Mostly because I’ve been sadly remiss with Witch’s Daughter.  BUT right now duty and honor (eh!) call me to laying down flooring in son’s new room.

Once he gets his diploma in order (GRRRR lockdown, universities, bureaucracy, argh!) and gets a job he might very well move across the country, and then I’d have to pay someone to do it, since I can no longer do this stuff alone. (Trust me, gals, after 50 your strength falls off a cliff, so make use of it while you can.)

So think of me with kindness as I deal with the — argh — flooring today.

I’ll try to post this evening.

PS – Greebo is not doing well. At this point I can only ask you join your thoughts and prayers to mine that it be quick and relatively painless.  I’m far more worried about his tendency to hide from me and not come up for pets or to sleep with me. I miss my cuddle boy. I’ve… well, almost reconciled myself to losing him. I know they’re ephemeral. But I’m also somehow losing his affection and our closeness before he’s gone.

Never mind. I’m being maudlin. He’s just… a very good cat.

To make matters worse his chosen successor whom he obviously gave orders to, aka Havey cat, does NOT silently herd me to the office. Instead he laments every minute I’m not in my office. And because the only word he knows is “hello” I’m being bullied by Hello Kitty.  Sigh.

I’ve been thinking of the whole Covidiocy.

I’ve been thinking of it through the framing of WWII, particularly in Britain (though we weren’t wonderful) where strict rationing and also recycling (in the form of scrappers collecting every bit of paper, old signs, etc.)

Speaking of erasure of culture and destruction of statues, that did a lot more damage than even our hordes of simplificators.

And in the end, none of it really helped very much.  No, I’m not sure about the scrapping, but knowing how the rest of things were run, I suspect most of the metal and other things collected ended up not suitable for the intended purpose and basically wasted. Food production got completely divorced of demand and kept up shortages.  And let’s not start in on fabric, etc.

And all the while there were vast fortunes to be made. All of which is basically textbook fascism: tightly controlled economy where the government picks winners and losers from nominally private enterprise.

within a very short time, all of the economy was bent to this purpose, to the “war effort” although not really, and all brought under the government heel.

In the anglosphere (Southern Europe was always… different for both good and bad) this paved the way for all the abuses and intrusions that we’ve been enduring for a century.

Which brings us to….

The way to get people to knuckle under was fear: fear of the big bad Nazi empire. (With reason given their expansionist tactics. Even if they ignored the equally dangerous COMMUNIST expansionist tactics. You can’t have everything. Where would you put it? Who would dust it?)

The threat was commensurate, though.  Remember that in Europe you can’t swing a cat without a passport (yours and the cat. Also the cat won’t like being swung.)  People had family in France and Italy, in Poland and countries under the fascist heel.  They GOT the threat.

And yes, it had to be stopped.

So, while the measures meant diddly for the war effort, it did a lot in psychological cementing and “we’re all in this together” effort.

From the whole “we’re all in this together” and dumb slogans that the left keeps spinning, you know they’re using WWII as the model for the Covidiocy as well as their lusted after Green Nude Heel.

But here’s the thing: to pull the kind of transformation they want, you need the extraordinary claims to have some concrete and immediate BACKING to show that yeah, we need extraordinary measures.

That was present in WWII. Now? Not so much, besides the fact even the dumbest person can tell if the grocery store is safe, the park is safe. If a riot is safe, so is a stroll on the beach.

Which brings us to: this is the reason for the whole masks mandates NOW, and for all the crazy claims that we’re worse than never.

They made a massive grab for power based on claims that were pretty obviously crazily inflated.

They now want to keep piling things on, to keep the return to normal so far future we never focus enough to see how ridiculously exaggerated and insane their reaction was.

In other words, the left has a tiger by the tail.

You can’t hold onto the tail of the tiger forever.  And when you let go, you know he’s gonna eat you.

This is where they are now. Desperately holding on to that tail, and not letting go.

And knowing what can’t go on forever,won’t.

And everything is okay.
Today is younger son’s moving day and I kept watch on his u haul while they were loading it.  It’s not a lot, but I’m glad I could do something.

Unfortunately, since he’s moving from the springs, we had to leave early enough I couldn’t write a post.

This is just the “I”m okay, don’t worry.” post.

Why is it always Hitler?

The left is off on another of their half-cocked bits of insanity comparing Trump to Hitler, because Trump used an eagle on a campaign t-shirt.  The Washington Post, in the article about it, kind of admitted that the eagle was also an American symbol, but they did it reluctantly and hidden, because of course it ruins the comparison.

But seriously, why Hitler?  There have been countless other bad men since the failed painter committed suicide in his bunker. Heck, on body count alone he was kind of a piker.

So, why is the left always and forever obsessed with Hitler.

Yes, yes, the second world war.  Well, there have been other wars since then.

