Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

The Camels of Christmas

Sarah A. Hoyt

There was someone new in the enclosure. And something was very wrong.

The thought flashed through Jason’s mind, and the next moment he realized he’d thought it, and that it had been in words. Real words, not the vague feelings, senses and impulses that had occupied his mind for… how long.

He looked around with a sense of waking up. He was in the camel enclosure in the zoo. As he should be. Beyond the enclosure, there were twinkling lights, and sounds of singing, and of people laughing and kids yelling. That wasn’t right. The zoo didn’t have any visitors at night. Or did it? He listened again. Ah. The songs were Christmas carols. So. This was the time of the year when the zoo decorated for Christmas, and they have visitors close on to midnight. He had a vague memory flit through his head, of walking through the zoo as a human, with a girl on his arm and—

He dipped his head and took a vicious bite of some of the grass on offering. It was suitably juicy and just crunchy enough to give him something to bite. But, to be fair, it tasted like straw. He wanted a cheeseburger. He wanted some of the hot chocolate he could smell in the wind. Which was a completely human thought.

Jason sighed. Okay, so there was no way he was going to be able to go back into just being a camel. The human part of him was awake now, and restless. And it had all started because there was something wrong in the enclosure. No. There was someone wrong.

He squinted at the shadows, in the dark of the enclosure, and counted. There was … He didn’t have a human name for her. She was a darker patch, against the fence, her legs tucked under her. And she might be asleep. His human brain wanted to name her Great Humps. Then there was the elderly female. Grandma. That would do. And there was the other male. Bad Ass would do for his name.

There were two very young juveniles, the progeny of Bad Ass and Great Humps. But there was someone else. He squinted at the dark and saw him. Male, his nose told him, and definitely a half-grown juvenile, moving his legs restlessly, and giving the impression he would run at the slightest provocation.

And then his nose told him something else. This juvenile was, like Jason, a shape shifter.

The shock was so great, that Jason found himself halfway through his shift, coughing and twisting in the pain of grinding-together bones and wrenching muscles. He had just enough mind left to drag himself into the darker shadows at the edge of the enclosure.

I’ll be naked, flitted through his mind, followed by a half amused and half appalled, all we need is for some kid to see a naked man in the enclosure. An arrest would surely make my return to the human world… interesting.

When the pain subsided, he took a half fearful, half curious look at himself. He looked leaner than he had when he’d come into the enclosure… however long ago that was. And he was filthy. Or at least he smelled like the camel enclosure.

He knit himself with the fence, at the darkest edge, behind the feeding through, and looked at the suspicious juvenile. Who was looking right at him, his ridiculously wide camel eyes opened eve wider, his nose twitching.

Part of him wanted to go to the kid and tell him to shift now, but if he did that, he’d be in the full light. He could already see the headlines, tomorrow, in Goldport’s local paper. Mentally Disturbed Man Molests Camels at The Zoo.

Shifters could not afford a sojourn in a mental institution. Well, not that normal humans could. But if they have Jason drugs to help with supposed psychosis, who knew what they’d do. Besides making him turn into a camel? And this time, he might not be able to get away fast enough…

The memory tried to surface and he closed his mind off to it. He remembered only that once upon a time he’d become a camel to forget. He shook his head, and instead of going towards the juvenile camel shifter, felt his way along the fence to the gate, opened it and squeezed out. Outside was a cleverly disguised service tunnel, of the kind used by personnel and hidden from visitors, because all the zoo needed was for someone to find their way to the enclosure and let the animals out. All things considered, the camels were not the worst to let out. Imagine someone decided to release the bears, the lions, or even the elephants.

Jason had only known where the service tunnels were because he’d worked for the zoo, occasionally. He once again tamped down the memories, save for one. Years ago, with the police – or at least the authorities, he wasn’t sure which – hot on his tail, when he’d decided to leave humanity behind and take on his camel aspect forever, he’d left himself an escape hatch. He knew he couldn’t become a human again, and join the crowds stark naked. So before shifting, he’d taken off all his clothes and hidden them.

Of course, he’d hidden them when the zoo was closed. Now, climbing onto the bench on the side of the tunnel stark naked, and feeling about at the top of the wall for the bundle he’d left there was rather more daring, but he saw no other way. Finding the big plastic bag, he dressed quickly. He stank and the clothes would stink, but he saw no way around this. His younger self hadn’t thought of having clothes of convenience till he could shower.

A quick thought of his condo came to him, and the thought that for all he knew it was no longer there. First order of business, find out how long he’d been a camel. Second order of business, which might become first depending on circumstances, find one of the employee showers and hope his contractor badge still worked. Third order of business—

He’d reached the end of the service tunnel and hovered there, with his hand on the latch to the outer gate. Third order of business, of course, could be that he forgot it all and just went back to the camel enclosure. Great Humps and Bad Ass weren’t bad, and Grandma was… well, grandmotherly. And none of this, none of it, had the emotional complications and the complex calculations of human relationships.

Then he thought of the kid in the enclosure. He didn’t know who the kid was, or how old, though he’d suspect he was just a teen, at that age when shifting first tended to occur. If he stayed in the enclosure…

Jason had been able to hold on to some of his own humanity, to an extent, because he was an adult, with an adults sense of self and of self in the world. But a kid, who was still trying to find himself, might become a camel in fact, and forget forever he’d ever been human.

Considering how – not happy, but – content Jason had been in the camel enclosure, the idea that the boy could become a camel forever shouldn’t have been horrific. And yet it was. The idea that someone wouldn’t even try adult humanity, that he wouldn’t ever experience the joys of those more complex realities—

He paused, shook his head, thinking that if he allowed himself to pursue that line of thought, he’d end up applying it to himself. Which would be sane and just, except that right then he didn’t want to do it.

Instead, he thought the kid must be convinced to join the human race, at least long enough to know what he was rejected.

With this thought in mind, he opened the gate and strode out into the zoo.

It wasn’t the part of the zoo thronged with visitors, but those byways and alleys, surrounded by tall hedges that only employees knew. Which was good because just the proximity of garrulous humanity on the other side of those hedges made him shiver a little. It was weird, because of course, while he was a camel he’d seen humans. But they’d been safe distance away, on the other side of barriers, never coming close.

Now it seemed that the idea of humans that near was unnatural and a little scary.

He lucked out though. He’d clipped his zoo ID to his shirt, hoping no one looked too close and realized it was outmoded, and the only person he met, a woman going the other way, only looked at his id and said, “oh, excuse me, doctor,” before hurrying away, probably afraid of his stink.

He hurried to the little building that housed showers, in case doctors and workers got dirty while dealing with the animals. It was still there, and nothing had changed. He took his clothes off hurriedly, got under the shower and washed away the camel stink with the rather astringent disinfectant soap.

Dressed once more in the street clothes which now only smelled faintly of dromedary, he took a deep breath, and decided to brave the byways of the zoo on his surely outdated id again.

He was about to leave the utility building, when it occurred to him that being seen with a naked young male might actually be worse than being caught naked himself. He found the closet where coveralls were kept for those people whose clothes got ruined in the course of their zoo duties. They were cheap coveralls, of the sort people wore while painting. But they would do. Supposing of course, he could talk the kid out of camel.

He walked back into the enclosure, noting the way the others shied away from him. The only one who didn’t was the young male, who stood, looking awkard and ill-at ease as Jason approached. Jason laid a hand on his neck and said “Shift back to human. Now.”

The kid blinked his ridiculously fringed camel eyes and snorted. He took a step back and it looked like he was contemplating kicking Jason, but he didn’t.

“Listen, buddy,” Jason said. “I know things look bad, but they’re not that bad. And I understand what you’re going through. I get it.”

The young camel visibly shook his head. “Yes, I do. You know I also shift shapes.”

Another snort.

