*I NORMALLY don’t run two guest posts, back to back.  However, I’m back on prednisone and trying to finish a novel.  the autoimmune was going crazy with the stress of the last week or so. So, cut me a little slack for one day.  And enjoy Alma’s great post. – SAH*

From Where came the Were? – Alma Boykin

Shape-shifting individuals, and animals that take on human form, seem to appear in almost every folk-lore around. They have become the mainstay of paranormal fantasy, in the process losing their negative connotation and taking on positive attributes. The idea of humans becoming predators is so common that I don’t think I’ve seen a werewolf costume at Halloween in decades. Why bother? They don’t seem to be mysterious or unusual anymore. And that in itself is an interesting twist on tradition.

Deities of all kinds shift into human or other form, and I’m going to separate out shape-shifting from were-creatures. If you look hard enough, almost every deity over the span of the human story shifts shape, or has a messenger or avatar that can conceal its true nature. I’m going to focus on things and people who are at most individuals with two or three forms—human, part-animal, full animal—and leave deities aside. Since I’m most familiar with European lore, I’m also putting more emphasis there.

No evidence exists to tell us how far back in human history the idea of were-creatures goes. There appears to be, perhaps, a shaman-like figure in the cave at Le Troi Frères, but anthropologists are no longer one-hundred-percent certain that the figure truly represents a human with animal attributes. It is thought that animist and shamanistic practices go very far back indeed, and very likely included the veneration of animal spirits, and the idea that a few trained, or cursed, individuals could be inhabited by those spirits, or take animal form while spirit travelling. From there it is not a great leap to someone not just putting on an animal hide to act as that animal during a dance or other ritual, but also changing shape into that animal, usually a predator or large herbivore. The Olmec in central America may have had werejaguars, if their carvings depict what we think they depict. The idea of humans becoming wolves also goes back a long way. Birds seem to have been were-creatures, but were-small mammals? None thus far, unless pure spirit forms count as weres.

Angry deities changed people into animals on a regular basis in Greek and Celtic lore. Athena and Artemis seem to have been especially prone to turn the arrogant into other things, such as Arachne becoming a spider, or Actaeon who was zapped into a stag and eaten by his own hunting hounds for spying on Artemis as she bathed. The Roman writer Apulias had a character turned into a donkey in The Golden Ass after messing around with witchcraft. He leads a miserable life until the goddess Isis takes pity on him and returns him to human form. In Celtic mythology, the Children of Lir are cursed by their stepmother, turning them into three swans who only return to their human forms at death. A druid cursed Fionn’s wife Sadbh, turning her and their son Oisín into deer. Certain Celtic deities also took on deer shapes, and woe betide someone who didn’t take care when they found a pure white deer or stag, especially if it had red eyes.

Werewolves could be venerated or despised and feared. A number of Central Asian peoples claimed ancestry from wolves, or held wolves in high esteem and assumed that wolves could shift into humans on occasion. The Chinese had weredogs, probably descended indirectly from the steppe tradition of werewolves, and dog-headed peoples appear in a number of Classical and Medieval writings, always a little farther on than the author’s sources had ever traveled. Europeans tended to see werewolves as evil, especially those humans who chose to take on wolf powers. Those unlucky enough to be cursed into being werewolves were to be pitied and freed if possible, but in general werewolves such as the French loup-garou meant nothing but trouble. In the Americas, especially North America, Coyote could become human, and was still a trickster and shape shifter. Louis L’Amour took advantage of this tradition in one of his short stories, where the protagonist uses an old den and a rather surprised coyote to convince the Apache that he is a were-coyote. They leave him alone after that, for good reason. Humans should never, ever cross Coyote.

European fascination with werewolves seems to have peaked in the 1500s-1600s, during a time of great social and environmental stress, and the rise of cheap, sensational printed literature. Everyone wanted to read werewolf tales, and stories about children literally raised by wolves also became popular. The interest faded away for a while, although Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book showed that it wasn’t entirely dead. In Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, the count takes the form of a great wolf at one point. Given the success of Dracula and vampire-based Victorian “penny-dreadfuls,” it is no surprise that werewolves became more common. The Twentieth Century brought on new interest in were-creatures in pop culture, starting with movies like Werewolf of London (1935) and of course The Wolf Man (1941). People began scrounging around for mythology to use in their movies and books. As time passed and people looked around more for material and ideas, other shape-shifters appeared in books, leading eventually to the explosion in the 1980s-90s through today of all sorts of were-creatures, including were-squirrels.

Alas for writers, people have begun to ask questions like “If a dragon takes on human form, and the dragon weighs six hundred pounds, where does the additional mass go?” or “Do you have to be bitten to become a were-[creature]?”  This probably explains why most weres are into creatures that are more-or-less human sized to begin with. And let’s face it, most people are going to have a hard time at first taking a were-chipmunk seriously. In general, writers have risen to the occasion, although I rolled my eyes at a scene when serious handwavium was applied and the mass sent to a pocket dimension for later retrieval, as the draconic shape-shifter explained in the text. In other cases, writers turn to pure magic, transmission via disease, genetic manipulation, cursed totems that transform their users into creatures, a ticked off deity who turned people into werewolves, mental problems such as schizophrenia that led to the sufferer willing herself into the form of a werebear, and other things.

The idea of taking on the attributes of a more powerful creature goes back very far into human mythology and memory. In Africa you find stories of were-hyenas, were-leopards, and other predators. Chinese tales describe were-dogs and spirits who take on human form, while Japan has the kitsune and the Ainu shaman who take on bear form. Transformations into deer, bears, wolves, and bison happen in North America, while were-jaguars appear in South America. The modern fascination with shape shifting has deep, deep roots, and will likely continue for quite a while.

Shameless plugs: For more shape-changing, try Sarah’s Shifters series, [the first edition of the first book, with the horrible cover is free.  No it’s not horror, and the main character is not a zombie with an udder fetish -SAH] or my (Alma’s) Cat Among Dragons series.

The Ease of Evil – Kate Paulk

This morning I read Marina Fontaine’s review of Downfall (http://marinafontaine.blogspot.com/2017/03/netflix-review-downfall.html), yes, including mention of that scene, the one that’s been recaptioned several gazillion times, some with more humor than others. In the review, she asks why the fascination? What is it with the Nazis and Hitler?