BUT, you’ll say, Hitler is the only one of the state-mass-murderers who didn’t do it in the name of communism.  Waggles hand. Kind of. He did it in the name of socialism, the nationalistic kind, and yet, the left has no trouble ignoring that.

With the help of their captive press corps, in fact, they have spent a considerable amount of time convincing the world that Hitler wasn’t a socialist, not harf.

Hell and damnation, I heard a communist in my field, who passes for an educated man, claiming that Hitler/Stalin was the ultimate confrontation of capitalism and communism.  Because, you know, Hitler is to capitalism as–  I don’t know? Chalk to cheese?

If you assume capitalism is “free trade” (and not a made up word of the left) that was the one thing that Nazis definitely didn’t have or encourage. In fact, like the international socialists of Europe, and like our own left, people were nominally allowed to keep their wealth and business, but the government told them what to do with them, and picked winners and losers.

So, surely the left could have picked someone else: Mao or Pol Pot, or someone and proclaimed them totally not communist and then obsessed about them as the monster to watch out for.  (To give kudos to a random complete idiot leftist (BIRM) she did compare Trump to Mao but that was only a facebook post, in which she showed more creativity than the Washington Post and the New York Times combined (tied together and thrown in the deep blue sea).)

Today I was watching Foyle’s War.  I have been “reading” Agatha Christie books (audio) while working.  And it hit me.

The left obsesses about Hitler because they’re nostalgic for WWII.
It’s the last time the world made sense to them.

No one openly challenged the principle that government, the bigger the better, should do everything and control everything, from news to food distribution (and growing.)  In many things, in fact, there was hardly any difference between the allies and Hitler.  Well, the allies in what would become the other side of the iron curtain were doing … well, just as awful stuff as Hitler was doing.

And even here, in the land of the free, that utter bastard, FDR, was busily putting people in camps, and interfering with private business and doing everything he could possibly do to make people miserable and to bring about the glorious triumph of the state over the individual.

Which brings to WHY the left are so nostalgic.

At the root of it, fundamentally, they have to know their policies, their initiatives, their grand plans are wrong at the level and by the only metric that counts: that of impoverishing society and destroying lives, and making people miserable who would otherwise be fine, really.

But during WWII they had an excuse: everyone was doing it. EVERYONE.  The only difference is that Hitler went in bigger than the other guys for ethnic cleansing. (Which is also why racism is now the left’s only and obsessively confessed sins.) And did it by the numbers and to horrifying levels.

Am I defending the bastard?  Of course not.

Because the world is NOT a dispute between complete light and utter darkness, ever, yeah at the time the allies defeated the worst possible of the alternatives. BUT they did it at the cost of convincing their population that the government had the right to enslave them, to curtail their lives, to make the individual count for nothing. Which goes a long way to explain the mess Europe has become since then.  (Well, again, they should have turned around and gone after Stalin next, but you can’t have everything. where would you put it? Who would dust it?)

So why does the left go back there like a dog to its vomit, from their obsession with comparing every single Republican president to Hitler, to trying to revive WWII rationing and programs, in response to various things that are to be declared the moral equivalent of war: the latest one being the “climate crisis.”

So–

Well, other than the fact that it’s fitting they’re running a demented elder for the presidency, what is the point of that?

The point is that it’s nostalgia.  Nostalgia is the sin of dying philosophies. Of those who know their time has passed.

The left is involved in a ghost dance.  It doesn’t mean they can’t do a lot of damage before they die, but they’ve entered that phase into which their maldaptive image of the world leads them to dig themselves deeper and deeper, every time they hit bottom.  They’re now reduced to Wile E. Coyote and his clever plots, which always backfire, because he fails to account for the other side not simply going along with his imaginings.

They are, in the end, headed to the trash heap of history.

Our job is to make sure they don’t drag us along.

Be not afraid, and keep working.

*This one is dedicated to Occasional Cortex who thinks that, after releasing criminals indiscriminately and refusing to enforce the law, the reason that NYC (and everywhere, really) has more crime is because “people are starving and need to feed their children.”
The level of stupidity involved in believing that is aided by a good bit of Marxist indoctrination and the fact that ultimately she’s a rich bitch who never had to do any real work or employ her mind in any way. (Bartender? Yeah.  She probably was a lousy one.  And we know she did no work in school.) Even so it is amazing that people believe this cr*p. But they do. Particularly people like Sandy Cortez, who find that they can use these stories to fashion saddles that they may ride us.

Of course the rise in crime is — as always — the result of letting people wedded to power and a dysfunctional philosophy (not to mention their own unearned sense of superiority) have any power at all.  Stay frosty.  Ça Irá! – SAH

Doing Evil by Doing “Good” – A Blast From The Past From August 2018

There is a peculiar strangeness to virtues, to those things we strive to practice and which are good for us and society in general: you have to know when to stop.

