Sorry this is so late.  Part of the issue is that windows`10 continues its reign of derp on my computer.  Among other things, it’s decided it’s a great idea to not run JASC paintshop 9, which is what I use to make covers.

Yeah, I know it’s an old and obsolete program, but it does exactly what I want it to without dropping me in the claws of Adobe.  Yeah, yeah.  You’re going to suggest GIMP.  Would you believe GIMP is not intuitive?  And that I’ve not had the time to conquer the learning curve? While I’m completely proficient with JASC from using it for years for other stuff, like posters and thank you cards?

So, Dan installed the Anniversary Upgrade (WTF?  Why are they doing… never mind.)  And it completely did away with Pidgin.  I mean, did away with it to the point of not showing it under installed programs, even though I’ve been using it for two months.  And then when I find it in downloads, as Pidgin.exe it tells me it can’t install because it can’t remove old program.

This is not a big deal, as I re-installed AIM.  It’s only a big deal as it clearly went trumping through my file system doing crazy sh*t without any warning it was going to do it.  And definitely sh*t I didn’t want it doing.

Same applies to “easy access” supposedly programs I use most, which showed Skype (never use on this computer, which has a sound issue) and Corel Word Perfect which I not only haven’t used in 7 years, but am FAIRLY SURE I have uninstalled (or only severely crippled to bring up files word can’t handle.)

Yes, I am in a state of high rant, and about ready to uninstall 10 with a sledge hammer, except I love my husband, and he’s a tech-head and wants me to continue trying it.  (Even though he promised me he’d reverse it if I hated it.  Hey, Dan, I hate it. And no, it’s not just new-program annoyance.  It’s changing files it didn’t ask to change.)

I’m not a ludite.  I was very excited when my computer was upgraded and I could use my computer with an internal drive.  Or when I could make files big enough that I didn’t have to save each chapter separately.  I love my spell checker.  I’ have an unrequited love affair with filter forge.

What I don’t like, what drives me nuts, is of another order.

The best way to explain this is to tell a story: when I was a young newly wed, I made our bread by hand.  Part of this is that I was used to freshly made bread every day (what we’d call artisan bread, I suppose) and wonder bread tasted like slightly less appealing pillow stuffing.  Part was that we had a warehouse membership and I could buy 50 lbs of flour for pennies on the pound.

So a part of my morning was kneading the bread.  Problem was two small children, and wanting to speed up process.  I told Dan I wanted a kitchen aid mixer, the almost top of the line, so it could do the kneading. It was, of course, beyond our reach.

When Christmas came around and his parents asked what I wanted, he mentioned mixer.

They sent me a bread machine.  (This was early days of bread machines.  They later became FAR more flexible, and when I could eat carbs, I owned two I used every day to keep family in fresh (small loaf) bread.)

Early bread machines were DUMB and designed for dumb.  They had a set program (which btw, wasn’t very good high altitude, and involved buying special bread mixes, which we really couldn’t afford) and if you wanted to do anything else, too bad.  Sweet bread?  Never mind.  Challa?  You’ve got to be kidding.  And what do you mean you want it to knead dough for pretzels?

To me this was far worse than not having the mixer.  It was something that forced me to do things ITS way and expected me to be grateful for it.  Fortunately it dove off the counter in a poltergeist incident (I’m actually not joking.  I didn’t do it.  I was across the room.  It wasn’t dancing on counter.  It was unplugged.  We were eating dinner, and suddenly it jumped up, pirouetted mid air, and dove to floor. No, I don’t have an explanation.  Do you?) Five years later I bought a mixer.

More and more, with computer upgrades, particularly windows 10 (8 I got around by refusing to use the computer on which it was) I feel like I’ve been given a brand new bread machine.

From the things it keeps pushing as very important, I gather that Microsoft thinks I want a gaming, tv/movie/music system.  I DO.  I have one of those.  DOWNSTAIRS.  This is my work computer.  I want it to work with the things I use every day to do my job.  It’s not a complex job.  I use email, word processing, chrome (which I also hate, but not as much as all others) to do this and facebook, Jasc paintshop, filter forge, and oh, yeah, a chat program to ask for help/run something by friends who are closest thing to a work group I have.

Windows 7 did that fine.  I don’t object to Windows 10 having a new look.  I find that annoying, mostly because I didn’t choose it, but I’d get used to it.

The thing is that other than new look and my stuff stopping working I have yet to find something it does differently/better than windows 7.  I mean, just ONE thing.  ONE.  So far nothing.  It’s like “but you have cortana, and you can ask it questions.”  Uh, okay, but I can navigate file system by hand without that.  And I DO know how to use a browser’s search engine.  Or “you have all these gaming things right here”  “don’t game.”

It’s like those birthday gifts you get that you look at and go “Why on Earth did you think I wanted THIS?”

What worries me about all this — besides my being in a state of high snit at the computer right now — is that it seems to be the way things are going.

I’ve talked here before about how I think new technology frees us from the tyranny of mass everything, and gives options to the INDIVIDUAL.