I have a theory. It is purely mine, based on reading a metric crap-ton about all manner of things (and don’t ask me for cites because this stuff has stewed so long in the back of my head I no longer remember where I originally read whatever triggered any particular piece. You can get most of the raw facts off Wikipedia). It is also a very broad generalization. Coming years will determine whether or not it is correct in the big picture. I’m not optimistic (I hope I’ve got this horribly wrong. I fear I haven’t).

Okay. So.

The ongoing fascination with Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Simply put, it’s the most well-documented and acknowledged demonstration of the allure of evil and how easy it is for a more or less civilized people to descend into utter brutality. As such, it holds an unclean fascination not helped by uniforms that were designed to look good as well as be practical (or by the simple fact that evil, when done effectively, is sexy. Because it is invariably power, and untrammeled power at that. We’re human. Power attracts and corrupts us. The wiser among us acknowledge this so we can fight the effect).

The various Communist regimes can be dismissed as “not counting” because to the minds of those who do the dismissing, Russia, China, North Korea, and Eastern Europe “weren’t civilized”, and so Communism/Socialism would work just fine implemented by civilized people (they usually point to one of the Nordic nations when they do this). These same people are a big part of why the wrong lesson keeps being drawn from Nazi Germany.

The problem was not nationalism. It was not even the disgusting racial laws. Those laws could never have been passed, much less enforced, without the one big thing Socialism, Communism, and yes, Nazism have in common.

The supremacy of the state.

In the case of Nazi Germany, it started towards the end of the First World War, with the combination of Communist agitation and an Empire tired of a war that was draining the nation dry. The Communist agitation had rather more to do with the Kaiser’s abdication than is generally admitted – and frankly, it was disastrous. Instead of keeping the royal family as a symbol of national unity and reforming the German government into something more like the British model, Germany emerged from Versailles with a weak government run by people who had no idea what they were doing, a crippling war debt, some self-inflicted, and a lot thanks to a vengeful France, and, on the part of the average German, a shit-ton of bitterness over having been betrayed.

Hitler’s “knife in the back” rhetoric was grounded in reality. If it had been purely fabrication, it wouldn’t have resonated nearly as well.

The Weimar regime proved incapable of managing what little economy it had. Between the hyper-inflation and the kind of turnover of leadership that left the government looking like a ping-pong match, the entire situation was a pile of tinder by a cloud of flour dust just waiting for that one spark.

Enter Prussia. Or rather, exit Prussia. Prussia had the most stable of the Weimar-era state government, and was slowly – and painfully – grinding its way back to something resembling stability. During the late 1920s and early 1930s there was a lot of unrest, most of it between the German Communists trying to foment a revolution and bring Germany into the Soviet fold and the Nazi Brownshirts. Both appealed to the average German, who knew very well they’d been sacrificed for someone else’s ideals.

Prussia’s constitution at the time didn’t allow a new state government to form without a majority. The 1932 elections left the ruling coalition without a majority, and the Nazis and Communists forming large enough minorities to effectively block any coalition forming a new government. When one of the clashes between Nazis and Communists left 18 people dead in a shootout, the German Chancellor used the opportunity to claim that Prussia’s government was incapable of maintaining order, and pushed the President (who was senile) into dismissing the Prussian Cabinet and – the main purpose of the exercise – placing the entire Prussian government under direct Federal administration.

With the largest German state under direct federal administration, that state had no way to prevent – or even protest – the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor. The rest, of course, is general knowledge: Hitler creating crises and using them to give himself absolute power, abolishing the German state governments, and of course, bringing everything he could under state control.

That bare listing of facts accounts for the rise of Hitler, but not the continuing notion that the Nazis were conservative (only if you define ‘conservative’ as ‘nationalist’). That one comes from two sources. One was Soviet propaganda aimed at making Communist and Nazi ideologies seem much more distinct than they actually were. The other was Allied propaganda aimed at much the same thing. It wouldn’t do, after all, to have people realize they were allied with a dictator every bit as vile as Hitler.

So in American and British media, the evil of the Nazis was played up, while the evil of the Communists was minimized where it couldn’t be silenced altogether. The Communist plants and fellow-travelers in both nations helped.

They were – and are – almost the same. Both demand an all-powerful state. The state determines who is deserving and provides for the deserving. The state dehumanizes the undeserving prior to eliminating them. The state determines the direction of industry (in the case of the Nazis, by requiring business owners to support the regime where the Communists took over the businesses). The state cares for you – but if you’re no use to the state, your care will be an unmarked grave in a prison camp/work camp/concentration camp/gulag. All hail the state.

And both regimes started by targeting those who were seen as deserving targets – criminals, Gypsies, degenerates, homeless… all while dehumanizing their other targets.

The biggest difference? The Nazis didn’t dehumanize everyone. They may have, if the regime had lasted. The Communists did. People belonged to their group. If it was a good group, they got better choices, better lives. If not, they got orders that their entire harvest was requisitioned and they didn’t eat.

In my view the real lesson to be taken from the rise of the Nazis is that evil is seductive and people will flock to power and happily dehumanize their neighbors if you sell it right. And, as Pratchett put it (via Granny Weatherwax), evil always starts with treating people as things.

Especially treating people as things.

I hate rumor.  Perhaps I hate it more because I grew up in a village.

The people who imagine villages are idyllic and every person in it loves the other like a brother or sister, have no knowledge of people — or reality.  Sure, in many villages in isolated places, most of the people there are related to some degree.  This was not true where I grew up, because the village was already in the process of exploding into a large-city suburb.  It wasn’t visible to me as a child, because it was so slow, and newcomers still took years to integrate, but it it had been going on for so long that the appellation of “aunt” given to any grown woman by any child was just courtesy, not truth.  Still, had we been all related, people who imagine that makes for harmonious living must have been only children and the children of only children.