An excess of virtue seems to turn to vice and derange the mind just enough that it doesn’t realize what it’s doing.

Perhaps part of it is that we’re a less religious society, so some people have never been warned of the dangers of keeping the form but forgetting the purpose.  Or perhaps because so many people have forgotten the idea of “virtue” as such and just have these left over, ingrained reflexes of a post-Christian society.  These people can usually be recognized by saying quite the most stupid things about who Jesus was or what he believed, while running down those who have any religious belief in the mean time.  You’ve run into these critters, for instance, deploying memes on compassion to claim Jesus was an illegal immigrant (as though the forms and borders of the 21st century applied to the 1st) or deploying memes to say Jesus expelled the “capitalists” from the temple, (ignoring that the sin was doing it under the aegis of the temple, aka, confusing the market place with religion and vice versa which is not, usually, a sin of capitalists, except in those places corrupted by socialism,) or oh, telling us that we should be willing to pay more taxes because we ere enjoined to look after the poor, or perhaps my favorite from the party of abortion-on-demandTM reminding us that Mary was a single mother, (again completely missing that the forms of the society in 21st century America and 1st century Judea couldn’t be more different.  She risked stoning, had someone not stood by her, and yeah, for the record I completely oppose stoning single mothers, even without divine intervention.  OTOH I don’t remember her asking for government benefits for her baby. Must be a different translation of the New Testament I read.)

But this is not a religious blog, and at least one third of my readers aren’t Christians, as far as I can track.  This was just to explain that the society retains the “form” of Christianity and a lot of the impulses, while having lost the why.

Which allows virtues to morph into truly repulsive behavior, which destroys lives while going unchecked, because it’s hiding under cover of something “we all know to be a virtue.”

Take charity, or if you prefer compassion — caritas, by any other name — which in many ways is unraveling society and destroying lives.

Charity, as practiced by all the Abrahamic religions is supposed to be a PERSONAL virtue.  Sure you can band together with people of your faith or others to extend the reach of your charity. BUT you are not supposed to force other people to participate by force.  That might be organized crime, or perhaps just extortion, and like some organized criminals, you might have the best intentions in the world, but it does not sanctify the arm twisting. Because you’re still “causing harm to do good” and that’s always bad.  Because your knowledge of others is limited, you won’t know the unintended consequences of your actions, or even if you’re extorting from the “right” people. (Not that there’s any “right” people to extort from but people delude themselves about the “rich” paying their “fair share.”

Government is particularly bad about this.

Take us, for ex.  I pay an unreasonably high tax rate, because I fall under a category that is meant to catch under-reporting lawyers and doctors, not free-lance writers. For the government, though, we’re exactly the same thing and if some government drone noticed that we fall into it too, he’d probably assume all moderately-successful writers are exactly like the series “Castle.”

And even programs supposed to be more discriminating (in the right sense) do very weird stuff.  Keeping in mind I’m a writer: we learned earlier that when our kids applied for student loans, we had to make sure my money from writing was in another account, neatly labeled business and locked away by being part of a corporation.  Because suppose I go a few advances, and had been doing well indie for six months, and had 40k in the bank the month the kids applied: the program ASSUMES all of it is available to pay for their tuition (we paid half of each) and none of it would go to taxes or other business obligations.  Nor did it seem to understand the money might be there for some other reason: a new computer, or whatever the need for making more money was.  There were a couple of years we had to shoulder the full thing, because my not unusual situation was completely opaque to what is supposed to be a fairly sophisticated ah “ability and needs” judging program, led them to believe we had a year’s income sitting around in the bank, waiting to be spent on tiddly winks and chocolate milk, and that the kids were only applying for loans out of joi de vivre.

In the same way, many a family business goes bankrupt when the main owner dies, because even though the business’s worth is invested (particularly in the case of farms or restaurants) in things that are neither convenient to sell nor can be sold without destroying the ability to make more money, the government expects the heirs to pay full tax on their WORTH.  It’s amazing how many small businesses (not ours, though some of my colleagues got books seized when the copyright passed to heirs, and the assumption of the copyright value was… interesting to say the least) have a worth of a million or so, while barely making enough for a family of four, once you run it and pay employees.

The thing is this is all done in the name of compassion, which has been outsourced to the government and therefore is going after the — on paper — rich to give to the — on paper — poor.  This is a lot like the left’s conception of Robin Hood (they have him as wrong as they have Jesus.  Mostly Robin Hood stole from tax collectors and gave back to the people.) And they think it’s a good thing.

But the repercussions or our… ah, developmentally disabled tax system has destroyed many many lives.  And not those of the plutocrats the left imagines it’s taking undeserved money from (they should know about undeserved money, since those of them who work work entirely on the parasitic mechanism of the state “equalization”machine.)  It has taken the money from family businesses that had sometimes taken generations of patient work to build, it has made it harder to survive as a middle class working person than an indigent lay-about, and it has made it harder for families to climb out of government assistance, because after taxes the proceeds of honest labor are much lower than what you can get milking the system.

