y’all But start listening to your “elders” dang it. – SAH)

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: cakes

Let’s establish something at the outset.  Humans are social apes.

Sure, okay, we’re also rational or at least reasoning creatures, and we’ve changed our environment and mode of life so much, and made so many adaptations that you can say “are we still?”

Yes, we still are.  The place where rising ape meets falling angel is a pretty decent description of being human.  We aspire to more.  This is good.  Our minds — souls? — can conceive a fantastic vision of eternity (except mine.  I’m really bad at imagining what heaven would be like.  I’ll just have to trust Himself to figure it out.) and abstraction.

But the creature doing this is a jumped up ape.  There are limits on who we are, what we can do.

And there are things we need that make no sense, because we don’t want to need them, we don’t know we need them, we want to be just fine without them, thank you so much.  And yet their not being fulfilled makes us neurotic and vulnerable, and can even cause various physical illnesses.  (There are triggers in our immune system, including auto-immune that get activated when very ancient parts of our brain detect, say, that we’re very, very alone (and their detection might or might not perceive internet friends. It’s complicated.  There are studies that say they identify characters in series we watch as members of our band and causes us to instinctively overestimate our number of close friends.  Of course social studies in general have a huge problem with reproducibility and therefore with credibility.)

If your back brain, the part that was very useful when your ancestors were barely down from the trees, identifies you as a “castoff” it might trigger desperate measure to find a band, or make you vulnerable to illness, or a bunch of other things we’re not very clear on (because we’re just getting past a materialistic area where your state of mind and your physical state were wholly separate.  In people’s minds.)

This is something that’s particularly hard for introverts to process.  It’s like me, and my apparent need for sun.  I started walking — outside — two hours a day, and it about banished the chronic depression.  It makes absolutely NO sense.  My office gets tons of light.  But moving outside under the full sun is different, somehow, for the backbrain.

And humans need bands.  We need social contact.  Even those of us who hate large groups need daily contact with a “band.”

Part of the reason I prefer living in cities is that I am an introvert.  (No, seriously.  Well, that and because I grew up in a village.  In a village everyone is passionately interested in everyone else, and also their memories and expectations write the script of what you should and could be doing.  There is a reason my mom won’t let me tell anyone I write fiction for a living.  In the village that is “impossible” particularly for the daughter of a rather stodgy middle class family.

I’d be interpreted as “giving myself airs” Or being jumped up.  I’m not bound by their expectations, you say.  You’d be amazed how much they matter when you all live in each other’s pockets and have for generations on end.)  Apparently — note caveat above about social studies — we need to SEE and interact with some number of humans a day for our ancient ape brain to realize we’re not outcasts.  Apparently “interact” can be ordering a coffee and paying, or smiling at someone who accidentally makes eye contact when you walk by.  (Because the back brain is stupid.)  This explains why I’m always saner living in cities and also what I call “making sure there’s still a world.”

Normally the routine was, finish x number of pages, go for a walk, smile and nod at people, feel way better. In a smaller place I might be expected to — aaaack — talk, or interact.  In a big city I can order a coffee and go for a slow stroll, no problems.

Anyway, these “needs” of the back brain are not rational and they’re not something you control.  They’re also not something you can change just because you want to.  Because physical structures don’t work that way, even if they’re designed to think or feel with.  They’re still physical.  You might as well plan to grow a third arm.  (when the guys aren’t helping me with something, say, opening the door when my hands are full, and they ask me why I’m just standing there, my answer is “I’m trying to grow a third arm.” They usually GET it.)

So… what prompted this: yesterday I was doing something else and stumbled on a Peterson video.  So I watched part of it, realized it was stuff I read.  And then I read the comments.  NEVER EVER EVER READ THE COMMENTS.

The Blue Schism and Why We Should Care – By Amanda S. Green

Well, it’s done. With the exception of Louisiana, all primaries leading up to the mid-term elections are decided. Louisiana will hold its primary on, well, the day the rest of us hold the general election. New York closed the books on the primary season and each of us should look at what happened and learn from it.

Since Trump beat Clinton in 2016, the Dems have been promising a Blue Wave that would wash away the evils of the Trump Administration. If it happened to wash away a few—or many—conservative and even libertarian voters along the way, all the better. If you listen carefully, you can still hear the chant, “Blue wave! Blue wave! Blue wave!”. But it isn’t as strong nor does it hold quite the conviction it did even a few months ago.