No, never mind, I’m being silly.  Those people are actually enormous racists and oikophobes.  Hating their own home, they imbue places far away, particularly those inhabited by people who tan more than they do, with the qualities of heaven.  They also in the process make those people-who-tan (or as I always think when I’m the object of this type of thought, and yes, I am, it’s what enables them to think themselves my intellectual superiors a-priori “Little browns peoples”) less than human.  They (we) are not people with our own agency, and all the virtues and vices of mankind, but sort of little pets, perfect, well behaved and needing both the protection of our masters, the pale enlightened, and their pat on the head for how good we are.  (Most of the left’s ideas on “defeating colonialism” envision themselves as benevolent colonial masters.  In fact, the colonialism of Marxist ideas in Africa is what has made it hell on Earth, far worse than any colonial overseers could do.  By turning their best and brightest into Marxist apostles at our “finest universities” they get to send these ideas back to Africa.  There was some idea they would flourish there among people unsullied by greed and the wish to succeed individually (yes, it’s that racism again.  It is inherent in the left’s contrived “celebration” of black people, Kwanza, which is really a celebration of socialist principles.  And no, is in no way African.  It was invented in the US.  For one there isn’t such a thing as an “African” holiday.  The continent is as or more varied than Europe (because transport was near impossible for most of its existence, tribes and villages were very isolated indeed.))  It didn’t.  Instead it has made Africa worse than ever before.  And this was done by turning its favorite sons, its brightest sparks into poison pills.  Colonialist Marxism is appalling and responsible for the deaths of millions.  As is Marxism everywhere.)

Returning to villages: even though most of the people in the village worked with their hands and still conformed to traditional roles; even though most people not only knew you on sight, but could assign you to a family and an ancestor; even though the fields were fertile and most people “got along” one way or another and had for centuries, we were not the happy people of Brutopia.  Not even our quaint customs, such as making the roads tapestries of flowers for Easter, or having processions at night, which you watched from your window, or singing traditional songs at wine pressing, could make us like angels or automatons.

Rumor was rife in the village as in the science fiction community.  It should be.  Both are the province of women.  Not that men didn’t gossip/egg women on in the village, as they do in the science fiction community, but the men stupid enough to be seen doing it openly had a special name attached to them “Tricoteiros.”  It was not a complementary name.  And most men really didn’t get involved.  They merely went along with what their wives decided and decreed.  People who imagine women powerless in true patriarchal societies are out of their minds.  Once the “court of public opinion” which is largely female, makes a decision, men risk falling victim to it, should they not conform to its dictates.

And this is why I loathe and despise rumor, and will stand up for a victim of it, no matter how little I like him or her: or indeed how little I know him or her.  I will stand up for the victim, because rumor is a ridiculous way of ascertaining if someone should be “a part of society” (remember the charming moppets who said someone should be “cast out of society” for saying bad things) or if someone should have a job or if someone should be allowed to live somewhere in peace.

Because the one thing rumor is not concerned with is truth or true guilt, or even gradations of guilt.  Yes, perhaps everything rumor says is true.  Heaven knows it’s been known to happen, which is when people say “no smoke without fire” but they ignore all the times their stories and whispers were ALL wrong.

For instance, before I got married to Dan everyone knew (based on TRUST me little more than a resemblance in coloring) he was a baker from a neighboring village, whom I’d met in Italy.  What was true to this tissue?  Well, I was getting married and the year before, I was in Germany.  (I’m still confused as to how Italy got attached to it.)  Which was okay because I had no reputation to speak of.  The life I lived in gossip was far more interesting than my real life.  Having grown up as the “little sister” of my brother’s group of friends, they (and I) never paid any attention to the fact I was now past puberty.  This meant if they saw me trudging towards the train and they happened to be driving, they’d pick me up and take me where I was supposed to go (mostly college or home) and if they were at a coffee shop and I walked by, they’d call me to sit and grab a coffee and a pastry (which they paid for, as older siblings will.  Since my brother is around ten years older than I, most of them had jobs while I was in high school.)  BUT the gossips knew I was having affairs will all of them (what a busy critter I must have been, what with carrying a heavier-than-full-load of courses and tutoring on the side, all this while having boyfriends/fiances.  So when I got married, of course the best I could do was the baker from the nearby, poorer village.  (Rolls eyes.)  Which fortunately Dan couldn’t care less about, since when I told him the rumors he went off in whoops of laughter at the idea that his geeky, introverted fiance could ever be the village hussy.

But yeah, there was truth there at the root of it, since I had traveled a lot.  I had boyfriends/fiances, and I spent a lot of time with my brother’s friends.  None of which justified the tissue of lies attached to it.  And of course I could never justify/explain/tell them they were out of their rocking minds, because this was never said to my face, but was passed around the village in whispers, growing in the telling.  (They usually came back to me via cleaning ladies, or the cleaning ladies of friends.  Or grandma, when the rumors came to her attention and she dressed someone one down and told them they were out of their rocking minds.)

Take, for instance, the last time I went to Portugal and my mom was full of news that a gentleman in the village — one with four children, who had been married 30 years — was gay.  I was rather taken aback and asked how she knew this.  In this day and age, I’d expect something like “left his wife for his boyfriend” or, at the very least, “set his boyfriend up in a pink apartment with shag carpeting.”  The second of which, btw, could still be just rumor.  But no.  As I dug through to figure out where gossip started, the ENTIRE base of the rumor seemed to be “He bought cologne at the village pharmacy.”

Here you see, local prejudice, that is that real men don’t wear cologne, though teen boys might, plus rumor inflating into this man’s having a secret life/sexuality.  Now, while I don’t — unlike village biddies — think being gay equals moral turpitude, what this man was being accused of was not only being unfaithful to his wife, but being an awful father, who would subject his children to the type of opprobrium the village would rain on them, should this become known.

Is it possible the man is bi?  I don’t know.  I think I knew him growing up, but after the age of about 12 I spent most of my time in the city and in school, and at any rate, I have a LOUSY memory for faces. I remember the people who were close to my family and constants in my life, but the far reaches of the village scene never interested me enough to remember names and faces.  So the man might have lisped, dressed in pink with flounces, and fulfilled every stereotype of gay.  I don’t KNOW.  What I know is that the only thing solid they had to indicate he was gay (despite marriage and children, and yes, I’m aware gay men have married and had families, but in this day and age most don’t bother) is that he had bought cologne in the village pharmacy.  (Which is more like a drugstore.) Now on the basis of that, he, his children and his wife were looked at askance, and if his job had depended on the village biddies (it might.  I vaguely remember he was some sort of a tradesman) he would slowly lose his livelihood.  All without having the slightest clue why.

I pointed out to my mom that my dad wore cologne (old spice — still wears it.  So does younger son) his whole life, even if he had the good sense of not buying it in the village.  Did I convince her?  I doubt it.  You see, all her friends KNEW he was gay, and they knew his mannerisms, which they only now noticed, meant he was gay, and hadn’t he always dressed way too carefully?  And now they thought about it, his wife was ugly and had been an old maid when they married, so he must have wanted her as a beard.