To the extent that generations on welfare stunts the ability to be a contributing member of society this false compassion based on extortion has destroyed entire generations of people and might have done irreparable harm by creating a tribe of anti-socials in our midst, who consider themselves entitled to living as they wish while not working. I’m not sure how many of those a functioning society can support.  I suppose at some time we’ll find out.

That’s the macro level.

The local level…. Ah, compassion.

Look, I do realize that some people, at times, are homeless through no fault of their own.  We’ve never quite hit that point but after some exceptionally bad years, I won’t say we weren’t close.  We stayed off soup kitchens by eating a lot of rice and frozen vegetables for years.

But you have to understand just like our “hunger in America” count dieting people (the question is “did you ever go to bed hungry” or “Do you normally eat all you want.”) so does homelessness in America count your kid who is between jobs and staying in your guest room, or your friend who just moved to town and crashed on your sofa for a week.  The most common time someone in America is “homeless” is 1 day.  Second most common is 2 days, etc.

But there is real homelessness.  Of course there is.  When Acacia Park, downtown Colorado Springs was infested with them (is it still?) I used to hear them talking candidly among themselves during my morning walk.

Do you know what I never heard them say “I can’t find a job.”

Do you know what I heard them talk about?  Drugs, mostly.  The young ones would talk about not going home, because their parents (gasp) would require them to stop doing whatever it is they were doing, drug wise.

There were also complaints about cities making it hard to beg, talk of having “dropped out” 30 years ago, and the injustice of even thinking of finding a job.

Were a lot of these people drug addicted or mentally ill.  A-yup.  Were a lot of the mentally ill drug addicts who were trying to self medicate?  A-yup.  Were a lot of them on the run from legally prescribed drugs that would control that mental illness?  A-yup. Do a lot of drugs, when used over time, have the uncomfortable side effect of bringing on mental illness which might have been latent?  Seem to.  The relation hasn’t been very well documented or studied, but anyone who knows people who did a lot of drugs in the sixties has noted a difference before and after.

The one thing that’s certain is that encouraging (with money and freebies and that famous “compassion”) the homeless to continue in their destructive lifestyle has horrendous social consequences.

Those shelters and soup kitchens that cater to all without demanding sobriety will turn teens who left home because parents objected to their pot use into hardened street people who will not have any skills and fall, rung by rung into being utterly useless and unable to integrate in normal society.

But they do worse.  Around these soup kitchens and shelters, if near residential areas, there grows an area of crime and desolation, because you know, these people still have to pay for drugs somehow.  If near commercial areas, they blight the tendency of shoppers to come to that area, because no one wants to be followed/accosted or screamed at by people who are acting crazy (whatever the real reason.)

The do gooders then claim the fault is of “normal society”, of those horrible bourgeois who don’t want to live or shop in an area where they’re likely to be assaulted, insulted or mistreated, not mention robbed from.

But of course, there are very few (some of course) middle class people who are that by virtue of having inherited all their money.  Most of us stay out of homelessness by working daily, sometimes brutal hours, so we can pay our taxes and still live and build a future for our children.

When you make the work and our limited enjoyments more difficult we move on.

Now the “compassion” in the more “progressive” locales has reached the point of if not outright encouraging, not discouraging “homeless” — which really should be “barbarians” because they’re actually not just homeless.  The habitual ones are people who live outside our civilization as effectively as though they were the nearby tribe who lives from raiding us — from defecating on the street.

You know, I come from a society where many many illnesses were endemic that shouldn’t be: from cholera to TB to typhoid.  They were finally controlled not by modern medicine but by a rigorous program of public hygiene; by making people buy shoes and wear them on public streets and spaces (in my mom’s time, though there was still a law forbidding going barefoot, which I fell afoul of when boarding the train to school on a day I had forgotten to put shoes on.  Shut up. It was in finals.)  Other things it discouraged included spitting or on ground.  Or pooping on the ground, where it could contaminate ground water.

In the densities of people in cities, it is very easy for one barbarian to infect the entire tribe and I look forward to seeing what sort of new epidemics develop in one particular city.  Or I would, if our society weren’t so interconnected and people didn’t travel all over taking their germs.

And ultimately that’s it.  Like a gap in our immune system — or an exploit-worthy flaw in a computer system — this “outsourced compassion” and this non-judging charity without paying attention to when it actually becomes harmful, is a gaping and growing wound through which barbarism is invading civilization.

The idea that instead of people being secure in their possessions and in the enjoyment of their space, anyone who has anything is somehow beholden to those who don’t is a Marxist lunacy, (not Christian) and a part of that whole fixed pie economics fallacy.  It’s the idea that whatever you have, you stole from someone, and if you wish to enjoy a clean and safe walk through your neighborhood, you’re some sort of despoiling ogre who caused the filth and the aggression of your neighbor, and therefore must have your nose rubbed in his (never learned to restrain it) anger and filth.