The why is simple, even if it isn’t one the Dems, especially the DNC, will admit: The Democratic Party is in turmoil. While that pleases my libertarian (with more than a hint of conservative) heart, it is also something I am watching closely.

Now, I hear some of you asking why I’m watching, much less why I’m concerned, with problems within the DNC and the Democratic Party. After all, that’s something we should applaud because it means we have a better chance to slow the decline into socialism our country has been headed on for some time. Right?

I wish I could say so, but I can’t. At least not with complete confidence and here’s why.

Those districts and states that have been solidly Dem for years are the ones that are feeling the impact of this schism within the Democratic Party. They ask, much as the life-long Democrat did during HRC’s campaign, “what have the Democrats done for me?” The answer is “nothing”. But, after almost two years of Trump, they don’t like what they see. They are buying, all too often, into the rhetoric of the MSM. Trump doesn’t help either with his love affair with Twitter. So they are looking for something else. Something that offers hope and still lets them be “loyal” to their party.

That’s where the Democratic-Socialists come in.

Let’s face it. The DNC opened this can of worms themselves when they allowed Bernie Sanders to run on the Democratic ticket for President. Here’s a man who has not only proclaimed himself an “independent”, but who also claims to be socialist. Yet, because they needed someone to run against Hillary, someone she could beat, they gave him the nod. What they didn’t think about was that, by doing so, they gave him and his fellow socialists a legitimacy not only in the Party but with voters. They didn’t look at how his “You will get what you want for free” message would play with young voters who haven’t a clue about how the world works.

The result?

Pennsylvania’s primary saw what can only be called a sweep by the Democratic-Socialist candidates. We have the poster child for the movement, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She and Bernie went across the country campaigning for others of their ilk. I guess we should consider ourselves fortunate their track record wasn’t any better than it was. But we can’t. The door has been cracked and it is going to be damned hard to close it.

And close it we must. In the meantime, we have to keep it from opening further.

For some reason, and I have my guesses why, there are voters in this country who no longer worry about whether candidates are truthful. I know, we have been trained to expect them to lie. That’s politics. But there’s spin which you expect from politicians and then there’s outright lying. New York’s primary yesterday proved just how little the truth counts these days.

Julia Salazar, Democratic-Socialist running for state  Senate, played fast and loose with her own background. According to the Washington Times, Salazar “faced criticism for saying she was an immigrant from Colombia who struggled financially growing up when she was actually born in Florida and had hundreds of thousands of dollars in a trust fund. She was scrutinized, too, over a political and religious conversion during her years at Columbia University, where she transformed from a Republican, anti-abortion Christian to a hard-left, Jewish Democrat.”

Try wrapping your mind around that. There’s more, but you get the idea. Now wrap your mind around the fact that she won a race without a Republican candidate to run against her in November. This is who will represent the district and who will push the Socialist agenda on a state level and, you can bet your last dollar, do her best to influence national policy as well.

This is a problem. Folks don’t think about how a local or state election may impact national politics or vice versa. It’s the same sort of problem I see here in Texas. Beto O’Rourke is using a well-funded page out of the Dem’s playbook. He’s not trying to raise money here in the state he’d represent in Washington if election. Not really. He’s going to California and other liberal havens. He’s making the rounds of the talk shows, becoming the darling of Ellen and others. These aren’t his constituents. Their concerns aren’t ours, as Texans. But that’s never stopped the DNC and it certainly isn’t stopping it now when panic is setting in.

Going back to yesterday’s primary, if anything good came out of it, it’s the fact that Cynthia Nixon lost her race to be the Dem’s nominee for governor. Mind you, I am far from a fan of Andrew Cuomo. I don’t trust the man any further than I can throw him. But you know what he stands for and you know what he’s going to do. Sometimes it really is better to have the devil you know.

Of course, Nixon isn’t happy with her loss. She’s basically blamed it on too many voters coming out to vote. This from someone who campaigned on a platform that included making it easier for folks to vote. Then there’s this tweet from her. It pretty much says it all on so many levels.

https://twitter.com/CynthiaNixon/status/1040431683026276352

“. . . take our country back. . . “  I hate to tell her this but the Socialists have never held this country. Oh, they are doing a good job trying to take it over now, but they have never held it.

“. . . take our party back. . . “ Again, as much as the Dems have veered into the realm  of socialism, it has never gone completely there.

Not that either statement really surprises me. It’s the way that side thinks, and it is a page out of their book. Convince those who are unhappy with how things are and remind them of how good they had it under prior administrations. Then claim those good times came under their watch. Paint the picture expertly enough and the gullible won’t realize the lie. By the time they do, it’s too late.