Mom is not stupid.  But when her whole circle is saying something “there is no smoke without fire.” Which is how people are “judged” in the “court of public opinion” from which there is no appeal, and where they never even get to confront their opponents.

Now if you cross that “court of public opinion” with the SJW’s Will To Power and desire to declare what is good and sound, and the “cause of the week” that must be supported and the “offenders of the month” who must be shunned, what you get is the nightmarish situation we have in SF/F.

I won’t say that rumor in sf/f is a thing of the current idiotic left.  It has always been that way.  If you add up every professional who has ever sold enough to qualify as such — one novel or three short stories — you only have a few hundred people.  Even if you add in the people who qualify as pros under indie rules, you’re probably under five thousand.  Which is why the community of writers has always behaved like a village.  Rumors go around, whispered, hinted.  “So and so said this about you.”  “So and so is not a nice person.”  “So and so welshed on a promise” and “So and so is the wrong political color, don’t be seen with him/her.”

Like in the village, you’d find a desert around you, and you’d have no idea why.

In that sense, it is better now, with the internet. Because we can at least know what we’re accused of, and as hard as it is to combat, at least we’re somewhat aware.

Take the case of Sunil Patel.  Yep, he’s a puppy kicker.  Nope, I pretty much don’t agree with much of what he has said, and if I look closely, I might not agree with any of it, including “a” and “the.”

However, should he be losing work and a place in an anthology on the basis of rumors?  At the time the “scandal” broke some friends dug through it, and there seemed to be nothing in it except he “encouraged some female writers but couldn’t come through with contracts or career advancement.”  There was no hint that he had ever used promises of advancement for sex.  And the “gaslighting” seemed to be limited to “he told me I was good and should continue working.”

As with village rumors, I haven’t looked closely at it, but if my friends who in general don’t like the guy couldn’t find anything more substantial, that is probably all there is.  He “bought scent at the pharmacy, so we know” is what it amounts to, but with a feminist mean-girl spin.  And on such things a man is to be shunned and deprived of work.

And yep, he apologized, obsessively, if slightly confusedly, because he had no idea exactly what he was apologizing for.

The whole thing reminded me of the comment by Synova, some years back, about the Requires Hate situation,

“Some of the comments by people who had been subject to the full treatment just made me want to cry. I didn’t think it was funny because the guilty parties and enablers aren’t the ones who are hurt. Yes, we can scoff at Scalzi when he makes a rational counter-argument and is made, ultimately, to retract and abase himself and agree in public and start proselytizing in public that no… you really can’t trust your own brain and if something seems wrong to you or you feel like defending yourself it is simply proof that you’re guilty.

Just the Sunday Vignettes, Ma’am- by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli

As most of you know I’m buried under a book deadline, and having  asthma attacks that pretty much knock me flat.

I know why and they’re tied to anxiety about family members, some of them health related.  But that doesn’t diminish the stress.

And yet there are golden moments.

What are golden moments?  When you get older, and have lived enough, you find most of your memories slide into this kind of haze “this type of day” is much like another type of day.  Unless you’re ten (and even then) if I ask you what you did on Thursday last week, you’re likely to get a blank.

Golden moments are the times you remember, the ones that stand out.  They’re not always what you’d expect, and they’re often not something that would work for anyone else.

My most obvious one, that comes to mind before even receiving the Prometheus, is the day we discovered Lakeside amusement park.  For those not in the area, it’s a seedy amusement park.  Some days, if they dropped a bomb in that killed all those who spoke Spanish as a primary language, only my family would be left alive.

But it’s perfect for us, because I hate most rides.  (Inner ear is wonky.  Being spun or shaken makes me deeply uncomfortable.  I don’t pay to be uncomfortable.)  We often had a coupon to get in free, the kids and Dan would get all day passes to the rides (the last time we went some years ago it was $15, but when we started going I think it was $7) And I got $2 worth of tickets to the merry go round and the train, which we did at the end of the day.

That first time we discovered the park — because I watched a documentary on the wooden roller coaster — it was all magical.  it was a perfect day, just warm enough.  The boys were five and two.  They’d never been to an amusement park.  We stayed there till ten pm and then had late dinner. I’ll always remember that day, and the way the kids laughed (they still had baby-laugh.)

Another is when I was very depressed and Dan told me to get my coat, and we drove (then an hour and a half) for a walk in City Park.  It was unexpected, it was fun, it was very romantic.

The other was this week, when Dan said “Are you making a great deal of headway?”

I said, no.  He said “Come on.”  So we went out in his convertible (older than the boys, I think.)  And we went out for a walk by the lake and a light dinner (appetizers and salad. ) The sun was up, the day was warm, and I was with my love.  That too is a golden moment.

Today is a rather difficult day, as I had an asthma attack this morning, and I’m trying to clean and work at the same time, which is like juggling chainsaws.  But we had a nice leisurely brunch together, and well… it might still turn out to be a golden moment.

This last week made me all too aware that not only time passes, but that we never know how much we have.  I don’t know if there’s eternity, but I have a gut feeling there is.  Surely the golden moments go with us.

Go make your own.

Be Careful What You Ask For – E. Marshall Hoyt

This is a post about grass and fences.

Yes.  I live in Denver.  I’ll let you get it out of your system now.  Yes, yes, grass, ahahahahaha.  We’ve sure never heard that one before.  (Has anyone seen my eyes?  I think they rolled under the sofa.  Someone find them before Havey-cat does.)  All I will say on that part of “grass” is that driving for two years after legalization was h*ll on Earth, with idiots not realizing that counted as impaired.  Seems to be smoothing out to normal Denver rate of casual vehicular homicide now, so I think that dime has dropped.

Now to be serious a while, let’s talk of envy.  It is almost St. Patrick’s day, and that particular form of green DOES pinch.  It pinches mostly those who sport it.  It can kill friendships (or in extreme cases prevent their ever forming.)  And it can destroy those who hold onto it.

Years ago, in one of our most uncertain (financially, emotionally, etc) times, we dropped by to talk to a friend, whom, we thought, should know something of strategies to move us past the issues we had at the time.  Or at least, we thought, he’d have some idea where to  look for jobs, some clue where to look for loans or contract work so as to make mortgage payments.  He is, after all, older than we are, and has always been more affluent.

What we found was something quite different.  We couldn’t get this gentleman, who really does have our best interests at heart to UNDERSTAND we were in real trouble.  What we got was chuckles at our “pretend” distress and reassurances that “you’ll come out all right. You always do.  You’re the luckiest people I know.”