It destroys decent life, enjoyment of the fruits of one labor and the safety that civilization is supposed to provide.

It’s not Charity.  It’s the “Marxist virtue” of envy dressed in charity garb and strutting and dancing to fool children and idiots.

And unless we start combating it, it is enough, by itself, to undo civilization.

 

 

The rest of the house still looks like a screaming disaster zone /construction area, and for that matter so do I, from weird bruises and cuts to the fact that my hands look like I’ve been wrestling something with fan-blade hands. I was telling my husband I have performed sacrifices of blood on every inch of every new floor. I don’t know if he was impressed or appalled. The expressions are so similar.

BTW you’re not looking at the side of a refrigerator on the right, but at the side of some very old cube-shelves we’ve had since the kids were little.  (Look, buying the same shelves all now would set us back $500.  We have too much stuff to do to waste that kind of money.  I do need to get cubes for my eventual sewing area, (When we get there) but I’m half tempted to get the cheap plastic ones, so as not to put the knife in the account QUITE that deeply.)  Of course, before putting them up I spray painted all of them (After saying I wasn’t going to do it because it’s so much work, of course, but I note that I need to bring in one of the little paint bottles and cover up those glaring screws.  Although that’s not a big deal in the long run (right?) and the office looks largely as it will look, pending my arranging files and such properly.

Which means I have a place to hide in, when things get to be too much for me.  Well, to hide and hopefully to write and resume normal life.

Besides the fact that it’s a relief to have ONE room that looks as it should, it is a much needed reminder of why we’re killing ourselves doing all this work. Because when we’re done the house will (hopefully) look like this, and we can have our life on a more organized and productive pattern.  It is the bait for when I don’t feel like doing anything.

Of course, yes, I want to fast forward to when all this is done, and the house all looks like this (well, not exactly like this, since this is a highly personal space with Boris Valejo on the walls, and pictures of the kids growing up, but you know what I mean.)

Sometimes I think it is like that with our polity.

Look, for a good 100 years our supposed elites have been playing footsie with totalitarian Marxism.  To an extent you could say that we, as we came along, purchased a nation in need of some renovation and fix up.  (We definitely need to find that rot in the attic and clean it out.)  I mean, it’s in better shape than other nations, but it does need renovation.

It’s just that you can’t do everything at once, even if you try.  There are limits to what you can accomplish in a month — or a life time — and while we’re attempting to fix the most glaring issues, it makes the whole thing look worse (like replacing truly ratty carpet means everything is out of place and you trip on crowbars in the hallway.)

This is not an excuse, metaphorically speaking, to just run off, soak the whole thing with gasoline and set it on fire.  Everything looks worse when you’re fixing it, be it a house or a nation.  And much as we’d like to fast forward to when we’re all done with this, that’s not the way it works.

OUR house should be done in another month, two at most.

The nation?  Well, maybe our grand-kids will live in the land of the free.  It’s better than the alternative, at any rate.

Be not afraid.  And keep working. Even if you have to bleed over every inch of the project.

 

*Sorry this is so late. The GOOD NEWS is that I am almost done setting my office up. YAY! – SAH*

Book Promo

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

FROM MARY CATELLI:  The Lion and the Library.

The library holds many marvels. Lena and her betrothed Erion had found things that helped the beleaguered Celestians of the city.But when the king’s caprice decides to sacrifice Erion to protect himself, Lena can only hope a legend can help her. A legend of just kings. And lions.

FROM SABRINA CHASE:  Rogues and Heroes.

…with a young woman desperate to leave her dusty planet for space … a British boy determined to end WWII all by himself … a cop in a dark world willing to do anything for a good read… an old cowboy with a final, heavy burden

…and more, in this collection of short stories from SF author Sabrina Chase.

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: UPPITY

 

 

 

 

It is highly unlikely I’ll write a full post today. You see I’m still putting the pieces of my office back together.

Yeah, I spent yesterday at it, and I’m still working at it.

Part of it is that I haven’t yet unpacked the boxes from the last house, even though we moved four years ago. I wanted to get to work, so I shoved them in the closet and carried on.

Part of it is that I suspect some of the boxes are from Manitou or even from Cache la Poudre…. (calculates) 26 years ago.

Sometimes I wonder if Americans, a highly mobile and very busy society, move through life accumulating more and more boxes they never open.  I think we unpacked everything when we lived in Manitou.  At least one of the boxes we opened there had been packed by the movers when we moved from Columbia, SC, and contained what had been in the trash can, including one of son’s infant diapers. He was thirteen when we found that. No wonder we hadn’t noticed it was missing….