At the same time there seems to be a reaction from not just our politicians but from our tech companies, and yeah, our book companies, too.  And that is to create something standard for the “standard voter/user/reader” and then demand you fit their parameters, instead of their fitting what you want and need. This is the result of MBA programs (and others) that treat people as “classes” and “widgets.”  This thought was outmoded in the 20th century, but to an extent the technology demanded it.  There was only so much we could do, and it worked better if done en masse.

Those days are gone, but the thinking remains, and the thinking is trying to force the tech back into forms the intelligentsia are comfortable with.

I don’t think it will work.  As I said, it’s a reaction by people who are afraid of freedom: for themselves and more importantly for others.  I think in the end, like the bread machines, they’ll have to give us more options.

I just wonder what it will take to get there.

 

Work from the inside out, AKA Everything is local. – Free Range Oyster

The first thing to note is that no one is without influence, and those who have very little have either never tried to extend it or have never been taught how. Consider this a crash course for the front line grunt in the culture war. Please note, you’ll never get any of these perfectly, and you shouldn’t try to polish all the edges before moving outward, just make sure you have a solid foothold. Metaphors may blend during shipment.

Start with yourself. Know what your principles are, and why. Be able to express them, in written or verbal form (preferably both). You don’t have to be a great rhetorician, but being able to explain yourself clearly and concisely is invaluable. As a side bonus, it’s handy for everything else. Get familiar with history, with basic political philosophy, with common issues and general facts. You don’t have to be a wonk, just be conversant with the basics. If you’re religiously inclined (or even if you’re not), be sure to spend some time with holy writ, both reading and pondering. Above all, work on living your principles. Don’t make a show of it, just do it.

Now reach out a little. This can be a challenge for introverts and the socially unskilled, but not as much as you might think. Strengthen the connections you have first. Do you have family you’re on good terms with? Close friends? When was the last time you talked to them or spent time with them? There’s a great deal that has been said and written on interpersonal relations, so I won’t reproduce it all here. Just build trust and camaraderie with people as you’re able. Discretely and politely share your values with those around you. Set an example, encourage them, help them in ways that will make them more independent. For fundamentals I’d recommend How to Win Friends and Influence People and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People; they’re both excellent, and my efforts in life have been much more successful as I’ve followed them. They may come across as cliched, but it’s the same way Casablanca is cliched.

Then the trickier part: how about neighbors? How many do you know, and how well do you know them? Get to know the people in your area. Online communities are wonderful – this one in particular has gotten me through some brutally difficult times – but they have their limits. As much as I love Hoyt’s Huns, when I need to strip a roof or haul a truckload of rubbish or build a fence, it’s my neighbors I turn to. Not every person is worth building a relationship with, but you never know until you meet them. The good ones you can move into that first circle around you, and share with and influence them. The others do your best to be on polite terms with; you never know when or how simple politeness will pay off.

If you’re a creative type, make things that reflect your values. Our Beloved Hostess has written a great deal on this over the years, so I’ll just summarize: Put quality first. Don’t preach. Don’t give in to what someone else tells you to create. Keep making. Keep improving.

There are other opportunities in the creative sphere besides making things yourself. Patronize creators whose art you appreciate (this applies to craftsmen and other skilled workers too) and spread the word to others you know. Don’t be afraid to share things you’re excited about. Request good books at your local library, or donate them there if you can. If you are an attendee at conventions, consider getting involved or at least offering suggestions for material to cover or guests to invite. Do you go to museums or concerts? Find out if there’s a way to give input on what they’re showing. Heck, put together a concert or dinner or art show: it’s not easy, but it’s not as hard as you might imagine. One of my brothers planned, prepared, rehearsed, advertised, and directed a performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue while still in high school. A church group I knew in California put together a show of local visual artists together with a concert of fabulous classical instrumentalists and vocalists on a shoestring budget.

Whatever your profession, trade, calling, or job, do it well. If you’re not employed and want to be, then finding a job is your full time job. Whatever you have to do, work hard at it. I cannot say enough of how important example is. People you work for will see it, people you work with will see it, people who work for you will see it, people you want to work for will see it, and you may plant a seed there. Again, this will serve you well regardless of culture wars.

Organizations are next. There are various opportunities online – open source projects, special interest forums – but most have a geographical component. At the local level is where everything starts. Professional and networking groups, religious organizations, conventions, HOAs, town councils, school boards, fraternal orders, band boosters, writers’ groups, sewing circles, guilds and trade groups, makerspaces, clubs of all kinds… get involved in what interests or affects you. Some of those get into politics, which I’ve largely tried to avoid here, but the same processes and principles apply there. Know who your local political and governmental people are, your mayor, city councilcritter, state legislator, party rep, precinct captain, etc. Get to know them; make sure they know you. Bring those people and those organizations into your circle of influence. Look for opportunities to advance those principles you identified at the beginning, even if just a little. Maybe especially if it’s just a little.

It took the progressives, communists, fascists, social justice whiners, and other authoritarians generations of this kind of effort to put us where we are today. It will take a long time – years at least – to put it right, but every step we move forward, every haven we build makes our lives a little easier. Don’t give up. Keep pushing.

I woke up with the cry of an eagle, circling in the crisp mountain air, and thought of early fall, of Thanksgiving.  And turned in bed, reaching for my kindle.