Now from the inside, having lived our lives together for the last 32 years or so, I don’t … see it.  Lucky is not the way I describe it.  Yes, by and large we are all right on the other side, but sometimes I think I should have “nothing is ever easy or simple” engraved in my forehead, mirror image, so I can read it every morning.

More times than I can say, Dan and I have found that our sure bets turned to dust in our hands.  (In fact, if we make the prudent decision, it always seems to turn out very badly.)  More times than I can even remember, our *sses were only saved from absolute ruin and losing everything we have managed to get by a wild throw, a last save, a chance in a million, and one that required us, incidentally, to work like mad people, or to sacrifice things we really loved or wanted.

At least once we went massively into debt and sold a house at cost, and moved across the country with nothing, because the culmination of something we had worked towards for 6 years — #1 son’s birth — went disastrously wrong, at the worst possible time, (we were on COBRA) and put us in debt for 1/3 of our mortgage at that time. (It also, incidentally, looking at the post-surgery images from 2015, rendered me unable to have more children.  So we’re not sure where younger son came from, or how he managed to be carried to term.  Count that as one genuine miracle, and a stunning stroke of luck.)

Even now, when we’re secure-ish, we’re gambling on at least four wild routes for my career (which require an amazing amount of work, yes) and my husband’s job as been fleeting in and out of some kind of limbo.  (Though it should resolve soon, and positively.  we hope.)

To look at our wild, careening race, with marginal help only (my parents.  We couldn’t have survived without it, but we also can never count on it.  Mostly it has been good to get the kids things we could never afford, like cars to drive themselves to college.  It would have been interesting to share one car) to know every time we hung suspended by our bleeding fingernails above the precipice, and to hear it described as “you will come out all right.  You’re the luckiest people I know” was a stunning shock.  But, not for the first time, but the clearest time, it showed me something: no one knows how hard someone has it.  NO ONE, except that person.

Apparently, from the outside, we’re the golden couple, moving in an eternal summer, effortlessly plucking up golden plums as we go.

I’m not even sure how we give that impression.  It must be that not seeing all the scrabbling and the endless hours of work behind the scenes, people think things fall into our lap?  Because we’re achieving more than they expect or anyone, it must be luck?

And then I looked at my acquaintance with new eyes: did I really know how well or badly those people who seemed incredibly fortunate were doing? Did I understand how hard they worked?  Had I a clue?

The answer is most certainly “no.”  The view we have of each other, from the outside, particularly if we aren’t close to that person, is a sort of “Christmas newsletter” view.  “oh, look, achievement, achievement, fortunate event.”  But you don’t see the stumbles, the falls, the years spent not sleeping as you worry how a chance might come out, the years of work till all hours, to make the chance come.

A study done a few years back identified the ONLY thing that men who got a lot of dates had in common: they asked out a lot of women.  How many is a lot?  A lot.  Like ten times more than the ones that said yes.  While men who didn’t date, or barely dated, might ask once a decade and get a yes every two times, the guys who asked constantly got hundreds upon hundreds of rejections… and a steady stream of acceptances.

I know back in pre-history, when the only form of publication was traditional, and when I and my writers’ group had decided that we must first break in to short stories markets, I probably sold more short stories than anyone in the group.  I did it by writing more and sending out more and getting FAR MORE rejections than anyone else I knew.  My first sold short story had garnered EIGHTY rejections in four years, by the time I sold it.  I had gathered another 100 or so for other work.  For years after that, I got 100 rejections by the end of March like clockwork.  And kept going.  My worst day was when all sixty some pieces of work I had out came back rejected THE SAME DAY.  It would still have been survivable, if I hadn’t managed to have a bad cold and another infection at the same time.  As it was, it took me to the doctor.  On my birthday.  BUT I survived, and I’m here.  I now sell, not counting indie, about 90% of everything I write.  Which seems very fortunate, but believe me, for a while there, I was the writer of NO future.  And yep, as the acceptances (back then I averaged around 10 a year) started coming in, people said how “lucky” I was.

Now, I’m not bragging about how tough I have it. My acquaintance is now wide enough and deep enough, that I look at about 1/3 of my friends, and know what they’re going through, what they’ve gone through for years, and think “Wow.  I don’t know how I’d even survive that, without coming unglued.”

We ARE lucky.  Sure, we struggle, pretty much ALL the time.  I worry for the boys every waking minute.  Sometimes in my sleep too.

But we’re very happy too.  I was lucky in one of the most important things one can be lucky in: I picked the right partner.  No, it was not careful reasoning.  No one can know each other well enough to know how the years will change them.  We were lucky.  We grew together.  It could easily have gone the other way.

But other than that wild stroke of luck, and having two sons whose company we enjoy — and those strokes of luck are probably the biggest anyone can get — no, nothing is ever easy or simple.  Often, particularly with my career, my saying goes that I have no more heart, and so I must forge my guts into a new heart.  I must make my will power stand for the enthusiasm and love that has gotten worn away.  And I do.  Somehow.

The important thing here is that we appear as a golden couple FROM THE OUTSIDE.  From the inside, it’s an endless slog, and other people appear TO US as golden, as having an easy path through life.  But I bet they don’t.

Leftists intuit this, only they intuit it in their own grubby way which forever mistrusts individuals not supervised by government.  Their fiction reflects this.  It turns “no one is that lucky” into “no one is clean.”  Unable to understand that there might be difficulties in every life, but that the people enduring them and struggling through them might very well still be capable and pure of heart and hard working, they instead turn everything behind the facade into dross and horror.  Every minister is a child abuser or a womanizer.  Every successful businessman is crooked.  Every woman is unfaithful.  Every child is a drug user and promiscuous.

It’s like they looked over the fence at the green grass and, unable to bear their own envy, decided to pretend/believe it was all poison ivy, as far as the eye can see.

Sigh.  It’s a way to cope with envy.  It’s not a good way.

You see, the danger of imagining everyone else has it easy and a wonderful life, and a charmed ride to the top, is that it blights YOU.  You then, instead of trying, sit there and scream at the gods, at fate, at everything, because where IS your charmed ride? Where is your magic carpet?  Why do you have to crawl along the rock-strewn road, while others glide effortlessly over it?