“Okay, tell you what, you shift and come with me. I’ll buy you a burger and you can tell me why you decided to be a camel. If you convince me that you have reason to stay here, I’ll bring you back. If not, I’ll help you deal with whatever it is that drove you here. How about that?”

It hung in the balance. Jason could sense that the juvenile really wanted to be persuaded to do this. On the other hand, whatever had driven him here must scare him enough he didn’t think he had a place on the other side. Jason bit his lip. Then gambled it all, by standing on tiptoe and whispering as close to the camel’s ear as he could, “Come on. I’ll buy you a cheeseburger with onion straws. Between you and me, that grass,” he nodded towards the trough with his head, “tastes like straw.”

The camel snorted, and Jason moved back, then realized the more-than-camel eyes were laughing, and that the snort might have been a burst of laugh. The juvenile nodded, and allowed Jason to lead him out of the enclosure to the little tunnel, where he shifted. It took a long time to shift, and Jason had the impression the kid was fighting it. When he was done, he revealed himself as a tall, stringy teenager, maybe thirteen or fourteen, with the sort of build that betrays a rapid growth spurt and no filling in, or muscle. He had a tuft of ginger hair atop his head, a longish face that reminded Jason of his camel face, and big, confused grey eyes.

He put on the overalls, turning away to do it, which meant he couldn’t be used to shifting. Not that Jason had met many shifters, at least not before coming to Goldport, but it seemed like once you’d shifted a few dozen times, even the most modest of girls started dressing and undressing wherever, with no problems.

When he turned back, Jason said, “Nice to meet you. I’m Jason Fleming. What’s your name?” He hadn’t given his full name, of course, because he never used his first name. When pressed, he’d sign himself D. Jason Fleming. Because Dimas was not a name anyone should be forced to confess to, and what had possessed his parents?

The kid hesitated, perhaps feeling the lack of complete honesty, then sighed a sigh that reminded Jason of the camel snort. “Codie,” he said, and hesitated. “Codie Smith.”

Jason nodded. “Come on, Codie.” And headed towards the exit of the zoo.

“Dressed like this?” Codie asked.

“Well…” Jason said. “Did you think to hide some clothes somewhere before shifting?”

“No, but—”

“Always hide clothes somewhere. Lots of somewhere. You can get thrift store t-shirts and sweat pants for a couple of dollars, and it will help—”

“I didn’t know I could shift,” the boy said, and gave a moist snort with the impression of holding back tears. “And I just want to go back to the zoo and stay there. It’s what I deserve. I’m just an animal.”

“I don’t think so,” Jason said. “Animals don’t argue because they have to go out of the zoo in uncool clothes.”

“Oh,” Codie said, as though this struck him. And then, in a rallying tone, “And I can’t go out barefoot.”

“Oh dear,” Jason said, noticing this for the first time. “No, you can’t, not in December, even if it’s mild. Come on.”

He took Codie to the utility building and grabbed a couple of the spare socks kept there, as well as a couple of the patens supposed to be pulled over shoes. They weren’t shoes precisely, but they were black rubber and stretchy, and the smallest ones covered the kid’s feet well enough that he wouldn’t get frostbite. Anything else would have to wait. “I can’t lend you my shoes,” he told Codie. “We don’t wear the same size.”

“No…” Codie said. “But look, I have to go back. I can’t go back to school. If—”

“Never mind. I promised you a burger, remember?”

As they walked out of the zoo, Jason fumbled for his wallet and phone and keys. “I don’t suppose you know what year it is?” he asked.

“Sure I do. It’s 2015. Why?”

“December or January?”

“December.”

The realization that it had been a year and a moth sank into Jason’s brain, followed by a strange relief it had only been a year and a month. His condo was paid for, and he had paid the HOA dues for a year and a half in advance, so he wasn’t even delinquent. He didn’t intend to take a skittish new-shifter to his condo, because the kid was likely to imagine all kinds of nefarious stuff. He remembered the paranoia of the newly-discovered shifter.

But at least Jason knew that once this was done, he would be able to go home. He felt a strange longing for his shower, his clothes, his computer. He wondered what had been happening in the world in the year he’d been a camel.

He put his key back, tried to turn his phone on but the battery was gone. Which meant they’d have to hope a cab went by, never a certainty in Goldport. But at least when Jason, at the time convinced he’d never want to be human again, had put money by in case the impossible happened, he’d put money by, and not just credit cards.

They walked two blocks, in the cold, crispy evening air, before they flagged a taxi. There was only one place to take the boy.

When Jason had first come to Goldport, he didn’t know he’d been lured by shifter-pheromones laid thick around a diner downtown. The former owner had needed to attract shifters for his and his girlfriend’s purposes. Now, under new management, the diner remained a shifter haven. Shifters of all kinds gathered there, and the owners were a male dragon shifter and a female panther shifter, and what was more important, Tom and Kyrie were almost foster parents to the entire community, and unusually kind to youths and lostlings.

I should have gone to them instead of running to the zoo, he thought. And for the first time he felt as though he’d spent an entire year running from himself.

He told the cabbie to drop them off at the George, handed off a handful of grubby bills, and go out of the cab. Codie followed, but stood still on the sidewalk, staring at the diner’s neon sign.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Jason asked.

“Why– Why is the dragon flipping pancakes?”

“Guess!”

“The cook is a … a dragon shifter?”

Jason grinned. “Bingo.”

“Why couldn’t I have been a dragon shifter?” Codie asked. “Camels are lame.”

“Oh, now,” Jason said. “I’ll have you know the camel is a noble animal, a symbol of exotic travel and enlightenment, and also of resilience.”

He didn’t know if what he heard from the kid was a snort of amusement or confusion, and he didn’t turn to look. Instead, he opened the door, and went into the diner.

It wasn’t busy. There were a couple of booths occupied in the main part of the diner, and a couple of tables in the annex next to it, but not the crowd that normally thronged the tables. Jason had a momentary pang of fear that The George was going under, but a glance at the clock showed him he was just between times. It was four in the afternoon, despite the full darkness outside.

He picked a booth in the row parallel to the front window, mostly because all of those were empty and the only people likely to hear their conversation would be those operating the register, and most of those were shifters or knew about shifters.

In seconds, a young woman with long brown hair, the ends dyed in a tapestry pattern came to the table. She gave a little start of surprise on seeing Jason, “Doctor Fleming,” she said. “We were so afraid– That is, we thought something had happened to you.”

“Something had,” he said gravely. Once more he felt he had been an idiot. He should have come here, instead of running away. But just becoming a camel had seemed so right, so worry free. He cast his mind over the last year. Just eating straw and sleeping. Why had he thought this would satisfy him? He basked in the glow of the lights from the ceiling, the subdued conversations from the various tables, and he longed to find out what was going on in the world at large. Why had he given it all up to become a camel?

He ordered two double burgers, and milkshakes, onion straws and fries, then as Kyrie, the co-owner of the restaurant and its waitress at least for some shifts, walked away, he turned to Codie.

“So, why were you being a camel?”

The kid flushed. “I- I—I– It started happening like three months ago. Always when I didn’t mean it to. At first I thought I was going crazy, and then I thought it was stupid. Of all the things one could turn into, why a camel?”

“Why not a camel?” Jason asked. “One of the guys around here turns into a giant squirrel. Sent him a little funny in the head, I tell you. He became a Marxist and keeps trying to organize a rodent liberation front.”

The boy blinked and Jason realized he probably hadn’t got most of that. He said, reassuringly, “Never mind. So you had some inconvenient shifting. But why did you decide to become a zoo camel?”

The boy flushed. “I was in the football team.”

“Was?”

“I don’t think I’m going to be now.”

“Uh oh. What happened.”