I’m reading All The Colors of the Darkness, by Lloyd Biggle Jr (thank you to the book brigade for recommending it, as in the bad old days when finding an out of print paper book took years and a lot of money, I’d only located two of his: The Still Small Voice of Trumpets — one of the best space operas ever written, and also a metaphor for what is going on in publishing right now — and World Menders, which I didn’t particularly care for.)

Right there, a page or two in, in what was if I judge right a pulpish solid mid list book, someone prods a loose board on the floor, and it gives “into Stygian darkness.”  (And apparently I dreamed this.  Post charging the kindle I realized it said subterranean blackness.  I have no explanation for this, except that I might have been in the wrong leg of the pants of time.  OTOH the fact such language was believable for that type of novel at that time, makes my point stand.)

I’m very aware of the level of language I use for writing, because I started out with that too erudite, faintly bookish undertone of everyone who first learned English in a classroom, then practiced it by reading mostly very old books.  (Look, the prices hadn’t been updated, and they didn’t have the ridiculous “culture preserving” tax.  They were forgotten, in a sort of little loft in the bookstore.  I spent happy hours there, selecting from Austen, Shakespeare, and Sir Walter Scott and a lot of now-forgotten Victorian novelists.)

One thing that has always puzzled me — though I get it less now, after years of working to stop it — is when I get otherwise cultured people telling me that my stories send them to the dictionary.

And then I stopped looking at that word “Stygian.”  Understand, Lloyd Biggle Jr. was in no way trying for literary stylings.  He’s setting up the situation for his characters and being very cadgey about it, and I get a workman sense from it.  (It’s good to read a competent craftsman.)  I don’t get a sense of “impress them with my vocabulary.”

I know what Stygian means of course. I cut my teeth on Greek-Roman myth.  Stygian darkness gave me the feel of a long way underground, in the land of the dead, of a river running through total darkness.  There is a feeling of no return and despair, attaching to that word.

And yet, if I were writing the story today, I’d have cut it on second language pass and replaced it with “cold darkness”or “echoing darkness.”  Why?  Because unless you’re aiming at a “literary fiction reading” public, you don’t want to stop the reader and make him go to the dictionary.  The problem is not only that he might not come back.  The problem is that you’ve popped him out of the story.  Instead of worrying about why these men are doing these things in an abandoned warehouse, he’ll be tracing through references to the river Styx.

The reason Lloyd Biggle Jr. used Stygian, probably unthinkingly, and didn’t cut it on second pass is that back when he wrote All The Colors of The Darkness, the word wouldn’t be unknown to most readers, raised as he had been on classical myth and references.  And because it’s so perfect, freighted with all sorts of meaning in a compact space.

But Latin is no longer routinely taught, not even in our colleges (Trust me, I’ve been looking for a class and gave up.  There are two in the region, but their hours are absurd. Though Great courses now has Latin 101 which I bought just at the beginning of the Great Move and haven’t opened yet.  It’s by my desk right now, and once I’m unpacked — looks like a week or so more — and have time after work, will start on it.)  I was the first in my family to not get it as a matter of course in High School.  Even in Latin countries, it is considered “outmoded” and who reads all those classical works with their references to Latin myth?  Or the Latin myth itself?

So what is wrong with abandoning Latin and Greek, and yes, the study of the Bible too (which CAN be done in a non-religious way.  It remains the basis for most of our culture’s patrimony.)?

A lot.  Part of it is that it separates us from the resonances and lessons of our own civilizational past.  It’s easy to convince people that women have been oppressed by men for six thousand years, due to some giant conspiracy of penis-bearing people, or that war would end if we all just decided it, or even if one side surrenders preemptively (with no bad consequences for the surrendering side.)  These absurdities would be exploded by even a brief dip into the past of our species, by reading the books written a hundred or two hundred years ago.

But the problem is that our children, hell, our middle aged people, no longer can do that.  Minor stumbling blocks like “stygian” send them careening into the recent, “approved” books, into the movies that give tendentious (always left) views of the past, into the pap that has been created on purpose to feed them.  And then they believe absurdities, and don’t realize their bright new ideas have long ago been punished by the gods of the copybook headings, which never sleep.

That is one part of the problem. It’s been a trick of conquerors throughout history.

If you want to control a great civilization, first you have to make it forget that it was once great.  As I said, I have been reading about the Muslim conquest of Europe, and one of the things they did was erase the past: they destroyed all large structures, used the elements to make their own structures (usually with captive design and labor) and then told the new generations that all the glories were Arab and their ancestors had been brutish barbarians.  (Worked too.  Recently read some historian lamenting the Brutish Spaniards taking over and living in the splendors of the Alhambra, not realizing it was built from elements stolen from earlier Visigoth buildings.)

The other problem is that you rob the future artists — writers, poets — of material that could connect their work to their ancestral civilization and make them resonate, enriched, into the future.  Even if you know “Stygian” you can’t use “Stygian” because your audience doesn’t know it, and you’re writing for beer and skittles.

So people no longer get what used to be true “literary” resonance, the mark of a work that is supposed to last more than in the moment, more than for passing entertainment.  (Well, most didn’t, but that was the aim.)  Part of the reason Shakespeare has lasted and projected is that it is full of such resonance some of which we don’t even get anymore.