There’s other stuff.  For the last ten years, things have been weird, mostly health wise, but also because I’ve been dealing with crisis not of my own making (and the ones I make are bad enough.) Also, I’ve been trying new ways of doing things, mostly because I was sick and hoped SOME method would work to be more productive. They didn’t work, and I’m culling them and donating them to someone who maybe can use them.

I’m not going all “get rid of what doesn’t spark joy” because if I got rid of my old contracts IP lawyers would have nothing to work with (for instance.)  BUT I am trying to cut down on the sheer volume of crap that I carry house to house without having any use for it.

It has become somewhat obvious that at some point in the future — should I live that long, of course — we’ll HAVE to move low altitude. When we do, we’ll have enough of our stuff to carry (200 and some boxes of books, and that’s having got rid of almost all fiction and keeping only the research books. Fiction is now electronic.) without paying for movers to take things I’m never even going to look at much less use.

So the unpacking and organizing has become…. really, an archeological dig. A very weird one.

Some of the things that were in my office (as opposed to downstairs in the library) are puzzling in the extreme, like books on the evolution of sexual reproduction (not titillating. Highly detailed, chromosome talk. (Yes, yes, I know. People pay good money. I think I did in fact.) To explain, I’m only supposed to have books for the current two or three projects in my office.

I do know why I have a pile of books on the war of the roses in my office, as opposed to the library, but only because recently I came across THAT out outline. It’s called Bone Deep, and it’s about a woman who rebuilds faces from ancient skulls.  (“she tries this one thing, and you’ll never believe what happens next!”  Dear Lord, to catch up with my backlog in the next couple of years I’d need to do a book a week, sustained.)

But other stuff….  Shrugs.

And the note pads, including a plethora of embassy suites complimentary pads scribbled with beginnings, with ends, with ideas, with what appears to be darn near full novels….  I got nothing.

I’m not looking too closely at those. Because then I’d be a month unpacking and have a million new ideas.  Right now any notebook that has stuff goes in a pile.  Okay three piles. Five feet tall.  At some point, in my copious spare time, I’m going to rip out the filled pages and file them in three boxes: ideas, plots and novels.

But some of them get my attention, and I read parts of it.

WHY in heaven’s name — and WHEN — did I write half of a mil sf with a character named Patience Bach?  And why is it called Patience Abides?  From the pad it’s on, it was LONG before I read Honor Harrington (I was a late comer to it) so it wasn’t an attempt at imitating it, but it’s WEIRD.  Also probably very bad.  I haven’t done more than skim.

I mean, it has pages and pages of RANKS — who WAS I when I wrote this? I don’t even think that way.  (Shoves the maps of Eden, and schematics of the Cathouse under the sofa with her toe) — and ship schematics.

And what in heavens name possessed me to sketch cozy mysteries in which the male protagonist has the help of a very proper lady ghost from the revolutionary war era?

And what, in the holy name of Ned is a long and complicated worldbuilding on a world that seems to be all mud and floods?

I almost feel like doing a day a week with “Discoveries from Sarah’s packed boxes” only you guys would expect me to finish them, even the very bad ones, for the LULZ.

All of these seem to have come and gone, leaving no trace behind and no wish to write them.

It’s very weird. Like looking at notebooks of a stranger who has my handwriting.

As I said, they will gradually be organized and filed and become someone else’s problem long after I’m gone, unless the boys are sensible and get a dumpster to take it all.

Anyway…..  I find it very weird to have to deal with my thirty-something year old self.  She might have been stranger than I am.

And now, back to the unpacking.

 

 

The Mark of COVID by Dr. TANSTAAFL

We wear masks at work.  Surgical masks were originally used to keep us from contaminating a surgical wound.  Nowadays, we wear surgical masks to supposedly keep us from unknowingly passing on COVID while we are not having symptoms.  I wear a mask for a few patients, then get a new one, because it gets moist and contaminated.  Masks do not keep me from getting the virus, it’s too small for the common surgical masks.  N95s possibly could keep me from catching the virus, but there is no study confirming that.  Again, they are used for one patient, then changed out.  I have to take a fit test each year to prove that the N95s fit correctly.  What I don’t do, is wear the same mask all day, leave it in my car, stick it in my purse, touch it over and over, and get whatever is on there on my fingers.  (Don’t get me started on wearing gloves all day.  How do you pee and wash your hands?!?)   People wearing masks around outside are unlikely to have changed them several times a day, and washed them, or wear them properly (cover both mouth and nose, and don’t touch or adjust them once on, and wash hands every time you put it on or take it off, or touch it for any reason).

So why are we pushing masks on everyone?  There are no definitive studies showing that it stops the spread of the virus.  We have differing recommendations from differing “experts”.  I’ve searched the medical literature to find any good studies that show it stops the spread of the virus.  Most studies are quoted from Wuhan, and we know what that information is worth. (Don’t believe China.  China is asshole!)  Some studies suggest that wearing masks in a family if one member is infected, decreases the rate of transmission in the family.  That’s the most definite one I saw.  Says nothing about masking in public, or outside of the house.