“I shifted. Right in the middle of a game.” He covered his face. “I ran away and kept on running. I can’t go back. Can’t. Then I thought there were camels at the zoo. I’ve been there three days. I want to go back. I can’t go back to school. Everyone will know I’m a lame camel.”

Jason didn’t say anything. He was struck by the idea that Codie had been at the zoo for three days, and he’d only now noticed it. Or had his first thought in words taken three days to wake him fully. The burgers arrived. It struck him, suddenly, that their cases were very similar, which made him laugh suddenly.

Codie looked mutinous, until Jason said, “I just realized how similar our cases are. I was about to say your solution was that of a kid, but I did the same thing at thirty six.”

“You changed in front of the football team?”

“No… I… My wife left and I was really depressed, so I went to a doctor, but the stuff they gave me made me change. Since I went to emergency, I shifted in front of a crowded emergency room. I ran all the way out, made some preparations and ran to the zoo, because I thought there would be a warrant for me.” Towards the end of this he realized Kyrie had stayed nearby and was listening. He realized it because she sighed.

He looked at her, “I should have come here,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “You know you can always come here for help. But that was not why I was sighing. Neither of you have anything to worry about, you know. People won’t see what’s actually in front of their eyes, when they believe it to be impossible. They see what they think they’ll see. Your team probably thinks a camel just ran through and you ran after it. And you, doctor, they probably think there was some weird camel intrusion. No one has searched for you, that’s for sure.”

“I thought that, when Codie told me his story,” Jason said. “I mean people must shift without meaning to often, and if every time were reported, everyone would know about shifters.”

“If only I knew for sure,” the boy said with the anguish of the early teens.

Kyrie smiled. “You can, Codie, is that your name?” When the boy nodded, she continued. “You can call your parents. Do you get along with them?”

Codie stopped for a moment, looked forlorn as though he’d just realized how his actions affected his family, then nodded.

“So, call them,” Kyrie said. “They must be pretty worried, right? And if they know you shifted into a camel they’ll tell you.”

“Or I could go on being a camel,” the boy said miserably.

“You could,” Jason said. “But then you miss on burger and fries. You miss on learning stuff about the world. You miss out on being able to create and live, and try out all the cool things that adults can do in the world. You can never travel as a camel, except as a zoo transfer. You can’t pick your own food. You can’t even pick whether you live or die. If you’re a camel, you’re a thing. The zoo makes that decision for you. I don’t think that’s what you want.”

The boy shook his head. “I’ll call my parents,” he said.

Kyrie got the phone out of her pocket and handed it to him. He dialed. He said, “Hi, this is Codie.”

Even though he didn’t have the phone on speaker, Jason heard the shriek of a woman on the other side. There was a flood of sounds from the phone and it was a while before Codie said sheepishly, “Yeah, mom. I’m fine. No, I didn’t get killed. I just—” a pause while the woman talked. “I chased the camel, and then I got lost. I lost my phone. And someone stole my clothes.” Jason would like to know how the kid would explain that one, but he suspected that the mother wouldn’t probe too hard. There was more squawking.

“A doctor helped me, and I’m at the George. Yeah, downtown. The one that has a sign of a dragon making pancakes.”

When he hung up, he looked surprised and relieved all in one. He handed the phone to Kyrie like a kid in a dream, “My mom says she’s coming to pick me up,” he said. “It was as you said. She thought it was a camel that came in, and that I chased it out…”

“See, I told you,” Kyrie said, and hugged him.

“Oh, and I’m not a doctor,” Jason said. “I’m a veterinarian. But you know, sometimes I treat shifters, so it’s the best of both worlds.”

“I always wanted to be a veterinarian,” Codie said.

“You can be one. But not as a camel. Camels can’t be vets. They don’t have opposable thumbs.” He knew things were going to be all right when Codie laughed at the lame joke.

The kid finished his burger in seconds, and ate all his fries and onion straws and Jason’s, too.

By the time Jason was done with his hamburger, a middle-aged red-headed woman in a tailored, expensive suit came in. She rushed to the booth and hugged Codie who looked suitably embarrassed. Then she paid the bill for their dinner, and it had taken all of Jason’s stubbornness to keep her from paying him for rescuing Codie.

Somewhere in the middle of her effusions, he realized it was Christmas eve.

Once they left, Kyrie approached the booth. “It was a good thing you did there, Doctor, bringing that kid back.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “He brought me back too. I realized my flight into … well… non-human was as stupid as his with less excuse. It seemed to me my life was broken beyond recovery, and in believing that, I almost made it true.”

“Will it be hard for you to… to recover from this?”

“Nah. I’ll make up some excuse. I went to look after my aged parents, or something. I might have to find another job, but most of my work as freelance and as a contractor, anyway. I’ll recover. My car was left in the condo garage, and it might need repairs, but it will recover too. And for the rest…” He shrugged. “It might be difficult at times, but I’m sure I can figure it out. Being human is more complex than being a camel, but it has better rewards. Like burgers, and sleeping in a bed. And friends.”

And then Kyrie hugged him too, which was very nice, and didn’t even complain about residual camel smell.

And that reminded Jason of another good thing about being human. Sometime in the future there would be a human female, or maybe even a shifter one.

His wife had left, unable to cope with his long, unexplained absences, and his irregular schedule, the combination of veterinarian and shifter too much for her. But if he found a shifter girl, she’d understand. And perhaps he would meet one.

As he left the George it was starting to snow. His condo was three blocks away, and unfortunately his fedoras were in the closet there.

But a little snow wouldn’t hurt him.

He walked down the street, with his hands in his pockets, enjoying the snow, and the lights, the people driving by and the sound of music, faint, from the doorways he passed.

Being human was a lot more complicated than being a camel. But it was more rewarding too. He thought of Codie and his mom. And most of the complications and most of the rewards were other people. And that was fine too.

He walked on, softly singing to himself, “Peace on Earth, goodwill to camels.”

*This story takes place in the Shifter/Goldport universe.  For those who don’t know the world, the first book in the series, Draw One in the Dark is free for the kindle on Amazon:

Or you could buy the omnibus of the first two books:

End of promo.*

*Yes, the camels will come, eventually.  But Euclid took a claw from Greebo just above his eye.  It’s probably nothing but I didn’t want to drag it through Christmas, when the vet is closed, and have it get massive and maybe have the cat lose his eye.  So we took him in for a shot of Convenia (slow release antibiotic) but course, the clinic was packed with people who don’t want to leave it till after the holidays, whatever it is.  So… an hour and change there.  And then my mom is supposed to call, I have the house to clean and cookies to bake, but yes, I’ll do camels first.  After I have lunch. Which hasn’t happened yet for reasons of running around like crazy people.  Meanwhile I leave you with a promo for Amie Gibbons’ novella.*

Evie Jones and the Spirit Stalker:
http://www.amazon.com/Evie-Jones-Spirit-Stalker-Novella-ebook/dp/B0174CBVHW/

Excerpt:

Mandy looked behind her like she was checking the door was still closed. “I… no.” She chewed on her bottom lip again for a second. “I think I’m being haunted.”

“You mean by a ghost?” I froze, eyeing her with fear sliding icy fingers up my heart. “Why do you think I could help with a haunting?”

“I talked to my professors and some of the graduate assistants who know about this stuff. And they said, you know, ghosts are possible. They show up all the time throughout history. And they had theories, but I could tell they didn’t believe me. But after that, Chet said you might be able to help with more than just the theory stuff the professors know.”

“Chet? Ohhhhh, you’re taking anthropology?”

She nodded. “I’m a freshman. Chet’s my TA; he said you could help. He said I had to keep it under wraps. Couldn’t tell anyone because you could get in trouble if people know you… know something about this stuff?” Her voice went up, making it a question.

I rubbed my forehead. Oy vey, I’m going to kill him.