Instead the intelligentsia has come up with their own “marks of literary” which mostly amount to “making sure you know I’ve gone to college.”  But the problem is that, unlike the older such marks, they don’t give a work deeper resonance.  What colleges are full of now is flawed, just-so Marxist-Leninist tales, and “more exploited than thou” contests.  Neither of which does anything but rip at the culture that originated them.  And neither of which lends a literary work more than a vague, sermonizing tone that makes one want to sleep.

Future historians, looking at before and after works will think that we were invaded and the ruins of our culture salted.  They wouldn’t be wrong.  To prevent our venturing back, even those of us who are willing to read the past, our invaders are gleefully “salting” the ground with “racist, sexist, homophobe” for any work even fifty years old.

Bah.

What they don’t get is that these things have a way of not working in the long run.  Humans live not of bread alone, much less of Marx alone.  And their supposed iron-civilization-that-will-last-forever is a brittle shell built by drooling idiots.  They can rob us of our past, but they can’t give us anything in its place.  And eventually humanity will come back, digging through the cultural ruins, as it always does, for anything useful.

Our work is neither glamorous nor exciting.  We are like Walter Miller Jr’s smugglers, in A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Only what we’re doing is not burying the literal books, because well, no one has thought to burn them, they made them inaccessible in other ways.  Our work — if you should choose to accept it — is to take those tales, those echoing glories of western thought, and bury it in our work.  We can’t simply use Stygian as a throw away work, but we can write the Styx in allegory or in fantasy and use the word there, and open the door a little for past works and new minds.

It’s a lot of work.  It will take a lot of us a lot of time.  What? You thought rebuilding civilization would be easy?

Take up the keyboard and write.  We are all smugglers.

 

 

 

So I shared this on Facebook.  I’m not saying I agree with it 100%. Given that “Russian businessmen” is code for “Russian Mob” and that Putin is their man, you could say Trump is as compromised as Hillary.

That said, if Trump is as compromised as Hillary, BAH.  On that point, as my mom would say “may the devil come and choose.” AKA, there is no difference.

You know my opinions, and I also know those of the three gentlemen in the video.  They might be reluctant “will vote for Trump to avoid Hillary,” but they’re not in any way shape or form unthinking Trump supporters.  They’re not unthinking anything, to be fair.  So I thought their opinions warranted listening to.

And then one of my commenters on the thread, explained to me that he wasn’t going to listen to the gentlemen because of their skin color and gender.  To be fair what he said was “Like I’m going to listen to white males, LOL.”

Mark that LOL, it is sort of a signpost.

My first reaction was “WTF?” This too is a sign post.  I have WTF wrinkles on my forehead from trying to understand the crazy things people will say in politics.  I mean, what the heck did Trump’s possible involvement with Russia have to do with gender or skin color?

If the video were about Hillary, a stupid person might think the only reason to oppose her was sexism, in which case I could see “they’re male” at least making sideways sense.  For a very dim person that is. One who really believes all the hot air that emanates from the Clinton camp re: Clinton foundation monies, Benghazi, compromising national security, etc.  I understand there are such people and have seen them (in a kind of awe, as one watches the naked mole rats, at the zoo) on Facebook.

But this had NOTHING whatsoever to do with male/female issues.

If  the video had been about Black Lives Matter, again, I could see someone saying “they should at least have a black person for perspective about what it is like to be black in America.”  (To which my answer is, “have a black person from Arab countries, for real perspective.” Never mind.)

But this was a discussion of a white male candidate, by white males, about possible involvement with evil white (and mostly male) powers.

Even if you’re a dim person who thinks that people think with their sex organs and skin, (the right name for that is sexist and racist) SURELY this would be the equivalent of having an all-black panel discussing Black Lives Matter.  Right?

I’m me, and I’ve been in a semi-pissy mood. Well, not quite.  The head cold was followed by the mother of all depressions, so that yesterday I had trouble talking myself into drinking coffee and writing was out of the question.  If you saw my deadlines, you’d know how antsy I’m getting.  So I pointed out the above, that if he believed that then he really was a stone cold racist and sexist.

What emerged was this crazy comment about how he was sure the three gentlemen had all pledged different fraternities and belonged to different country clubs.

I don’t know the background of the commenter, but I understand he’s fairly well off.  So this is a “let them eat cake” moment.  I know the backgrounds of the three men in the video and none of them pledged a fraternity and if one belongs to a country club it’s not what this commenter imagines.

What I mean to say is that what he said is as nakedly stereotyping and idiotic as saying “I bet all them darkies were sitting on their porch, eating watermelon and singing spirituals.” (And the closest I know to that would be older son, who would totally do this, if he weren’t low carb.  Seriously.  None of my black friends can sing.  Well, maybe one.  I’ve never asked him.  Didn’t come up.)

NO ONE.  NO ONE who lives in the real world can believe this bullshit.  Most of my friends are white (Duh.  It is still the majority in the US.)  Mind you, most of them could probably claim another race, if they looked into it.  But they’re white-looking.  (I haven’t looked at their census forms, and we Americans are a mixed lot.)