We are better than that. We are smarter than that. But we are not the only ones voting. It is up to us to keep challenging these sons of bitches. It is up to us to fight for this country and what it stands for. When we throw our hands into the air and say it’s too late, we play into their hands. When we sit back and assume the Red Wave we saw in 2016 will continue in 2018 and beyond, we have played into their hands. The DNC and, unfortunately, the Democratic-Socialists are honing their attack plans aiming not only to improve their numbers in Washington in the mid-term elections but to retake the White House in 2020.

My question to each of you is “are we going to let that happen?”. If not, what are you, as an individual, going to do to stop it?

(I’ll be back next week with another book commentary. This was something I had to get off my chest.)

Cats are more sensitive to noise than we are.  When I was doing work with orphan kittens — most of your local shelters will take kittens any age.  Most euthanize those under 8 weeks of age, which most state laws view as being too young to adopt.  Some people like me volunteer to raise litters to 8 weeks of age, which is often 7 week stints of having infants, with all that entails.  As my health got worse, I stopped doing it, so I haven’t done it in close to ten years.  Might do it again, when some of our feline geriatrics go to their reward — one of the women in our support group said she’d been delivered a 2 week old kitten who was in shock.  Someone had transported him in a tin bucket (lined with warm towels, mind) on the handle bar of a motorcycle.  The person doing it, had found an almost-dead kitten, wanted to take him to a rescuer, and had not idea their hearing is far more acute than ours.  (The kitten survived, btw.)

Posit a kitten whose mom gave birth under some piece of industrial machinery, with all the noise and clanging.  If he doesn’t go deaf, he might adapt to a quiet life, as an adult, but he’ll probably still deal better with chaos and confusion than your average cat.

In a way I am this kitten.  Due to things too hard to relate, and besides not mine to tell, things were already semi-unpredictable before the revolution.  They hit full potato after in that I couldn’t predict what would be next.  Like…School could start 1st or October or… whenever.  One year it was January.  Our curriculum was not what my brother and father had studied, not even in vague outlines. It could change, for that matter, at any time during the year, both courses (in Portugal you don’t select them.  You get them per-school year) and what courses taught.  Your commute home could be fine, or there could be a sudden strike, and you had to walk home (if it was both bus and trains on strike.)

There was no rhythm, no pattern, no pathway to adulthood.

And then when things were stabilizing, both in the country and in my life, I moved overseas.  It took me a while to realize all my assumptions — and therefore most of my actions — about how things worked were plain wrong.  I’m sure there are some minor things I haven’t figured out yet, because they’re internalized when people are pre-verbal.

Though my new environment didn’t contain surprise strikes, or pitched street battles when you least expected them, it was completely unpredictable TO ME.  (My misreading of real estate cost us dearly in our first house.  But I came from a country where you bought a tiny home and it grew with you and you stayed there for life.)

Then we moved… well more or less every five years for the last thirty.  We stayed in last house 13 years because most of it I felt too ill to move. But then we had six moves in a year and a half (some of them partial, some kids, but still disruptions.)

I’m as “adapted” as our kind can be to disruption and chaos.  Which is still not very well.  I still feel confused and upset when I can’t predict what  the best path is, when I can’t make the “noise” and confusion stop.

Most people want tomorrow to be a little better than today, but not markedly different.  They want to raise fat babies and fat, happy grandbabies, and predict what gets them there.

They get downright testy when the path to get there keeps changing and they have no clue where to go or what to do to get to that happy outcome.

Right now our disruption is mainly technical.  “Mainly” but it soon flows out to the rest of the world.  The French Revolution and probably WWI were convulsions from the big tech change of the industrial revolution.  Because when people are unstable, things go nuts.

And we’re at the beginning of such a period.  On and on it goes, where it stops nobody knows, but hell, the last echoes will probably resound 500 years from now, particularly if things keep changing.

Which means people are getting — to coin a phrase — their cheese moved all the time: jobs, politics, expectations, ways “things have always been done” within jobs and families. The inevitable is no longer inevitable.  The impossible and unthinkable might be improbable, but they do happen.  “Things fall apart.  The center cannot hold.”

I’m not better at this than anyone else.  I dearly love security and predictability, I just think a little clearer through the mess, because I’m the kitten who grew up in the machine shop.

So — some things I know you might want to think about:

1- You’re not crazy.  You just feel that way.  Our brains are wired for the neolithic (if that.)  We don’t do well with fast changing situations.