Chet had seen magic at work when we were attacked a few months ago and I swore him to secrecy. We’d dated, but after I lost my job I told him I needed some time to figure out where I was in my life and we were better going back to friends for now. He’d been the one to tell me about the job at the U of U Hospital and put in a good word for me, but other than that, we hadn’t talked in two months.

“Why do you think you’re being haunted?”

“I don’t think I am. I know I am.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I was the adult here after all. “Okay?”

She nodded again. “It started maybe a week ago. I’m not sure because it was so gradual. You know when something feels wrong and you just shake it off? Like you had a bad dream or the place is too cold so you’re on edge and shivery?”

I waved a hand and nodded. Come on, kid. I’ve got real work to do here… well, kind of.

I blinked and realized she was still talking.

“…so I just shook it off. You know?”

Apparently I hadn’t missed anything important.

“Yeah,” I said.

“But the cold kept getting worse and my roommate couldn’t feel it and then my laptop disappeared.”

“Someone stole it?”

“No. I put it in my backpack, went straight home, and it was gone when I opened it, right after I got home.”

“But you didn’t notice the change in weight?”

“Well, I mean, I ride a bike and put it in the basket. It’s heavy. You know?”

“Okay. What else?”

“Two nights ago, I heard something in the bathroom. It was sort of a thump?”

I wanted to say, “Asking or telling, kid?” I kept my mouth closed. So sometimes I had tact.

“I got out of bed and went in there and the faucet was on. I went to turn it off, and it was like pouring blood.”

I sat up straighter. Okay, that was definitely a sign of a ghost. A pissed off one, and powerful at that. Meant either a poltergeist or a dead witch. Either way, she could be in serious trouble.

“And then I turned on the light and the blood was gone,” she said.

Or she could be a kid with an overactive imagination fried from the bleach she took to her head, and a TA who was all too ready to fall over himself to help her. Oy vey, I was in a pissy mood. Still, I was so going to get Chet back for this.

“I tried telling myself it wasn’t real. It was my imagination. I was freaking out from the noises in the dorms. But my laptop popped up this morning. I pulled it up and the screen saver was a picture of my family, with my eyes crossed out.”

I shivered, sitting back. “Okay, that’s creepy. Do you have the laptop?”

“No. I screamed and ran to the common room to get my roommates. When I got back, the laptop was gone again.”

“I know the professors probably already asked you this, but are you sure you’re not seeing things? Halloween’s on Saturday, creepy decorations are up, there’s horror movies in theaters. You don’t have any proof. Nothing has stuck. If it was a ghost, wouldn’t he leave stuff around for you to show others so you’d get really worked up?”

“Do ghosts like it when people know about them?”

“A ghost pissed and powerful enough to mess with things on our plane wants chaos. Fear. They can’t move on for whatever reason, so they start to lose it and want to take others down with them.”

“Then wouldn’t he keep making only me see things so I’d think I was going crazy? If there was proof, I’d know I wasn’t.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “True, but ghosts aren’t coherent. They aren’t sentient the way we think of it. They’re an echo. A memory. They just react.” I leaned my elbows on the desk, pressing my fingers together in front of me. “Though, if it’s not a ghost, but a trapped spirit, it’d still be coherent. That requires some serious power… and the proper rituals before death to pull it off.”

“You do know about this stuff,” she breathed, grinning. “I knew it!”

Oy vey.

“Do I need to say what I’ll do to you if this gets out?”

“Whatever you’re already going to do to poor Chet?”

“Yep… only he’s getting the dull hedge clippers because he’s older and owed me keeping my secret.”

“I’ll owe you forever if you can make this thing go away.”

I pointed at her. “Never say that. I mean it. To anyone, but especially anyone…” I bit my tongue.

“Were you going to say magical? Anyone magical?” She grinned.

“What else has happened, if anything?”

She told me of the bad feeling building up, swearing she was being watched when she was alone, someone peeking into the window when she was at her boyfriend’s place, the cold spots.

“And…” She finally paused for breath. “I’ve been hearing things from other people after I talked to the professors today. I walk past someone and a voice hisses at me. It’s happened a few times and it’s only been like two hours.”

“What does the voice say?”

“It says…” She looked down and when she met my eyes again, hers were filled with pure terror. “It says if I want to play it that way, I won’t live through the night.”

Story — The Camels of Christmas, in the shifter universe — not done yet.

On account of TWO vet visits, and one more tomorrow.  Minor stuff, but argh.

*Sorry guys, I’m working on another gift short story.  My intention is to put these in kindle format for ya’ll on download on Friday morning.  But we have older boy home, and the routine of the house is no longer accommodated to him, so it’s taken me this long to make it to a keyboard.  So, Promo post (by Amanda Green) first, gift in the evening, okay? Be good.  Treat shall come in time.*

When characters take over – Amanda Green

Once upon a time, I went to the Romance Writers of America national convention with Sarah. This was not long after she finally got me to admit that I wrote. Now, I’d been writing stories for almost as long as I could remember. I’d shown some of them to friends and teachers along the way but they were for me. Written and then stored in the desk or under the bed or in the closet. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of them. No, it was more basic then that. I come from a long line of folks who thought writing was fine but you couldn’t make a living from it. So it was one of those hobbies you really didn’t talk about but you did because you couldn’t not do it.

Then along came Sarah and my ordered world was upset and all those characters I’d been holding at bay came pouring out. One of them, Mackenzie Santos, was loud and demanding and not about to wait one moment longer than necessary for her book to be written. That book turned out to be Nocturnal Origins. I had a lot of fun writing the book but figured it was a one off. So I moved on to other projects.

The only problem was Mac and company had other plans. I had only started to tell Mac’s story. Along came Nocturnal Serenade. That’s when I learned – yes, yes, I know. I’m the author. I ought to know all about my characters before I start a book. – that Mac’s mother had more than a few issues with the fact that some members of the family turned furry and without donning a costume. Then there was Mac’s grandmother, a strong and formidable woman who shifted into a strong and formidable jaguar. All that put family dynamics into a whole new light.

What I didn’t realize was that Mac and her grandmother had plans for the two books to turn into three and then four. With Nocturnal Interlude, I was forced to explore the consequences of what might happen if the “normals” suddenly realized monsters really do exist and live next door. That revelation hasn’t happened but it will, sooner rather than later, especially when there are members of the shapeshifter community doing their best to cause a civil war among their own kind. Mac finds herself in the middle of and wishing for a nice, simple murder case to solve instead having to deal with Shifter politics and trying to keep those she cares for safe.

December 15^th marked the publication of Nocturnal Challenge. Civil war among the Shifters is getting closer to becoming reality. Mac and those she cares about have to decide if they will violate oaths they took and risk war or if they will act to prevent it. There is no doubt that the existence of Shifters will soon become public. The question is if it will be done in a way that doesn’t start a modern version of the witch hunts of old.

Mac Santos was supposed to be with me for one book. Instead, she’s “helped” me create a world that is still evolving. There is one more book in the current story arc to be written. After that, the world will continue to grow. There will be more books. Will Mac and company be the main characters? I don’t know. She tells me they will, at least in some of them. Me, I’m not too sure. There are other characters, supporting ones in the current books, who have their own stories to tell. All I know for sure is I’m not yet done with Mackenzie, Jackson, Pat and the rest of the gang. I hope everyone else is as pleased to hear it as I am.

*Post of the day below this one.  If you’re here for feisty opinion, keep scrolling down, but keep track of what’s on offer anyway.  Some good stuff.*

We Wish You A Merry Promo- Free Range Oyster

Festive greetings, O my people! This has been a great week for promo submissions. We’ve several new releases, some older ones on sale, and some lovely covers among them both (just hanging out here has made me more attentive to covers; running the promo has made me a downright snob). I’ve heard rumor that there may be listings of good books elsewhere as well this weekend *cough*MGC*cough*, so please sound off in the comments if you know of more good stuff to be found. Go, read books! Buy books! Borrow books (and return them)! Give books as gifts! Give books as bonuses! Give books in leiu of payment if they’ll let you! Tell people about good books you’ve read, and leave reviews on every appropriate outlet. Let peace, goodwill, and awesome stories FILL THE EARTH! As always, future promo entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good book

Karl K. Gallagher

Torchship

A captain who’ll take any job if there’s enough money in it.