I have not one white male friend who fits that stereotype the commenter invoked. Hell, I don’t have a MALE friend that fits that stereotype.  Not one.  This is possibly because, as Dave Freer calls it, most of my friends are strivers.    They are from that vast American middle class that seems undifferentiated only if you don’t want to differentiate it.  Because of my age, most of them are children of what Heinlein called “the neglected children of WWII”.  Most of them are also the result of the sexual revolution, the upheavals in society in the sixties, the e-revolution, the turning away from mass manufacture in this country.

What I mean to say is that I am racking my brain and I can’t think of a single friend who grew up without at least one of these handicaps: single parent; borderline poverty or extended periods of poverty; unemployment of one or both parents; a serious health/addiction/etc issue in the household.  I don’t have any friend who attended college (about half my friends) who didn’t have issues THERE, often graduating in debt and by the skin of his teeth.

I don’t think my friends are that strange for the majority of Americans of any color in the last 40 years.  Maybe they’re Odd, but in this, from overheard conversations and my contact with the “normal world” (I wear gloves) I think they’re dead center normal.

Then there’s my generation.  We graduated in 1980 when there were no jobs.  I had more friends working temp jobs than finding “real ones.” Then things stabilized till the early 2000s when…  Let’s say I know one man who works in computers and has been continuously employed since 2001.  My husband.  All the rest are working for six months, laid off six months…

And while computers (which seems to occupy most of my generation) is traditionally unstable, the other occupations don’t seem to be beds of roses. MOST of my friends go through cyclic periods of unemployment.  This is what happens in the middle of technology upheavals.

Note I didn’t say my white friends.  This happens to ALL my friends.

Unless my commenter on facebook is of a rarely privileged breed, surely the same happens to HIS friends. So why would he think that white males have no history, that they’re all alike, having pledged fraternities and joined country clubs?  How can any human being, alive in the 21st century think that?

They can’t.  Which is why I told you to notice that “LOL”.

None of the people who harp on “white privilege” or talk about “diversity” when they mean diversity of external characteristics CAN follow their own reasoning down the rabbit hole.

Even a moderately intelligent person, with more than room temperature IQ would get that if you think putting someone of a different color/genitalia on a panel makes it more valid, you must assume everyone of the same color/genitalia thinks and works exactly the same.  In which case you have to admit you’re sexist and racist.  The worst kind, the kind who dehumanizes the “other.”

But what the commenter was doing was not thinking.

When I was very little I would pray a lot.  It wasn’t real prayer.  It was just a repetition of familiar words/rhythms to stop anxiety.  On occasion I also counted, or recited Shakespeare.  You see, I hated meeting new people or being in unfamiliar circumstances. This calmed me down and stopped me thinking whether people liked me, whether I’d done something wrong, wether–

This is all these “comments” are.  The commenter is stopping himself thinking.  The “LOL” is not an infallible clue but it’s close to it.  Whenever you hear a liberal shibboleth thrown in at random, it is almost always followed by “LOL” which is even more out of place, and definitely a mark of “I’m saying this to stop the bad thoughts, bad thoughts, bad thoughts.”

Now what in particular about the above video caused such a strong reaction, I don’t know.  If I had to guess I’d imagine that the commenter is so annoyed at Hillary as a candidate that he can’t allow himself to even hear something mildly non accusatory about Trump, without doing his own private exorcism.

Me?  I don’t care.  I don’t have a dog in this presidential race.  A pox on both their houses, etc.  BUT even I can see that yeah, on some fronts, if only because he’s not used to the GOVERNMENTAL kind of power Trump might be the least of two evils.  (Then there’s his unfathomablity.  That’s a discussion for another time, and one I don’t intend to have.)

The point is that normal, functional adults discuss things and are willing to take things into account and maybe even change their opinions somewhat.

Children, the indoctrinated and our so called intelligentsia, OTOH, cannot afford to think.  Thinking would reveal all the cracks in their self-contradictory philosophy

So they just scream things about race and gender and LOL.

Not realizing that here on the streets we are every day less and less amused at being told to eat cake.

Blame this on the head cold I’m almost over (truly) and the mild fever that accompanied it.  Blame it on the change of weather, that had me getting up in the middle of the night to close windows that had, sudden and inexplicably, become openings to the arctic.

Blame it on my dad giving me all the books of legends of the region that he could gather on short notice.  Yes, I also got books on the history of the City of Porto and surroundings, but when it comes to Fantasy it is easiest to dip into the legends.  And these legends are full of changing times and changing circumstances, of the tumultuous succession of Romans and Swabians, Moors and Christian crusaders, absolutist and parliamentary monarchists, republicans, French invaders and British liberators.

Most of the legends are just that, legends, though I suspect a lot of what the guys writing these books ignored is that that type of popular memory might be wrong in the particulars (So it wasn’t that particular Caliph, but something happened here, perhaps a hundred years before or since.  I know from my own experience it’s very easy to confuse stories your grandmother told you for things that happened in her life time and that you find, once you look into it, had to have happened in the time of her grandmother’s grandmother, and which she told me as had been told to her.  — Confusing how many grandmothers ago is particularly easy since her introduction was always “My grandmother told me that once upon a time, this street–“) but is often right in the details, particularly when various local legends chain on each other to form a coherent whole.  (A Moorish defeat in one place, leading to a Moorish route passing through the next village, leading to–)

Anyway, legends seem to cluster around times of great change, times in which lots of things were happening, times of turmoil and movement.  As did, I’ll admit, my grandmother’s stories.  Humans seem to have an innate predilection for stories in which stuff happens.  (I know.  It’s astounding, right?  It’s almost like there’s a difference between stories and sermons.)