Imagining that someone else really doesn’t have it, or that he only got it through horrible means helps soothe the envy.  But it’s still dysfunctional.  You give yourself permission to act out, to be as horrible as possible, because after all EVERYONE is horrible, they’re just hypocrites who project this beautiful image.  And then you write grey goo fiction and the only sin you’ll recognize is hypocrisy.  Which fortunately you’re immune from, since you surrendered all your principles because “no one has any.”  So you’re as nasty as you wanna be… and destroy yourself as surely as if you sit there raging at fate.  More surely, maybe.  There’s nothing left to love, dream of or hope for. You might as well have sold your soul, because you’re gonna lose it anyway.

We’re humans.  Sure, none of us is perfect.  The best people I know have flaws.  They’re aware of them, they compensate for them.  I do not know any — not even among people I despise — scoundrels as perfect as the “nobody is clean” people imagine.

I also do not know anyone who is flawlessly lucky and golden.  Sure, some people are luckier than others. And some have connections and nepotism can never be eliminated.  in any society.

But in the end — in the very end — most of us get what we work for, and persist through as much as we can endure.

It is important to remember that because envy is a disabling sin.  It disables YOU.  It colors all your relationships. It colors your view of the world.  It can get you to stop even trying to get anywhere, and when you get somewhere, it can turn everything you’ve achieved into dust and dross, because someone has more.

Does someone have more?  Guaranteed someone does. There are six billion of us.  Some have a lot. Do some people have an easier ride than others?  Assuredly.  Some people are very fortunate.  And yet, I bet if you were in their shoes, you’d find they pinch, too, and that they too have challenges and things they cannot reach.  What about people who REALLY achieve?  Are they all corrupt?  Do they all “sell out” to achieve?  No, they are not all corrupt.  Some people hold on to very high principles, even while succeeding.  As for “selling out” it depends on what you mean.  You buy success with time and effort, and those come at a price.  You might ruin your health, you might lose your kids early development, you might even ruin your marriage, to achieve something.

It all gets back to the price of magic.  Success, like magic, has a price.  What are you willing to pay?

And only you can answer that: what do you have? What do you bring? what are you willing to pay for what?

I discovered, for instance, that while I could make a lot of money flipping houses (seriously, it’s the only thing I have a talent for) I didn’t want to do it.  Nothing about the work made my heart sing.  And if I did it it would take ALL my time, at the expense of what I DID want which was to write books people read.  That was my decision.  So all those times we’re incredibly tight?  The price I pay for a career in writing.

You pays your money, you places you bet.

EVERYONE does.  Envy of someone who risked more to collect more is not only misplaced.  it will eat you alive.

So send the green eyed monster to the right about.  Yes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.  It’s an illusion of refraction and distance.

In fact, everyone’s grass is as green as the owner is willing to pay for: in time, in money, in effort, in the sweat of his brow.

Wasting time with envy only makes your life needlessly hard and blights your existence.

You want it?  Great.  No one is going to hand it to you.  What are you willing to PAY?

Situational Ethics, a Guest Post by Caitlin I. Woods

Is it wrong to steal if it’s to feed your starving family?

No, no, wait—I mean, what if you *really really* needed the food, and you had no alternative way to get it, and you had a huge extended family that was going to die, *literally die* if you didn’t procure food for them *right now*. And you live in a hideous dystopic world where the powers that be are intentionally starving everyone, and the only people who have food are the ones that are actively starving

everyone else, and…

Stop. Just stop.

Yes, I’m sure it’s possible to posit a world where the only reasonable alternative to death is theft, and even a world where any moral person would cheer the decision. You win. I will completely and totally agree that it is theoretically possible to come up with the circumstance.

So. Freaking. What.

I think the best comparison is really something like… I don’t know, gravity. The effects of gravity vary wildly depending on where in the universe you’re observing it. In a black hole, it is an astoundingly inescapable force that even light is powerless against. On Deimos, a human could, unassisted, attain escape velocity.

For pretty much all practical purposes, though? Gravity is 32ft/s^2, and anyone who needs to deal with it being different than that will certainly know it well enough in advance to be able to make the proper allowances.

In the same vein, while it’s possible to come up with a circumstance in which it isn’t wrong to steal… it’s not here, it’s not now, and it’s a circumstance none of us are likely to come across. Ever. Let me put it this way: While we can have an argument about whether it is more moral to steal than to allow someone under your care to die of starvation, there are *so many millions of options to take* before that’s even remotely an issue that I’m astounded at the sheer fatuousness it requires to come up with the circumstance.

But it’s not fatuousness. Not really.

It’s an inherent, knowing attempt to destroy the entire idea of things being always right or wrong *at all*.

Think about it. Let’s just go and assume it’s all right to steal so long as you’re trying to feed your starving family, take it as a premise, as obvious as water being wet or fire burning.

Well, that means that stealing *isn’t wrong*, per se. Not for the fact that it involves taking something that isn’t yours. It’s just wrong if you do it for the wrong *reasons*. It takes the question of morality from the *act*—and, perhaps even more importantly, from the *victim*—and onto whether you had a really good reason to do it.

This itself is pretty horrifying. I mean, let’s say you and your family are escaping from some sort of murderous chainsaw clown. Is it okay to push a bystander in front of him in order to distract him long enough to get away? If we think about it in this way, there’s no question. You do what you have to in order to save your family. The

victim… well, is the victim really important, anyway?

But it gets even worse when you think just another step further.

Because if right and wrong is just a matter of circumstance, who is it that gets to decide the circumstances?

Circumstances are a slippery beast. You can’t codify them in advance; there’s just too many of them, and there’s a real impulse to make every different detail you can into a question. (This is one of the reasons that common law gets so confusing so quickly.) The only way to *really* gauge if something is a circumstantial right or a

circumstantial wrong… is to appoint a judge.

A judge, see, who can see past the bourgeois concepts of things being right or wrong in and of themselves, and able to see instead the entirety of the circumstance behind them. The petty puffery behind an act of charity, say, or the true helplessness behind an act of theft.

No more condemning people for something that isn’t *really* wrong, not given the circumstances.

Wouldn’t that be *great*?

(And again, pretty much anyone in any of the countries with commenters on this blog have about a zillion options to turn to before they’d really be reduced to theft or starvation. Seriously, we are in an era of plenty *undreamed of* in any past age, where  he only real way to starve people *at all* is to actively prevent them from getting any of the food that charitable souls are trying to send their way. We might as well talk about whether it’s right to sacrifice a virgin in order to prevent the

village from being torched by a dragon.)