A pilot with an agenda of her own.

And a mechanic with an eye on the pilot.

The crew of the Fives Full are just trying to make enough money to keep themselves in the black while avoiding the attention of a government so paranoid it’s repealed Moore’s Law. They’re not looking for adventure in the stars… but they’re not going to back down just because something got in their way.

Alma Boykin

The Bird of Dawning

A Cat Among Dragons Christmas Story

“Bah, Humbug.” Rada Ni Drako wants Christmas, and the rest of the world, to go away. Her fellow soldiers have other ideas. So does Logres, the one creature Rada will not, cannot, ignore. Especially not at winter’s turning.

What happens next will take Rada and her human allies to an amazing place indeed.

Cedar Sanderson

Dragon Noir

Pixie For Hire Book 3

The pixie with the gun has come home to see his princess crowned a queen and live in peace. But nothing is ever easy for Lom. A gruesome discovery on his doorstep interrupts their plans and sends Lom off on a mission to save not one, but two worlds. It’s personal this time and the stakes are higher than ever before. With friends falling and the enemy gathering, Bella and Lom must conquer the worst fears and monsters Underhill can conjure. Failure is not on the agenda.

On sale this weekend

Anthology

Enigma Front

A wave of possibilities rolls across the land and nothing remains the same IN ITS WAKE … Dinosaurs. Dragons. Clowns. From nineteenth-century China to the moons of Saturn, from the Renaissance to the aftermath of apocalypse, these eighteen stories share one theme–change, like you’ve never seen it before. NOW, EVERYTHING CHANGES! Read stories penned by Aurora, Hugo, and Nebula Award winners, as well as up-and-coming authors, in a single volume.

Includes a story by our own Christopher Chupik

Laura Montgomery

Sleeping Duty

Gilead Tan and Andrea Fielding survived their stint in the military, got married, signed up to emigrate to a terraformed colony world, and went into cold sleep for the journey from Earth. While they slept, the starship got lost and settled for a different world, a wild world. Three centuries after the founding of a colony on the uncharted planet, Gilead awakens to find humanity slipped back to medieval tech and a feudal structure. Worse, the king who wants Gilead awake won’t let Gilead awaken his wife.

Joe Vasicek

Genesis Earth

Michael Anderson never thought he would set foot on a world like Earth. Born and raised in a science colony on the farthest edge of the solar system, he only studied planets from afar. But when his parents build mankind’s first wormhole and discover a world emitting a mysterious artificial signal, Michael is the only qualified planetologist young enough to travel to the alien star.

He is not alone on this voyage of discovery. Terra, his sole mission partner, is no more an adult than he is. Soon after their arrival, however, she begins acting strangely—as if she’s keeping secrets from him. And her darkest secret is one that Michael already knows.

Twenty light-years from the nearest human being, they must learn to work together if they’re ever going to survive. And what they discover on the alien planet forces them to re-examine their deepest, most unquestioned beliefs about the universe—and about what it means to be human.

This book is rated T according to the AO3 content rating system.

Free this weekend

*Okay, this is Sarah speaking.  The mollusc and I some communication issues, so the promo post will go up around two my time tomorrow and for the end of the year I’ll put up promo posts (mostly for other people) in the afternoon.  I’ll take care to inform you at the top of those where the post of the day is — completely out-of-itly yours – SAH*

Tin foil hat or reality speaking?- Amanda Green

Approximately a week ago, a 12 year old in Arlington, TX was taken into custody after telling another student that he had a bomb in his backpack. In September, a 14 year old was arrested in Irving, TX, on suspicion of bringing a homemade clock bomb to school. On December 16^th, the Los Angeles school district canceled all classes after receiving threats against the district while New York City decided similar threats made against its schools were not credible. The following day, the Dallas Independent School District, Houston ISD and others around the nation received similar threats. These recent incidents have played out against the backdrop of the horror of the attack in San Bernardino on December 9^th.

I bring up the Arlington incident for a couple of reasons. The first is the level of outrage I’ve been seeing on social media that seems to be looking at the event in a fishbowl that excludes everything else that has been happening in the world of late. Yes, the boy was arrested. Yes, he was taken to juvenile detention and held there over the weekend. Yes, he was charged with making a terroristic threat (or the equivalent) and has to wear an ankle monitor until he has his day in court. Yes, his parents say they were not notified of what happened and didn’t know until they finally contacted the school and then called 911.

What the social media accounts don’t tell you is that the boy admitted he told another classmate that he had a bomb in his backpack. They don’t tell you that the school did, according to reports, try to make contact with the parents. They don’t tell you that it isn’t all that unusual to hold a juvenile offender over the weekend until a judge can determine if probable cause exists to hold an offender.

Instead, we are greeted with the “but he did it because he was bullied” and “profiling” because the boy is, allegedly, a Sikh. It doesn’t fit the narrative that the boy never mentioned his religion and the police say all they reacted to was the fact that there was an allegation that he claimed to have a bomb and he, allegedly, confirmed he had said he had one. Let’s forget that we have lived in a world since 9/11 where making jokes about bombs and guns and such things can get you arrested and EVERYONE KNOWS IT.

Forget that this happened just days after a terrorist attack that left a number of people dead or injured in California, an attack that has Texas ties.

Forget that we are talking about a young man who is, presumably, old enough and capable of understanding right from wrong and the consequences of his actions.

I’m not saying there wasn’t some amount of profiling going on. It is quite possible that it was. What I’m on my high horse about is the fact that the allegations are being automatically dismissed by a certain group of people simply because it fits their political narrative. This tendency to react based on narrative and without taking into account all the facts – and in situations like this that has to include events going on in the world around us – can wind up leading to situations that will bite us in the butt.

Which leads to the various threats that were called in to the school districts around the country. Los Angeles has been hit hard in the media because it took the approach of closing down the schools for the day instead of running the risk that the threat was real. NYC took the opposite approach. I didn’t think too much about it at the time except to wonder if the NYPD had better intelligence than had LA. But when the other threats were called in the next day, I wondered if it was time to pull out the tin foil hat.

Sure, the threats could have been coincidental. A handful of students around the country could have decided they wanted out early instead of taking finals. After all, the new Star Wars movie would be opening soon and they might have wanted to go find their places in line. But the timing and the fact similarly worded threats were being used. . . . well, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

The so-called rational part of my brain kept telling me there was nothing to worry about. Then there was the part trained by law enforcement officials, the part that doesn’t like crowds and always looks for other explanations for why something happens. That part wondered if the threats were simply meant to see how the local school districts, their security contingents and the local police forces would respond. That is part of intelligence gathering. Send in the threat and then watch to see what sort of warnings, if any, are released to the public and see what sort of response the authorities make to determine if the threat is real.

Fortunately for everyone, none of the threats turned out to be real. It was reassuring to see the head of the DISD and the Dallas mayor talking about how they not only conferred with DPD but with the administrations in the other cities receiving treats as well as their local police departments and the Feds. They took the threat seriously and did everything they could to make sure our children were safe. I fully expect to learn sooner, rather than later, that the Dallas threat was made by a kid who didn’t want to go to school the next day and who heard about the LA and NYC threats and decided to play copycat.