There must be another reason for the mask fetish.

The Mark of Cain was placed by God on Cain after Cain killed his brother, to prevent anyone from killing Cain.  It is assumed that the mark was easily visible and gave information about the person it was on.

Masks are being mandated to place the Mark of COVID on all of us.  It is an easily seen mark that says we are compliant with what our betters tell us is good for us.  They have no scientific evidence, but they can force us to wear one to show that we will do what they say.  If we want to go to the grocery store, wear the Mark!  If we want to go to exercise, wear the Mark!   We are to take it on faith that a smarter, more omnipotent person who is employed by our government knows best.

The Mark of COVID is the warning that we have no rights.  We walk around feeling the mark. Others can see that we are adhering to the mark.  We walk outside and are defiant because we are not wearing the mark, or we are tacitly or actively agreeing to the mark rule if we wear a mask. Do we dislike or despise the person next to us who is not wearing a mask, or do we nod in agreement and feel more comfortable with not wearing a mask?

We have the right to make our own decisions.   If a 95 year old grandmother wants to go to her great grand daughter’s wedding, she should have that right. And if her choice results in her illness, it was a known risk which she chose freely, and she will pay the price.  If someone comes to the Emergency Room with chest pain that looks like a heart attack, our role is to give them the best advice we can based on the science we know.  And if they tell us they disagree and want to leave, we do the best sell job we can.  We try to be very persuasive, including telling them death and disability is a possibility.  If they still want to leave, they are free to go and free to face the consequences.    I don’t want to live in a world where its my choice, not theirs.

With no good studies to show that wearing a cloth mask protects others, we are left with a mandate based on faith that someone deemed important feels it might help lower the risk of COVID spread. In medicine our choices are based on risks and benefits. Does the benefit of what we are doing outweigh the risks? We are told the possible benefits of wearing a mask outweigh the negligible risks of covering our faces for a large part of the day in various environmental conditions is worth it. For an unproven benefit, and at least some risk, why should we listen? Can we at least look into the risks and benefits before mass masking?

“When you wear a mask, whether you’re walking on a busy street, whether you’re inside a grocery store or riding transportation, that is a sign to the whole community that we are in this together.”  Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania Health Secretary.  This is the actual reason for the masking orders.  They want the community to all buy into the story.  Having to wear that mask, at least outwardly, says there is no dissent.

The Mark of COVID is psychologically damaging.  Every time we sigh and pull on a mask, it is a reminder that we are not allowed to decide for ourselves or disagree with the “best and the brightest” (GAG!).

How did we get here?  And most importantly, how do we get out of here?

Lately I’ve got interested in stereotypes.  Oh, not racial or cultural. Not gender either. More like the old stereotypes of our field, the stories you think you know where they’re going (the stereotypical — or should I say archetypal) characters and stories are so old you mind starts filling in stuff just from reading a few lines.  Which btw means the author needs to do a lot less work…. and more work, at least if we don’t want to make it paint by the numbers boring.  Though I’ll note in the new era, the paint by numbers pulpish stereotypes sell better than the “so innovative, so literary, so relevant” stuff. (Mostly because those are usually wrong on three counts.)

OTOH I know myself, and things would get interesting/sideways/subverted. Because I’m me.  What they probably wouldn’t get is pulled down into the mud and rolled in with the pigs. Because, yeah, some humans are terrible, but if you live in the real world and pay attention, you’ll find more heroism and glory in anyone’s life than petty self-betrayal and amoral vacuousness.

I haven’t had time.  We’re halfway, in number of rooms (in size of rooms it’s different, though as husband pointed out most of the large rooms remaining ARE very straightforward with no weird angles) in flooring the house.  Three to go. One very small, but….

And I have a million stories ahead to write, anyway, all planned, laid out, some started some almost finished.  But I’ve been grabbing almost randomly old stories (and filk) when I sit down.  (Old stories in paper. Part of the job is shelving stuff in the library, where the new and improved (my old rendering computer almost 10 years old) publishing computer is going, so younger son can use it, and make me paper editions of everything, and run the new, upcoming, wonderful (look, I need to sit down and edit, and — if she signs/agrees to the contracts — republish Kate Paulk, including her new one.  And we have a dozen anthologies in the works too) inkstain publishing (shared worlds, anthologies, and perhaps Kate Paulk, if she so wishes.)  Thing is the thing needs management, and I haven’t even been managing myself well.  Younger son will take it up while he’s looking for work. And hopefully when he finds it and likely moves out of state, there MIGHT be enough money to hire someone for the job — gulp — I hope.

So anyway, I’ve been grabbing old books, the ones whose covers were in primary colors and whose pages sometimes crumble at the touch. Not all SF/F. I have a collection of pulp mysteries as well, mostly picked up when I was depressed and needed comfort.