My favorite — I’ve been crashing early, but having trouble sleeping, so chain-reading these little one to two page stories, until I physically can’t hold the book up — was the story of Wellington taking the city of Porto and eating the lunch originally cooked for Soult.  While Soult wasn’t waiting around to eat it, and had prepared to leave the city in the morning, it is easy to believe the servants of the house he was occupying went around preparing lunch, as they would have done, anyway.  And of course Wellington would have eaten it, and probably toasted his victory, as befits the gallant spirit of the age where being seen to do something with flare was even better than “just” doing it.

Then this morning, I woke up and caught up with Mad Genius Club, where Dave Freer has written a post about the changing state of our field. (Last Monday.) Changing Spots.

In it he notes many things I have myself realized, including that it’s d*mn hard to plan for the future in this time of turmoil we’re entering.

And it’s not just in publishing, of course.  If it were just in publishing it would be easy.  One could after all fall back on the rest of the “stable world.”

It’s not just in publishing.

It’s everywhere we look, and part of this is that we’re in the middle of one of those macro conceptual changes the human race goes through now and then.  You know, nomadic to agriculture, agriculture to cottage industry trade/cottage industry-trade to industrial/ industrial to mass production/mass production to personal-individual-small scale.

All of those are accompanied by equivalent turmoil: political, scientific (as the conceptual change spreads), territorial.

All of them.

So, things to remember:

-It is only beginning.  Someone on Facebook said we’re living through the period of history summarized under “causes leading to” before the map gets all arrowy and scary.  And they’re not wrong.  What I have a feeling though, is that we’re living through “Factors contributing to” the “causes leading to.”
Things are still working themselves out, and the economic fall out of what seemed like the relatively simple innovation of instant communication around the world and portability of data hasn’t fully worked itself through yet.  When will it work itself through?  When you see land in “states with no jobs” pick up on sales.  You’ll know we’re halfway through the transformation when pay scales start to balance between KS and NYC. (Not quite.  Very large cities will always have a pull of their own.  It’s the mid range cities that will balance and empty. But you know what I mean.)  You’ll now we’re almost done when telecommuting is the ASSUMPTION for any job that can be done this way.  I don’t expect it in my lifetime.

-The very beginning is enough for craziness and dislocation, war and rumors of war.  Trust me.  So, we’re living through that.

-The Future won’t look anything like those people who think history comes with an arrow think it will look.  It also won’t look like the dreams of those who wish to hurtle back intot he beginning of the 20th century.  (No, seriously.  They’re the romantics of the present day, wearing their retro chic opinions like people who built “ruins” on their estates.)  It’s an hysterical reaction of scared children in either case.

-It is entirely possible that the future won’t look like anything any of us CAN conceptualize.  Start working through the consequences of a truly decentralized, not-space-attached workforce.  Real estate? Dating? Family structure? Education?  If you really think it through it will make your head spin, particularly as you get into the consequences of the consequences.

So, what to do?  Try not to get too excited.  Stay flexible.  Be able and ready to jump.  Don’t try to define the present based on the past: it’s likely not to work too well.

In practical terms: take care of yourself.  Make connections. Teach your children well.  Don’t let yourself be gaslighted. Learn.  The more options you have the better.  And stay awake. Falling asleep is to fall behind and lose touch with what’s happening.

Most of all don’t give up.  There is a good chance the future will be better than the past (though some disgusting interludes do occur.) and if we don’t live to see it, other humans will.

May you thrive in interesting times.

 

Yesterday I was talking to a friend about a project where it all is going wrong.  Look, guys, when you’re brought in to finish a project that has had at least two other teams on it, and which isn’t in any way started, you really shouldn’t be surprised when it is a cluster… bunny.

But my friend was.  Being an hyper-competent and hyper-responsible person, he was blaming himself.  I had to point out that sometimes I think half of the work done in the world is done between incompetence and accidental f*ck up, and we should be grateful when ANYTHING gets done, no matter how picayune.

Part of this is that humans seem to come mostly in two flavors, neither of which is “reasonable.”  You have the ones who blame themselves for everything and the ones who admit responsibility for nothing.  Neither is perfect to work with, as the ones who self-blame heap more and more responsibility onto themselves, and in the end either crack, become unable to focus, or end up carrying the work that other people won’t do, and thereby getting other people used to doing less and less work.

Then there is sheer chance.  It’s not that I decided to take a break from work the last four years, really, it’s that first I was very ill and then I was moving.  I imagine I’ve been no end of fun to work with for this time, as things seem to drop off my head as though it had sieve-like holes.

Yeah, sure, sometimes chance works the other way, and everything aligns perfectly.  Then we call it luck, and it’s much rarer.

One of those instances of luck seems to have been “the miracle at Philladelphia” and we’ve been dealing with chance ever since, and has Murphy been having fun.