So sure. I can see a world and a circumstance and a time and a family where it wouldn’t be wrong to steal.

But it’s sure as hell a lot harder to come up with than the situation where puffed up jackasses try to eliminate the idea of right and wrong in order to consolidate power into their own greedy little hands.

Go live in that world if you care to. If you can find it. But leave *my* world alone, before you destroy everything good about it.

Because believe me—the concept of objective wrong is not the only thing you’ll be losing.

It seems to me that this is my week for apologies.  I apologize.  I have guest posts working, but I was so tired, yesterday, that I couldn’t find it in me to schedule (or read even) them.  And this morning, when the place opened, I had an MRI.

Complicating things, I slept very badly.  Partly the two deaths, partly other people’s issues which I, like an idiot, tend to take on my shoulders, partly the book which I’m still fighting (mostly because I keep having headache-clusters and I’ve been in the middle of the auto-immune attack of the year, I think, with asthma and arthritis particularly bad.)   To make matters worse, Havey-cat decided it was a great time to demand pets every ten minutes, and when he failed to get them, run around the room batting things to the floor.  Since half the room is my “art studio” this woke me up, but unfortunately never enough to kick him out and close the door.

So today I’m at least two of the seven dwarfs, plus an alternate one: Sleepy, Dopey and Wheezy.

Which is probably why I’m attempting to do a post I had in mind for a long time, except perhaps with a different slant.

I first thought of the concept of “bare branches” when reading about Chinese families where the son couldn’t afford to marry.  The family line ends.  The branch is bare.

Most of us, on this blog, are bare branches.  Okay, I might just feel like it, but it would not shock me overmuch if neither of the boys marry/have kids.  It seems to be a thing for Odds.  It’s also a thing of our times.  I’m not sure EXACTLY what other long range goals modern feminism will have accomplished, but crashing human population in the lands it infects seems to be very effective.

My grandmother, younger than my mom is now, had something like 12 grandchildren and five great grandchildren.  My mom has four grandsons and no great grandchildren.  In fact in the whole extended family, including in it my cousin Natalia, who was raised with us, there is ONE child in the generation after my boys: a two year old born to a father who turns forty this year.  So, there is a very good chance that if I have grand kids I’ll never see them.  And it’s equally likely I’ll never have them, too.

So — bare branches.

Part of the reason for so many bare branches, particularly among the highly educated is the postponing of marriage and children till after education.  Part of the reason of bare branches among the Odds is that even in the age of the internet, there are so few of us we have trouble meeting/mating.  (Particularly those of us who are not on the left.  I swear we should start Almacks at Liberty Con.) Also, we have, as Kate put it in one of her con books “bodies as strange as our minds” and I suspect, though I have no proof, that infertility is higher in our ranks.  Though, frankly, just marrying late will do it.  And then there are any number of us who — most of us being cuckoo eggs and hurt by our upbringing, not because our parents were bad, but because we were odd — simply don’t think we’re fit to be parents.  And hell, we might even be right, though it could be argued nobody is fit.  But we are perhaps more conscious of it.

It’s entirely possible that the odd branches have been bare throughout history, that the people who communicated and lived for the mind were mostly childless, and left no descendants.  Certainly most of the great names of the past were either childless or (Shakespeare, for ex) grandchildless.

It’s possible the Odd world passes every generation, and every generation new Odds step up.  Leo Frankowski in one of his books thought that the church led to a massive decrease in IQ from the middle ages, by siphoning off the smarter boys into celibacy.  But I’m not sure that’s how that works.  I suspect a lot of the people went into monasteries or convents because they were Odd and having trouble mating (imagine pre-internet.)  And I’m fairly sure that’s not how intelligence works, or whatever you want to call the way our brains work sideways and upside down.  I imagine a number of us are thrown off every generation.  And the operative might be “thrown off.”  Evolution has a way of cutting off extremes.  And older son tells me the type of “extremely connected” brain we seem to have comes with issues like sensory and emotional issues.  Also other issues run in the same pack, like extreme auto-immune.

Some days I look around at my friends and colleagues and feel as though I’m living in a lost world, one that will leave no genetic trace in the future.

I kept meaning to write about it, and getting too depressed and not doing it.

Which brings me to yesterday.  Yesterday a first cousin once removed (I think.  My mom’s first cousin, and raised with her) died.

She wasn’t around much, when I was little, because she and her husband lived and worked MOSTLY abroad.  I think it was something like: South Africa, Rhodesia, France, Belgium.  They retired and moved to Portugal about the time I was born.

But without being around much, they were still two of my favorite people.  She, because she REALLY liked children, and he because he was… well… Odd.  There were other reasons, too.  They never had children.  She wanted them.  He didn’t (his upbringing having mangled him.)  But they tried.  It just never happened.

In a way they were a strange marriage, for the time and place I grew up in.  Most people were married FOR the children, or at least acted like it, in the village.  It was strange to see a middle aged childless couple, much less one that obviously enjoyed each other’s company.  And he WAS Odd.  Quick-witted and with killer snark.  I remember being three or four and trying to imitate him as he did yoga. He stopped and rather solemnly taught me how to do it.  Which is part of why I liked him.  He never treated kids like kids, but like serious little adults.  And his wife was just … a mother thing, always trying to console and help.

It will tell you how much I liked them that I don’t remember a single gift they brought me.  Because their visits were their own reward.  (I’m sure they brought me gifts.  you bring gifts for the children in the family.  It’s a Portuguese thing.  I just don’t remember any.)

He died somewhere between ten and fifteen years ago.  No, I don’t remember, for two reasons: the first is that he had a stroke, and stopped functioning at grown up level somewhere around 20 years ago.  The other is that I only go to Portugal once every few years, and the visits run together in my mind.

She died yesterday.  It was a great sadness, because she had become my parents’ main companion to go out to dinner, or have a picnic, or even just hang out and talk to my parents.

I first knew she had died, because my nephew, Jorge Ferreira de Almeida, (a poet of some renown himself) posted a poem on Facebook, which weirdly brought about that idea of “bare branches.” I thought the poem was his, until now, in fact, when I realize it’s a quote.  Cynthia Bagley very kindly has translated it.  I’ll reproduce it below.

“Cedo ou tarde

Devias saber

Sorry this is so late.  Had news of the death of a relative.  No one close in blood, but someone who was very much a positive presence in my childhood.  So I took a little while to be … cogent.