2- Most of the anxiety you feel is not real.  Look, when you were a neolithic farmer, and a lot of things started changing, it was sure as shooting some bad invaders would raid your farm one night.  So you had to be alert and paranoid all the time.
Sure.  I don’t want you to do things like ignoring your surroundings, but I also don’t want you to die of stress.  Take a deep breath.  Yeah, it’s crazy, but you don’t believe in a deterministic future and the inevitable arrow of history.  Your world is being rocked, but not jack-hammered into the ground.  Chances are good you’ll be fine.  You got this.

3- Our friends and neighbors who believe in a deterministic future and the inevitable arrow of history?  Their world is getting jackhammered.  Worse, their ways of reacting that always served them well are doing worse than backfiring.  They’re not doing anything.  Worse, they’re used to being in power, and in having “privilege” for having “the correct opinions.”  That’s not really paying off anymore.  Even in publishing where the establishment abides, there’s less and less cheese to go around, which means the other rats are turning on you.
I’m not saying you should pity them.  Oh, heck, you should, yes, but considering what has gone on in the past, most of us aren’t that saintly.
Just understand the crazy stuff they do and say is because they lost their moorings, not because “they were always inherently bad people.”  (Though some, of course, were.  People will be people.)  They’re really really scared, and scared people do crazy stuff.

4- So, you, stop being scared.  Yes, there’s a possibility this all goes to buckets of blood, but I can guarantee those who see a boot stomping on a human face forever in our future are not taking in account a bazillion factors.  That type of thing works in fiction.  Reality is more complex and frankly the boots haven’t been permanently successful anywhere, even the parts with the worst record in that regard in human history.
Take a deep breath.  Half of what you’re feeling is due to perceived chaos and instability and the people for whom the chaos and instability threaten fundamental beliefs.  You’ve got this.  Most of us will be fine.

5- This is no time to run around with your head on fire. Conversely it’s no time for a nice nap either.  Roughly half the population (not all of them hard left, or even left) is out of their minds with panic.  Roughly 90% are somewhat scared. All over the civilized world and some of the semi-civilized.  Scared people do crazy things.  Be aware of your surroundings, particularly when traveling abroad, but in our fair land, too. Have a plan of escape/survival if things go strange, at all times. Just don’t obsess on it.  Having the plan will help you feel less anxious, and increase your chances of survival should things go wrong.  Think of it as the spiel on emergencies when you board a plane.  Chances are things will be fine where you are, at that time.  But there will be rough patches. To survive the rough patches, your back brain needs to know what to do.

6- Think about the specific change around you and in your field.  The way changes are trending is not always obvious — in publishing right now I swear things change every six months — but they can be guessed if you think about it.  Nothing trad pub has done so far has really surprised me (except perhaps for how long they’re taking on the way down, but I know non-fic is still profitable, and there’s parent companies and stuff.  So my surmise of how fast it would all go South has always been broad “two to ten years” say.) Some turns Indie has taken have shocked me because they’re due to Amazon changes, and I can’t anticipate those.
You don’t have to foresee ten years in the future, and thank heavens, no one needs to foresee 100 (unless you’re an immortal.) Even science fiction is less forecasting than “what would be cool” and “what would make my story more fun” and then finding a plausible way to get there.
BUT if you’re a few months ahead of the rest of your field, your town, your business, you’ll do very well.  It’s like surfing on the crest of change, without getting pulled under.

7- That’s it.  Take a deep breath.  You’ll do fine.  You got this.  Reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated.  Be not afraid.

There are a lot of sayings (yes, a lot of them from the Bible) that seem pretty silly when you’re a kid.  Take the thing of hiding your light under a bushel.  I knew what a bushel was because they were these reed things used for measuring corn when you bought it (mostly for the chickens) by the bushel-full.  I also knew what the lamp referenced was, because we still had a ton of them around — electricity supply being spotty and the house weirdly wired — they were the oil lamps where we would spend the morning cleaning them and trimming the wick.  They were dangerously flammable (at least in the mind of a little kid), got very hot, and putting them under a bushel was just asking for trouble.  So the light and bushel thing got filed under bizarre things adults say.  You know like “I wish I were your age” (Why? You want your every minute controlled?) or “don’t eat sand”.

Later when I got the whole quote I realized it wasn’t quite as silly, but also didn’t apply to me in any way, shape or form.  There was no stretch of the imagination, even in my moments of greatest egotism, that I considered myself “the light of the world” or “a city upon a hill.”  As for the people called “the salt of the Earth” they tend to be the solid, steady people, unquestioning and loyal, who live rock-ribbed lives.  Me, with my perpetual questioning and my either over driving myself or slacking off to near dangerous points?  I was never that.