All this is relevant, as most people who hang here, if I read them right, are the type to self blame.  So I’m going to say it once and for all “this horrible election season is not your fault.”

Sure there are things you could have/should have/might have done, including (as I remind myself) being a lot ruder to liberals in the eighties, and not letting them control public spaces.  However, remember back down the “shut down” techniques were still very effective, their controlling most of the media, and at least in some fields, it would have ended your ability to support yourself.

But most of what you could’a, should’a, might’a done is marginal and around the edges and probably wouldn’t have changed anything but your personal life.  The leftist dominance we’re fighting started long before we — any of us — were born.  Even in the US it started at least 100 years ago.

Seen another way, it is a new battle in an eternal war, that war for individual will and dignity against the forces of the “lords” (aristos, government, etc) who would make us all widgets and control us, the better to impose their vision (or simply to enjoy power over us.)

Old wars are not won quickly, or really ever truly won.  Yeah, this battle, this year is going very badly, but there are signs of hope.  Keep fighting and we’ll enjoy dominance, for a while.  But never relax, because liberty is antithetical to the social ape, and in the end half the people at least will try to crawl back under the boot of the oppressor.

But you can always fight.  And no one can make you give up.

Don’t give up.

• Under the clurterf*ck, mostly caused by chance, you know that Through Fire was one of those, with its release delayed twice, and then e-stealth released before being released in paper.  I’m sure this will do wonders for those numbers in computers, in bookstores.
  Remember if you’d pre-ordered before the delays, it won’t be shipped to you and you have to re-buy.  This is the end of the extremely awkward promo.  Buy if you can, and re-order if you pre-ordered early.
  

 

 

1- The most effective way to kill a baby is to leave the window near his crib open at night.  He’ll be stiff and dead by morning.  (Sorry Robert and Marsh.  I keel you a lot.)

2- If you work too hard you’ll get a “drained brain.”

This will cause you to sing New York New York at your important meeting, then pass out.

3- You can kill any number of people on your way to success, and no one will notice, not even enough to have rumors about you.

4- Memory loss is WAY common.  I mean, you walk out your door and forget your name every other morning.

5- While suffering from memory loss you’ll fall in love with someone you hate.  EVERY TIME.  Preferably someone you hate who is married to one of your best friends.

6- The best way to avenge yourself on someone for anything ranging from trivial to heinous, is to create a really complicated plan that will eventually bring about their downfall.  Or yours.  Or… nothing, really.  But you have to try it.  Holy Plot Dictates so.

7- If a priest shows up in any role but villain, you’re watching a Portuguese soap opera.

8- Priests, Doctors, lawyers, anyone in an advisory capacity will come to your house to discuss your current problem, even if objectively he/she can do nothing about it.

9- Your priest will come to your house and tell you to be strong when you’re attracted to someone-not-your-husband.  It’s amazing they have time to do anything else, including breathing.

10- the most menial occupations pay enough for palatial digs.  This is shared with American sitcoms, I guess.

• Sorry to fob you off with a quick post.  Third supplemental son (we had him by adoption), practice daughter in law and grandkids have just left, and I’m still having trouble breathing.  Older son has suggested we go to the zoo and take a slow walk,to stop me opening dusty boxes and worsening my cold.

The head cold I’ve been fending off since we landed caught up with me.  Since we still have older, adopted son and wife and grandkids here, I spent my energy on being sociable.

Sorry.  Post tomorrow.

WHAT ROUGH PROMO, ITS TIME COME AROUND AT LAST by Free Range Oyster

Alma Boykin

Ivan the Purrable and the Twelfth Dancing Princess

An Alexi’s Tale Novella

In Russian tales, the third son is the clever one, the hard-working one, the one who gets the victory, the girl, and usually a kingdom. And then there’s Steve…

Stavros George doesn’t believe in Baba Yaga or Chernobog. Steve believes in structural engineering, materials science, and that people need to tip their pizza delivery guys more. Too bad for Steve that Baba Yaga and Koschai the Deathless believe in him.

It will take all three of Alexi’s children’s bravery, strength, and wits, and Ivan the Purrable, to get out of this mess. And Steve had better hope his siblings reach him before Ivan does. Because there’s no tuna in Chernobog’s realm and Ivan’s seriously ticked.

J.M. Ney-Grimm

Perilous Chance

If only Mama were well. If only Papa were… not like this.

Clary needs a miracle, but wonders rarely step forth to solve life’s problems. While her mama lies wearily abed and her papa spends the day… elsewhere, Clary struggles to look after her younger sister and their baby brother. And longs for more than making do. If only.

Then, one spring morning, Clary and Elspeth visit the old bramble-grown quarry to pick wild cabbage leaves. Hidden within the rock’s cleft, Clary’s miracle awaits. But this miracle sports razor-sharp talons, world-shaking power, ravenous hunger, and a troll-witch to guard its sleep. When it cracks the egg, will Clary survive?

Something wondrous this way comes!

Michael A. Hooten

We Are All Enlisted

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

Cedar Sanderson

Jade Star

Tanager Book 1

Jade is determined to die. She is old, and useless, when she points her tiny subspace craft at the cold stars. She wakes up in the care of others who refuse to grant her death, and instead give her a new mission in life.