I was talking to one of you on AIM and I said my family is half crazy and half stubborn and that all the best people are crazy.

And it occurred to me you need a good bit of crazy to get anything done.

When I was very little — oh, four to ten or so — I loved Enid Blyton’s books of adventures. In them kids went camping on their own, solved mysteries (usually, this being WWII era) espionage or smuggling or the like and had adventures.  For a while, I had “clubs” like her “Seven club” and such, but though the other members wanted to plan expeditions and camping trips, I was held back by knowing it was impossible.

You see, English culture between the wars might have allowed boys and the girls with them to go camp somewhere relatively safe, but Portugal in the sixties wouldn’t allow any kids to go camping on their own, without vigilant adults.  Different culture.  (I suspect it still wouldn’t, not unless one of the kids were legally an adult.  And even then…)  Particularly not girls.  So while my friends indulged in those dreams, I knew it was impossible.

It is somewhat of a mystery whether I thought it was also impossible that I’d grow up to live in Denver and be a writer.  I suspect I did, but it was a nice dream, and one I often resorted to.  From the window of my 9th grade classroom, (it was an attic of a five story building on a hill) I could see the road that (then) led to the airport, and I spent many a dull class day dreaming about going to the airport, taking a plane to Denver.  I suspect that dream was cherished BECAUSE it was “impossible.”  I didn’t have to worry about “with what money” or where to live when I got there, and I never even though I’d be leaving all my friends behind.  In the daydreams one or two of my childhood friends came with me, and we set up house and met nice men.

But these were dreams and it was impossible.

I can honestly say the day I went crazy was NOT because of that daydream.  For one, I had no clue what the poster was actually about (I often wonder if that ineffective advertisement was the MOST effective.)

It was a weird concatenation of circumstances, in that after 9th grade we no longer had gym classes, and I missed playing badminton.  So a few friends and I, after finals, arranged to have the gym, and to get together for a friendly game of badminton doubles, after which we were to go to a coffee shop for tea.  (So many days have dropped into the soup of the indistinct past, but that one is clear as a bell.)  It was a good game, we showered and changed in the gym showers, and then, as we were headed out the door, my friends decided they needed to use the bathroom.

This was an exit of the school we NEVER used and we only used it because it was the day after end of classes and only the front door and that exit were open — and that one was closest to the gym.

So they went to the bathroom and I was left loitering in the hallway.  I suspect the bathroom was a makeup emergency, because they took forever.  (At sixteen I only wore makeup on weekends, so it didn’t matter to me.)

The hallway had an enclosed-in-glass bulletin board, and I read all the stuff on it, because it was printed.  In those barbaric days, before a kindle was always at hand, I didn’t have anything with me that I could read (this itself was strange, as I usually had a science fiction paperback in pocket or purse.)  I no longer remember the other announcements.  Probably lost and found and the gym schedule for the summer (If you were a student, you could reserve it and come back to do stuff in the gym)  But a full quarter of it was taken up by a poster, with a picture of a girl emerging from a suitcase.  It said “Come out of your shell” and had a number to call.

I called because I didn’t know it was impossible.  Had it said “Call this number to become an exchange student” I’d have known it was impossible.  My parents would never let me.  We didn’t have the money. It would mess up my normal education flow.  I had no business doing it.  It was impossible.

But I didn’t know what it was for, and curiosity took me to a phone booth where I called the number and asked what it was.  They told me, I thanked them and was about to hang up.  They said “Can we send you an application?” and it seemed impolite to refuse.  So I gave a friend’s address, so my parents wouldn’t freak.

And then because the paper said only one in ten people were selected, and I knew the chance was remote, I applied.  I finally told my parents before the final family-interview, before they sent my paperwork abroad, to find a host family.

Even though it was “impossible” for various reasons, I ended up being placed with a family in the US.  My future husband lived down the road.  (Though it took us four years to get it through both our hard heads that we liked each other.  We were young and stupid.)

Four years later, when I moved here, and we tried to decide what I should do for a living, I tried all the sane things first.  I wasn’t markedly successful at any of them.  Translating (particularly multilingual scientific translation) IS well paid, but I hated it.  It is also a job that takes time to build a clientele in.  I was halfway through doing that when we moved to Colorado (that itself the result of my husband saying “you wanted to live in Denver, right? We haven’t done too well here; I shall apply in Denver” and us moving across the country, to a place we’d never been and where we knew no one.) I lost my few clients.  In those days translating was often intensely local.

When we got here, Dan said I could rebuild my clientele, or I could try pursuing my dream of becoming a novelist.  By then I’d written a few books, sent out a few submissions, and I KNEW it was impossible.  I mean, it was pretty difficult when you were native born and writing in one of the more popular genres.  I think the ration of first-novelist to accepted/published was something like one in a hundred thousand.  But for SF/F it was closer to a million.  And to “author who makes a living” it was even more difficult.  And then add in that English was my second language.  It was crazy.  Insane.

But I was home with a little kid, anyway, and I REALLY hated translation.  And, hey, I could always go back to translating in a few years.  It’s not like I could get less successful than I was at that moment.

So I tried.  took me five years of concerted effort to start publishing short stories, seven to novels.  And then my career crashed after nine eleven (Ill Met by Moonlight, my first-published (though Darkship Thieves was written three years earlier) book came out the month after 9/11.  It crashed so badly)) it was impossible to get back in.  But I’m really bad at giving up. Once I knew it was POSSIBLE I was going to keep beating at that door.  (That’s the second half of the family character; the stubborn.)  And things picked up.  And most years I even make a living at it.  Of course it’s impossible I’ll ever become a bestseller…  but it doesn’t mean I ain’t trying.

I’m using my history because other people’s I know is not mine to tell, but almost all my closest friends have something like this.  They’ve done the statistically impossible.  Heck, even my kids, once or twice.

I’m afraid I’ve got in the habit of disregarding “that’s impossible” which, yes, I know is crazy, but if I weren’t a little bit crazy, I’d never get anything done.  And I’m afraid I’m very stubborn, so any setbacks just make me try harder.

Is it worth it?

Who knows?  In the long scheme of things my books are probably forgettable and to be forgotten but I AM living in Denver, and I am a writer.

Whatever your crazy dream, you can do it.  The only thing that can stop you is an unwonted bout of sanity.  Don’t let it. I have the greatest faith in all of you.

Illegitimi non carborandum.