Look that type of space opera is barely science fiction unless you extend the definition to mean “Man faced with strange situations.” I mean, the science is usually cursory and/or waved at.  Yes, Heinlein did it better by injecting real science.  (I try, okay. A part of the science is handwavium — well, isn’t it always? — but in the part that is essential to my premise I bug all my contacts. Yes, including sons.)

But Heinlein leaned heavily on the pulp stereotypes, the stereotypes of the human mind that go back to — if you could verify it — the campfires of the indo-European culture (whose main strength was apparently multilayered endless sagas. They worked to draw other tribes to the culture apparently. Or at least that’s one of the speculations.  Not so much by the force of arms but by story they conquered. Um….. Nice work if you can get it.

If you don’t believe he leaned on those, go read the opening to Citizen of the Galaxy. Or the first chapter of Starman Jones. Or the scene when Star appears to Oscar for the first time.

I’m not Heinlein. I couldn’t even play Heinlein on TV (though if I don’t wax, the mustache could pass.)

But those old stereotypes have been rolling through my mind like thunder. I’m not sure what the hell to do with them, but they’re there, and maybe something will come of it eventually.

Tell me you don’t get hooked, and sense the surprises hidden in each of these.  (And it’s me. The surprises would probably surprise you.)

There was a laughing devil in his eyes.  He was a disreputable, scarred man of middle years, sliding reluctantly into old age, kicking and screaming the whole way.  Flesh hung loose on his broad frame.  His left eye was missing. What remained of his hair was red and looked like he’d given himself a haircut using metal cutters.

But his remaining eye was the dark blue of space. He walked with the rolling gait of a spaceman, too long in free fall.

There might be another reason for his walk. In the bars of Far Itravine, in the Blind Seer system, he told stories of his fighting pirates in Antares and barely piloting away from a black hole in High Mauritius.  People bought him drinks.

But if you waited around after you left, someone would come and tell you, “Bless your heart, sir. No.  He was a stevedore down in the spaceport locks. The eye and the scars are where an AI loader’s grappling hook hit. His mother was a spaceport whore. I don’t think he ever spaced.”

 

Or,

“Need some company, spaceman?”

I looked her over. You never know, in these far ports.  She looked eighteen, maybe twenty. And she was pretty. Pretty enough to hit close to the uncanny valley.

Instinctively I looked for those seams that join head to neck and neck to body.  Look, none of the comfort women are real humans. Humans are spread too thin over the universe to waste on that kind of thing. Particularly when androids do it better, and you don’t need to worry over their feelings.

To my surprise I found none.  And yet her greeting was straight from historical hollos, and she was wearing something shimmery and so light I could see the shape of her rosy flesh beneath.

I looked at her eyes, improbably spring green, and she smiled back.

That did it. No one smiles that willingly at a guy with my mug. She was either an assassin — since when did I rate assassins, though? — or an alien in human disguise.

Or

Things were rolling along pretty good in Myroclady.  Well, as good they could be, in the middle of the war.

Conscripted laborers had settled down to building the new shiny war ships.  Engineers — male and female — worked overtime at the designs, and laborers slapped them on frames as far as they would go.

And then people started talking of seeing the Invictus.

Yes, that Invictus, the ship blown up with all hands at the beginning of the confrontation with the Alliance. The one that had aboard the best regarded of our commanders, and his son the Young Hope. And the best brains the human race had ever thrown out. At least on the side of free men.

It started with one of the women assembling the shipskin in the molecular vats. She was walking home, late at night, and swore she’d seen the Invictus — “As I remember, sir, from a hollo at school” — materialize in the skies. So close she could see the faces of the lost at the viewports. She said she saw Vir Hopewell — Young Hope — at one of them. “His hair was just like in the holo, but he looked sad.  And he lifted his hand at me. Not quite a wave, you know, but like he knew me.”  And then she burst into tears.

Now, these could be set — with modifications — any time from the ancient agean to the present.  Why set them in space?

Well, obviously, because that’s the frontier we instinctively know we must colonize. It beacons and calls to us, and our dreams are there.

In the nineteenth century, people told stories of Africa that had very little to do with the real Africa, but they sold to the restless.  I think it’s something-like with pulp.

And why some people are so invested in making sure we never dream of that frontier.

They will yell how colonization is bad, even if you colonize emptiness.

Unfortunately all species, at least on Earth (though if it’s not the same in other worlds we don’t need to worry about alien competition) either colonize or die.  A niche species is an endangered species. It endangers itself.

Sure, we can choose to commit sepoku and die in your cradle. Or …. or we can go find out what’s there.

And stories pave the way. Which, I think, is why evolutionary we’re attracted to them. They make us human.

And humans, by definition want to push ever onward, into the infinity which calls to us.