The thing is, that isn’t the sort of threat we can take for granted. Nor can we take for granted comments made by someone, and I don’t care how old that person is, that they have a bomb. In the Arlington case, 12 years old is old enough to know there are consequences to actions. Page eight of the Arlington ISD Student Code of Conduct states that:

Students have a responsibility to show consideration for the physical, social, and emotional well-being of others. At a minimum, this may be demonstrated by: Using kind and courteous language and refraining from making profane, insulting, threatening, or inflammatory remarks. (emphasis added)

Further in the Code of Conduct, threatening behavior is defined as a Group 3 Misbehavior that can be punished by emergency removal from the campus and referral to law enforcement, among other options. Group 4 Misbehaviors include terroristic threats which, duh, includes saying you have a bomb. The same responses are available to the school as well as expulsion and more. (pg. 39) Arlington ISD, like most school districts, take threats seriously. If you search for “threat” in the Code of Conduct, you will find 54 instances of its use.

This means, the student in question knew or reasonably should have known there would be consequences to his actions that day in school. Was he bullied? I don’t know but will admit it is possible. However, there are better ways to deal with bullying than claiming you have a bomb, especially when less than two weeks have passed after a terrorist attack within our shores.

I guess what I’m trying to say it is time to start holding our children responsible for their actions. Being a Texan, this is something that has been very much in the forefront of our media of late. The affluenza teen, Ethan Crouch, successfully used the defense of never having been made to know there was such a thing as a consequence to his actions to avoid prison time after killing four people in a drunk driving accident. Instead of prison time, he was given 10 years probation. Now he and his mother are on the lam, possibly having fled the country. The poor little rich boy once again is trying to avoid consequences of bad decisions and actions.

It is time we all remember there are consequences and we need to make wise choices or face the fallout. That applies not only to our personal lives but to the decisions our politicians make as well. We cannot and should not try to be best buds with those who want to see our destruction. We should not make our next generation weak by not teaching them that there are those out there who want to destroy us and by constantly telling them that they are wonderful and special and can do no wrong.

In short, it is time for our country to wake up, grow up and grow a pair again (well, at least for your politicians to. Most of the rest of us already have. At least I hope so.) Or maybe it is time to be fitted with a new tin foil hat.

I’m mostly alive, and sorry to be so late, but yesterday for reasons I can’t explain lest we all be commited, husband, older son and I felt a necessity to walk seven miles, uphill, through snow.  Younger son picked us up when we realized we simply didn’t have it in us to walk back.

It’s not the first time we did this, and it was both easier and more difficult than before.  Easier in that I really didn’t get tired till the last mile, more difficult because we did it in ice and snow, and like a right berk, I forgot to wear my snow boots, so that last mile I had to go baby steps and in waddle mode, which made my ankles hurt like living h*ll.

Of course it’s also 4 years since we last did it, but I must actually be in better shape than I was then, as my legs hurt like heck today, but the rest of me is not that TIRED.

Several take aways, of course, and part of the reason we did this is that we haven’t been exercising as we should and this was sort of our opening salvo warning to the body we’ll be doing more stuff (yes, we probably DO do it backwards.  Deal.) and our assessment of how bad the situation is.

The answer is both not that bad and dismal.  Not that bad, because we can still do this stuff, though it takes us longer, and our legs hurt the next day.  Dismal because heaven forbid we had to actually walk any distance, say, because the highways are clogged with cars fleeing the city.

When I was young and in college, I went to college about 10 miles from the house, and periodically, when the weather was fine and I didn’t need to have stuff done right that moment — say twice a month — I’d walk all the way home.  Now this was ten miles as the crow flew, probably 12 to 14 otherwise.  But here’s the thing, in my grandma’s time when walking was the main form of locomotion for those not rich enough to own a carriage, people walked six to seven miles regularly, for jobs, for studying, for recreation even.

Which brings to halfway through walk, older son said “you know, this is what we evolved to do.  We’re not faster than most of our prey, and we don’t have the claws and teeth to bring them down.  What we are is relentless.  We would follow herds day and and night, not letting them rest, until the weak and the elderly fell behind, and then we had them.  Hunting bands survived this way.  This is what they did.

Which brings us to the long march through the institutions.  In a way when the left started its long march through the institutions they were just practicing ancient hunting practices, with Western Civilization as its prey.

Now their long march might or might not come to fruition, but you can’t avoid realizing that for people whose ideas are at best silly and at worst downright harmful, they’ve achieved remarkable success by taking over what they could and grooming their kids to take over more.

It is not their fault that the fields they’ve completely taken over, like academia, literature, art and news reporting are escaping their grasp.  Yes, sure, the fact that all these fields are in major crisis IS their fault, or at least the fault of their philosophy which, in contact in reality, doesn’t hold up and tends to make people make decisions (and national policy too!) based on the reality inside their heads, implanted there by the cult of Marx.  But the thing is, without new technology to allow us to escape their grasp, we’d be stuck with the crisis AND with leftist control.

However, again, for a philosophy whose proudest achievement is the killing of a hundred million human beings (and that’s lowballing it, as Colonel Kratman says) to take over those many institutions and not to be laughed out of polite (or worse, impolite) society is a testimony to the effectiveness of the long march.

And it has been long.  They’ve been at it for close on a hundred years.

Meanwhile our side seems to think we can do with the hunting techniques of cheetahs.  We are not cheetahs.  We are just human.

The RINOs you complain about are RINOs now but they weren’t always.  I don’t know how many of you remember the seventies.  The right here was kind of like the right in Europe.  It assumed that in the end communism would not only win, but DESERVED to win, and what the right disagreed with was the way to get there.  It is useful to remember this was a time when William Buckley’s dictum that conservatism was “Standing astride History  yelling stop” found deep resonance.  Unpack that phrase.  It assumes history comes with an arrow, that it’s not going our way, and that at best we can get it to pause.

Those RINOs who, by the way, took immense flack back then were as conservative as anyone dared to be.  Because everyone knew in the end the reds won.

Then the wall fell down and we knew what true horrors lurked on the other side.

Individuals process these things fast enough.  Well, my generation, at any rate, awakened by Reagan and shown that the win of the dark side was not inevitable, was  more pro-freedom than people ten years older than us.

But when we saw the wall fall down, it pushed many of us further into the liberty side of the isle.  Not only wasn’t a communist win inevitable, but their vaunted “strengths” like superior planning and better minority integration didn’t exist unless you really wanted to plan for three million size thirty boots for the left foot only, and integration meant grinding the minorities very fine and spreading them in the soil.

However cultures aren’t individuals.  Cultures re-orient and process startling events very slowly.

Yeah, those older Republicans are still with us, and they were over 45 when the wall fell, which means they couldn’t reorient anymore.  (Studies have been done.)

Because we tend to draw our leadership from the older people whose “turn has come” that means you get a lot of those older Republicans.

It doesn’t mean the party is dead.  The fact that there is strife at all means some of us have stopped standing astride history yelling stop and are busy building new roads for history to run on: only this time faster, better, and with more freedom for as many individuals as possible.

Yeah, we’re going to “lose some” via our “elites” i.e. the grand old men in the party betraying us.  This is not their world.  Reality changed too fast, and they don’t get it.  But their time is limited and we can work harder to replace them.

Look, at least it’s not like traditional publishing where most of them are singing “If you’re happy and you know it” while washing down the drain, and the only house that will save itself has long been an outcast.

There is strife.  Strife means the old blood and the new don’t agree.  Another way to look at it is renewal.

Problem is advocates of liberty are about as good at coordinated action as a bunch of cats.  I pretty much laughed myself (Physically) sick when I read that the Sad Puppies “strictly enforced slate voting.”  Not only did the numbers completely deny this (the only lockstep voting was no award) but the idea of anyone on our side doing anything “lockstep”just about…  Giggle, snort.

If you told most people on our side “you have to do it this way, it’s the only way” you’d get “Who’s gonna make me, you and whose army?”  And if you said “you have to do it this way or we’ll kill you,” you’re still likely to get “You’re not the boss of me.”  We should have “Stupidly individualistic” stamped on our foreheads.