I have a friend who is an atheist, but who knows the Bible — old and new testament — better than I do, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that he also owns an annotated Torah. He says that these books are some of the most valuable repository of wisdom in western civilization.  In a way they are the warp and weft that has made Western civilization so distinctive compared to all that came before and all that still exists around the world.  It set in different ways of being that made us who we are, now, at so many removes that we don’t remember why this is the way our civilization is.

He might very well be right, because I keep catching myself in figuring out that there is something I discounted as “that’s for extra special holy people, not me.”  And then I find out, well, no, if everyone were like this it would make a big difference. Whether it glorifies our Father in Heaven or not (I don’t have a particular feeling I’m good at that, either) it short circuits some of the ah…. malware that is taking Western civilization apart.  It is the “repair patch” you apply over the malware that sure seems to be designed to destroy the West.

You don’t have to believe in the greater religious significance of the documents, just to see them as well…. “simple rules for living.”  To coin a phrase.

When I first started this blog, I was so scared of saying anything even vaguely offensive or causing ripples that I often went months without writing. When I started writing more, my articles tried to be as anodyne as possible, but often stuff leaked in, and my friend Pat said “I think you’re a happy warrior.”  He couldn’t be more wrong.  I’m still not a happy warrior.  I don’t like fighting or disagreement or confrontation.  Partly because I’m empathetic, but partly because when my hands start shaking I know the berserker is about to activate, and I’m bad at containing it (it hurts) and also it’s hard to let it out when my only instrument is a keyboard.  And partly…

Partly because I grew up under socialist regimes (both kinds.  Whee.  Though the national socialists didn’t bother me much, since they were toppled when I was 11.  Just as well, given my temperament I’d have become a communist to spite them, and that would involve turning off large portions of my rational mind) and occasionally communist (never quite openly declared, but when socialists are being accused of being right wing, you know where you are.  At any rate, as my history book said “socialism is the way to communism, the perfect society.”).  This meant that at school you weren’t supposed to question the pap they were pouring out.  You were supposed to absorb and regurgitate.  Extra points for figuring out the principles of the pap and coming up with angles your teacher hadn’t thought of.

I was very good at it.  I did manage to absorb a decent education, somehow, around the indoctrination.  But being smarter than the average bear (if often not acting it) I had the sense of preservation to realize that no matter how well I wrote and ciphered and read, I was not going to college unless I repeated the pap back and even improved on it.  Since I was convinced I was so repulsive no one would ever marry me — there were reasons for that.  Until 9 I had eczema all over my face and neck to the point I looked like a burn victim.  You internalize people’s reactions to you at a very early age. — I had to go to college, or be an unpaid drudge in my parents’ house forever.  I preferred the first.  Like most smart people do.  So I got really good at parroting things back.

And yes the left grades on ideology everywhere, in every field they take over.  The proof is simple: if all the luminaries of a field are leftist, then yep, the field is being run by leftists, who grade/promote on ideology.  Because if you study history there is not a single case where talent or intelligence were ALL on one side of an historical debate.  The only people who believe that are people who believe in the rightness of their cause with religious fervor.  And religion by definition is not rational.

I didn’t expect to find the same in the US, though I realized early on that leftism was a positional good.  When you grew up where and how I did this was not difficult.  All the upper class defined as higher education or more money parroted leftist views (often unexamined.)  This was partly because they all read the same magazines and watched the same shows, which were uniformly left and which were considered “smart.”  And people are social monkeys.  They want to be smart.

I didn’t expect it to be so strong in publishing, to the point that you had to watch your every word and your every expression.  I’m not good with that.  Hell, my communist teachers were more lenient (partly because they never expected a ninth grader to be thinking “Good heavens, you’re a credulous guppy.”)  Nor did I expect unapproved thoughts to be so quickly detected and to immediately put you in the “suspect” category.  Things I’d got away with under leftist regimes, like saying “But note, this actually is worse for the oppressed, because…”  And “Shouldn’t we instead…” were just slammed down upon hard.  Partly it was that the structure here had been in place longer than in Portugal (national socialists punish open dissent and subversion, but by and large don’t care if you’re having unapproved thoughts, nor do they try that hard to ferret them out.  Well, maybe the ones in Germany, but they were a different ball of crazy.  Not so much in other countries.  Socialists and communists, OTOH, think that utopia will come when everyone believes as they do, and so they must get in your head and ferret out your beliefs.) The people in power in the industries taken over by the left had gotten there by parroting the left and going a little further, as I did in school.  They had never actually examined the beliefs, or thought about them.  They were already second generation of people getting in that way.  You not only can’t reason a man out of what he wasn’t reasoned into, but you can’t dispute a person’s belief that having a set of shibboleths makes someone “smart.”  For me to say anything counter their religiously-held memes either made me stupid or evil.  I was either too dumb to realize what I was saying revealed my stupidity, or I was trying to trip them up.