So long, coordinated marches like what the left (they of the collectivist will) executed are really impossible for us.

On the other hand… On the other hand, we seem to do pretty well in our long uncoordinated march of building under and building around and building over.

We might all be marching in different directions and to the tune of a different kettle of fish, but the other side is so profoundly incompetent, that even so we can still replace the moribund institutions they took over.

It’s just going to take a little while.  Not a hundred years, but probably twenty.  Not three generations, but one and a half.

In the end we win, they lose, but you can’t stop when your ankles first start hurting.

The last mile of the long march is always the hardest one, but the goal is almost in sight.

Be not afraid.

Sursum Corda.

This morning over breakfast I was thinking of what used to be considered enough.  (Not enough food, I had two poached eggs for breakfast, something that would have been un imagined luxury some days of my childhood.  You see, when the chickens weren’t laying much, an egg and some rice might be dinner and certainly not every day.  Of course, when they were laying and we had a few who did two eggs a day, grandma would be begging us to eat eggs.  The problem of self-sufficiency at least in places with no refrigeration is that it’s often feast-or-famine.)

I was thinking that, along with being possibly the most wealthy/pampered generation in history we’re also the most demanding.  On ourselves, on life, on those around us.

(Look guys we’ve been broke.  We had a year we were so broke we NEEDED those donations the fire department makes for the holidays, which reminds me, the snow interrupted me, I need to make a big canned food shopping trip and take it to the Manitou Springs fire department.  BUT by historical standards, I was magnificently rich.  We could eat at least one meal a day, I had heat and light and plenty of water.  Oh, and books and entertainment at the flick of a button.  Rich.)

Specifically, as the 30th anniversary of our religious anniversary looms, and Dan wants to go away for a writing vacation for three days, (and I’m afraid people will die during it, again), I was thinking of how our marriage has been for thirty years.

Overall, it’s been d*mn nice, with occasional episodes of grumpiness (right now mine over finding/buying a house.)  And then I thought by the standards of the village — the standards I heard my mom and her freinds judge marriages on — we’re a frigging miracle and fortunate beyond all hope.

As with everything else that’s a transition/change, 2015 was rife with divorce in my extended friend circle, and it seem like almost all of them got divorced because “he doesn’t make me happy” and “she doesn’t fulfill me.” A tall order.

In the village a successful marriage was as follows: he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t beat her, she doesn’t sleep around and she manages the house and keeps the kids clean.

Were some marriages hell on Earth?  Sure, from the outside some looked like it, but you now what, sometimes you got these rare glimpses from the inside and realized these people were crazy but in a way they were happy too.  Okay, a crazy way.  But you know, looking around now at my friends who have marriages I don’t get and which TO ME would be hell on Earth, it’s not markedly different, even though everyone seems to demand so much more of marriage these days: a lot more beyond companionship, mutual support and not doing bad things that affect the other.  (Yes, I know, some of you got divorced on that last clause, and that I totally get.)

But it’s not just marriages that are affected.  It’s like because of mass media, those of us who tend to be driven have these impossible images of what “success” is.

Oh, it’s not just the media, mind, though it doesn’t help.  Some people always expected a lot of their close relatives.

At one point my mother was complaining to a friend that I never won most of the writing contests I entered (thinking on it, there was a political color bar, of course) and how my brother only won poetry contests that didn’t pay, and her friend told her “Think about it, woman, what are you complaining about.  They aren’t on drugs, they aren’t bringing you home illegitimate children, they pass their schooling with As or Bs, and they’ve never been arrested.  You should be thanking G-d instead of griping.”

Now, I’m the last to encourage low expectations.  (Ask my kids. I know what they’re capable of, and won’t be happy with being fobbed off with a token effort.)

However as I was thinking of that overheard conversation and of the definition of a happy marriage in the village, I realized I’m holding myself to a crazy-impossible standard.  You know, EVERYONE is supposed to be buying my stories.  I should be bigger than J. K. Rowling.  I should be writing a lot better and a lot faster.  I should be losing weight (well, that part… eventually we’ll figure out why it isn’t happening and I’m inexplicably gaining.  BUT… It doesn’t seem anything I can do.)  Dan and I should look like those Hollywood couples, and have everything and never snap at each other…

And I realized it’s not sane.  It’s not happy-making.  Not that I ever contemplated divorcing out of dissatisfaction, or that I’m dissatisfied, but mostly I’ve been very upset at myself.

I’m not one to encourage low expectations.  But sometimes knowing what the passing grade is makes you realize you already have an A, and stops you driving yourself crazy.

This holiday season give yourself and those you love permission to be less than perfect.  And celebrate what you have.

Every culture has myths. For instance, I grew up in a culture where I knew (not thought, mind you, knew) that if you took more than one aspirin at once, you’d die.

Proven?  You don’t need proven.  Everyone knew this.  Why would you test something that could kill you?

So my first week in the states, when I told my host mother I had a headache and she said “just take a couple of aspirin” I thought she was trying to kill me.  She had to show me the instructions on the bottle.

This trivial incident was my first exposure to the idea that “what everybody knows” can be wrong.

Progressive culture in the US, having been the dominant culture in media/entertainment and the news for the last 100 years at least (not the dominant culture in the country, necessarily, but the dominant culture in the classes that controlled these intellectual products and which were consolidated/made uniform by the “mass” aspects of communication since at least the end of the nineteenth century) has lacked challenges to its internal myths, which means it ended up with as many unfounded “everybody knows” as a small village in Portugal where aspirin was still a miracle drug and a little scary.

I normally don’t pay attention to what Bernie Sanders says, and pay Hillary only the attention necessary to roll my eyes at the things that come flying out of her mouth.  (Like, for instance, that Republicans don’t know that terrorists use guns to kill people.  Oh, lady, we know, that’s why we want guns of our own to defend ourselves, because the terrorists, you know, aren’t likely to obey gun regulations.)

But yesterday Mike Rowe went after Bernie Sanders.

At first I just read it wishing that popcorn didn’t have so many carbs.  Then I went back and read the tweet that inspired Mike’s take down. Here it is in its full glory:

“At the end of the day, providing a path to go to college is a helluva lot cheaper than putting people on a path to jail.”

Mike got seriously upset — as he should — at the notion that not going to college is the same as being condemned to becoming a criminal, and he went after it, as well as after the fact that absent a few professions (and the only reason my kids are in college is because they’re aiming for two of those professions) college really doesn’t help.  (Make an informal count in your head.  How many of your friends with degrees work at anything even vaguely related to their degree?  And don’t tell me “but they learned to learn” because this is another thing altogether and you might have confused cause and effect.)

But there’s more than that in that tweet, there are at least three warring myths, all of them so central to what liberalism once was that the current progressives aren’t even aware most of them have been disproven by the real world tm.  These are things “everyone knows” and why would you question something everyone knows?

The thing is outside their world, where no one gives a good goddamn about their myths, these things are disproven, and most people only don’t realize it because of the entertainment news industrial complex repeating them so often and acting like they’re proven.

The first and most basic myth, and one of which, once upon a time, I was an ardent proponent, is that education is transformative.  This goes along with the myth that man is infinitely perfectible.

The liberal — back when liberal meant classical liberal — as undertaken by our ancestors, hinged on the idea that education would transform everyone into individual thinkers and philosophers like themselves.  It would make them more moral too and improve them to be onto like angels.

They had a point of sorts, in their time.  Most of the people who weren’t learning weren’t learning because they were underfed, too busy making a living, sick with a million little illnesses that made them not function well intellectually.

I saw this in action in the village, which is why I was an ardent believer in this myth.  Giving people education truly uplifts them if the people giving the education also provide a meal and clothes.