This mind set will be familiar to anyone who’s lived under a multi-generational authoritarian regime.

Well…  I wasn’t stupid.  But maybe there’s only so much one can keep one’s mouth shut, and I’d exhausted it by 22.  I could kind of stay still, but I couldn’t do the extra of going a little further.

And as far as keeping my mouth shut, it was hard, and I had to watch myself all the time.  But what can you do, when your income is, if not essential, what allows you as a couple to live beyond bare necessities, and traditional publishing is the only game in town.  Oh, yeah, and news is controlled by the left by the same expedient as publishing.  Only leftists are hired or promoted.  No matter how much you know they’re fudging (like Heinlein, I’ve never been present at something reported in the media and found any resemblance between what I experienced and what was reported.) to say they’re lying is to go against consensus reality and be treated as a crazy person.  Even if you were there.

I knew my time even working was limited.  Until ….

Until things changed.  Being an early adopter, I thought that the web would influence elections MUCH before 2016.  I thought cracks would appear in the consensus and what a professional in my field called “the ability to be very rude to those who deserve it”in publishing would set in earlier, given indie.  The world is often slower (or catastrophically faster) than I expect.  In this case it was way slower.

But as I argue in MGC the parts of society taken by the left were also committing suicide.  When ideology is the parameter for hiring and promoting, you’re not hiring or promoting the most able or competent. On top of that, since virtue signaling is all important, you’ll distort all of your actual work to fit with the ideology.  Which in writing makes for very boring stories.  And in other areas can make for outright bad results.

What can’t go on only goes on until an alternative is available.

And eventually an alternative comes into being.

Which brings us to where we are now.  The left — and remember they’re in their third generation.  The people my age are third, that is, with the younguns being the fourth. These people were raised in the serene confidence the way to be smart and successful was to mouth these unexamined “truths.” — no longer has control.  In fact, every day, more control slips between their fingers, and they don’t fully understand why.  You see, they didn’t have to think about it, or engineer their way in.  That was the first generation after the take over.  They just accepted these “truths” to BE.  The same way they accepted belief in the arrow of history.

Meanwhile my giveadamn broke, because I was never going to be a good enough acolyte in the progressive mass, and I started speaking the truth as I see it, and as loud as I could.  I’m not alone.

The reaction of the left to people like me is to run around bullying, shaming, and when we’re obviously beyond that (hey, one of my former editors once emailed me and tried to call me to get me to shut up.  That was fun.  This was the person publicly fantasizing about  a Hilary presidency in 1999.  To the acclaim of her listeners, all also NYC editors.) they slander us, and try to make as many people as possible think we’re evilbad people and they shouldn’t even read us, or think about us (because of course, that will contaminate them in some way and cause them to be shunned. Which of course only makes sense if examining the dogma of leftism is by definition to doubt it, and therefore to become a heretic.)

No one likes being attacked and slandered.  I’m not a fan.  Though these days mostly what it causes is a feeling of disgust so deep it acts as an emetic. This might be different for less case-hardened badevil people than myself, of course.

Think of it this way: These are people who for the sake of advancement and yeah money as well as power over others, voluntarily killed the questioning part of themselves (or as one of them called it “mindkilled”themselves.) I.e. they took their lights and covered them tight with a bushel, the best to fit in with darkness.

Those of us who dare to show a light and try to build lighthouses showing the shoals of history and how to avoid them, scare the heck out of them.  They were taught light was bad.  Our lights must be covered now, because they’re scary.  They invalidate their “sacrifice”. They cast doubt on how “smart” they are for saying what “everybody knows” is true.  They might even make the smarter of them suspect that they’re not the heroes in this stage of civilization, and that their way would lead to death and utter darkness.  All of this is intolerable and must be stopped.

Ignore them.  Light another lantern.  Build another lighthouse.  One sees better in the light.

You might not be the light of the world, but once a bunch of us light our lanterns, the world will be a brighter place.

Me? I’ve chosen.  I’ll live in the light.