The thing is, it’s one of those things that has huge gains up front.  “Teach everyone to read.”  And yes, can make for a more moral society, if the education has a moral component.  This is important as “education” is not a neutral value.  It can be adaptive or maladaptive to reality.

However just about every country in the world that isn’t in dire crisis or doesn’t belong to a religion that forbids secular education has free education — yes, even where I came from, though often the kids were taken out of fourth grade to work in factories.  This was strictly speaking illegal, but you could always find a doctor to sign a paper saying your kid was educable mentally retarded and couldn’t learn any more “abstract stuff” but could learn to be a factory worker) — at least through 9th grade and often through 12th.

I’ll pause here to point out that when I was little, someone with a 9th grade education was accorded the respect here given to people with Masters Degrees.  They were learned and performed work of the mind, and didn’t dirty their hands.  This I’d guess is true for most of history.  The level of a 9th degree education allows you enough to explore and learn just about everything that doesn’t require hands on training or specialized tutoring only administrated by professionals.  (I’ll not specify which trades because it varies per learner.  I can’t learn languages outside a classroom, at least a virtual one.  I also have trouble with art by myself.  I’d guess there’s the same problem with most things requiring labs to learn.)

So, are people made more moral?  Snort giggle.  Hardly.  The causes for this are complex and a lot of it has to do with how wealthy our society is.  Wealthy people have always had more time to get funny on morality.  Other parts include a morally neutral or worse education (when the purpose of education is to deconstruct the culture that made more people wealthy and healthy than any other culture in history, while praising cultures that mutilate women, kill gays and enslave children, it is worse.)

Are people individual little philosopher kings, for all these years of education thrown at them?

I read something in a book I can no longer remember the title of, when I was researching Shakespeare.  The number of people who are fluent enough readers to read for pleasure in our day is the same as in Shakespeare’s day.  When they didn’t have free education, much less 12 years of it.

The idea that if you gave everyone enough food and time and free schooling they’d all become erudite and thinkers can be disproved by a stroll through your local Welfare hub.  Go on, I dare you, go down and start a little discussion on Kantian philosophy.

But it’s an idea that remains a myth on the left which has lost all other classical liberal ideals (like, you know, individual freedom) but holds fast onto this idea that education will somehow make a progressive out of everyone.  (Patently ridiculous as they’ve been indoctrinating several generations now, and it still won’t take the way they want.  That cold slap of reality counteracts it.  Which is why they advocate more cowbell.)

The other myth in that statement — and the only way to make sense out of that linkage between education and prison — is actually several linked myths:

1- that people turn to crime when they’re poor  (an insult to every poor but honest person ever.)

2- that without a college education you’ll be poor (Mike Rowe ably disposed of this one in the linked article.)

3- that if the government won’t pay for something it’s unobtainable because there is no private charity and also people can’t lift themselves up by their bootstraps.

All of these are nonsense.  Sometimes I think people like Bernie Sanders watch Les Miserables (a piece of propaganda even when it was written) and say “it’s true, it’s all true” and then see the world through that lens ever since.

Being poor doesn’t lead to crime.  Wealthy people can and do commit crimes, not all of them white collar (in one of the stunning contradictions that would make their heads explode if they paused and thought about it, progressives also assume that all rich people are criminals, since economics is a fixed pie (giggle-snort) and to have more you have taken “more than your fair share.)

Lack of a college education doesn’t make you poor.  I’ve yet to meet a poor, competent plumber. And I sometimes regret I didn’t learn more carpentry from grandad, instead of going to college.  We knew someone who built cabinets by grandad’s method (think all manual tools) in reproduction of colonial furniture.  One of those cabinets which he could build in 3 months, sold for what my husband was making at the time, as a computer programmer. I’m fairly sure anyone who knows one of those trades really well is raking it in.  We’ve become a nation of do-it-yourselvers not because we enjoy it, or want to save money but because finding a competent tradesmen takes longer than just doing the best you can.  (Been there, done that, have spackle on my t-shirt.)

People have managed to be educated beyond their relatives and parents without any government intervention (in fact until government stuck its nose and quotas in, there were a lot of merit scholarships.  My husband did his college with them and a part-time job.)

Once you realize those myths ARE myths, Bernie’s prescription to end crime makes about as much sense as saying something like “Hit yourselves on the head with rubber mallets, increase the production of wheat.”

In fact, someone came trolling a share of this post trying desperately to keep the two things linked by yelling that it was a shame we spent more on jails than education.

Again, with the what?  Nothing our government does makes much sense, but this makes as much sense as “Abolish the helium reserve. Subsidize canneries.”

What we’ve found since the classical liberal times when we thought education would uplift everyone is that education and proper nutrition and proper civic instruction does uplift some people.  Yeah, there are a percentage of people out there who could/would do much better with a little help.  I don’t know about you, but I make it a point, on my own, to identify such people and such situations and intervene and help when I can.

But you can lead a student to school; you can imprison him/her in it for 8 hours a day for 12 years: what you can’t do is make them learn.

The same person who was whining about that horrible discrepancy between jail spending and education spending said that you know, most criminals stop learning in grade school.  I think he meant they dropped out.  This is probably true, although I’d bet the reverse, that if you dropped out of grade school you’re likely to be a criminal isn’t true.  It’s also insulting to claim so.  For this he advised more cowbell… er I mean more free education.

The sad fact is that we’ve continuously not only dumbed down education, but tried to make it “fun” (listen, if you’re learning a language, there’s no way to make it fun.  To be fluent, you need to start by memorizing vocabulary and studying grammatical structures.  Neither of those is fun.  Useful. Needed.  Not fun.) to the point that a High School diploma means nothing, which is why the new push to put everyone to college, as if more of the same will fix the problems.

There are people who don’t learn because they have no interest in learning.  Some of them might be very good at things — engines. Carpentry — that would baffle phds who are not put together that way.  There are people who don’t learn because our educational system, barring active teaching at home after class, is put together NOT to teach but to keep the masses from rebelling in their pseudo-scholastic prisons.

Lack of book learning doesn’t make anyone a criminal.  It doesn’t make them poor either.  I think my dad’s dad had a third grade (might be fourth) education.  Like younger son when he was younger, he had problems with verbal expression, and issues writing a legible hand.  In those days this meant “stupid” or at least book stupid, so his caring parents apprenticed him as a carpenter.  He supported his family in (for the village — grin) a more than middle class lifestyle, never that I know so much as stole a stamp, and raised sons and daughter who did better than him, and grandchildren who — weirdly — all have college educations, almost all of them (except me) in useful fields that actually make things or cure people.

The left is so wrapped up in their myths that they don’t understand “subsidize more education.  You’ll need fewer prisons” makes about as much sense as “eat more fiber. Control garden pests.” Worse, they legislate based on these myths, without the slightest qualm.  And then are shocked and posit bizarre theories (the GOP is holding back solar energy! The oil lobby! Eleventy!) for why it didn’t work.

And this is why our monoculture of progressivism hurts every field in which it is in fact a monoculture: education, the arts, entertainment, politics.

This is why diversity of thought is important. And why the progressives’ crazy attempts to shut down opinions they don’t agree with are … well… crazy.

In the safe space everyone believes as you do.  And that’s the problem.  Human beings aren’t built to be safe.

It is in the rubbing of thought against thought, in the contest of vision against vision that the truly ludicrous is eliminated and that, at least, we avoid the worst errors.

It is in not being locked up in a tiny intellectual village that real progress is made.  Not the “progressive” of progressives, which fills mass graves with those humans who weren’t infinitely perfectible, but the progress that fills bellies, raises humans above poverty and makes it possible to aspire to the stars.

Real progress comes from strife and work.

Which is why they’re acting more and more like isolated, illiterate villagers in a land where myth is more important than evidence.

And why in the end we win, they lose.