Jade isn’t happy, and she only gets angrier when she learns that her mysterious new home hides a horrible secret. It’s time for this old lady to kick butt and take names. Aliens, death, destruction… nothing trumps the fierce old woman who is protecting her family.

I don’t remember how or when my brother taught me the saying “distance and death dress everyone in his best smile.”  I know that I’ve known it, seemingly all my life.

As you guys know I’ve been reading about Islam.  I’ve also been meditating on the glamour that Europe has always exerted over a certain number of Americans, a glamour all out of proportion to what it actually is and how people actually live there.  And of course on many people’s (particularly leftists’) view of cultures that are completely different from ours, like China, or even Islam, as being inherently superior, BECAUSE they’re different.

The funny thing about that sort of effect is that it rarely holds up on close acquaintance.

Send an Europhile to Europe for two or three weeks, and they’ll come back raving about the wonders and beauties of the old country.  Send them for three months, and they’ll come back complaining about such things as restricted access to electricity, inability to turn on a hotel’s air-conditioning if you don’t have the key in the right slot (that’s right, so that you can’t cool the room while you’re absent) and all sorts of “the elites know best” measures that in general make life in Europe less comfortable, less easy, and more fraught. Mind you, this might, or might not, make him recant his previous expressions of love for Europe and disdain for the US.  Most people hate saying they were wrong, so instead they’ll come back talking about the good (or at least unverifiable) points of Europe, while admitting they have “some issues.”  But they will never again say they want to live there, and they might find good reasons not to have another extended visit.

And then there’s the view from the other side.  We never get dressed in our best smile.  Partly because the US is never fully absent.  Our specific cultural gravity makes a hole in the consciousness of everyone in the world.

But because of the gushing and crazy of our europhiles, genuine Europeans believe, quite logically, that they have it way better.  This is fostered by their kleptocratic elites who don’t want them throwing off socialist-fostered death panels and therefore convince them of nonsense such that poor people die in the streets here.  But wait, there’s more: because they know us only through our movies, which tend to ignore the stable and boring parts of the country, and through our europhile media, they genuinely believe that everyone here gets raped and mugged once a week.  And then there’s funnier stuff: they actually do believe we have only one type of cheese, that there’s no access to say specialized books, that all Americans are semi-literate (yes, I know, but by that standard so are Europeans) and that oh… we live under a military dictatorship with curfew (I kid you not) or — my favorite — that pokeyman Go was banned in the first week, because it was causing deaths (wait, what?)

Other things they believe include that our media is controlled and that if you say anything bad about the US (other than the patently truthful, like people dying in the street, natch) the government will put you in some sort of Bastille.

I’d find all this funny if it weren’t in fact tragic.

The assumption of superiority from Europe only reinforces the star-struck on our side, leading them to wish to live in that paradise they hear described as so wonderful.

Mind you, there are (several) worse places to live than Europe.  And it is probably my tendency not to LISTEN well that causes me to want to say “you and whose army” when I see them controlling energy consumption, fat intake, salt, etc.  (Yeah, I know, NYC — rolls eyes) because the elites CLEARLY know better than the people.

They have a patrimony we just lack, a lot of beautiful old things, from architecture to various art artifacts.  Mind you, those are things from their ancestors, and when they were produced new were derided by the truly cognoscenti, just like our stuff is.  The entire Romantic movement was designed to sneer at modernity of their time, which to us right now seems quite romantic itself.

Also Art in Europe seems to amount to a large tizzy-fit throwing, something along the lines of “we’re surrounded by such beautiful stuff we can’t match it, so let us, instead, make simplistic crude things that tweak the tradition.”  Like our own intellectuals they seem unable to understand that those who would get upset at crassness or rudeness died about a century ago, and that the current intellectual establishment in Europe is exactly people like them, striking a pose and doing their best to speak power to truth, while acting daring.

That’s fine.  They’re not the first or the last wave of cultural decadence to sweep the continent and there’s a good chance that they’ll recover.  Eventually.

But there is a difference between countries run for the comfort and convenience of the elites and countries run for the comfort and convenience of the buying public.  It means that the buying public has more choice and more ability to decide what they want to spend their geld on in the second, which leads to a life that’s more comfortable, more innovative, and overall just NICER in the day to day sense than what obtains in countries run by “those who know best” for “your own good.”

Yeah, I know, I am an ugly American, willing to trade massive Cathedrals (Hey, that’s why Himself in His infinite wisdom gave us Google Earth and 3-d tours on the computer) beautiful palaces and rare objects d’art (not to mention exquisite little bistros) for a store that’s open 24/7, so I can shop whenever, and which has a greater selection of left hand screwdrivers than I could buy in a month of Sundays.

But in the end, when you want that left hand screw driver, or breakfast at three in the morning, it is more comfortable to know you can get it.  Sure, you could go look at a Botticelli in the day, but how will that fix your unscrewed toilet seat?

And I have enough Roman ancestry never to have understood why we can’t have both: art, and comfort, style and commerce.  Doesn’t one feed the other?

The dichotomy between the two is something that can only be maintained at a distance, by people who have never experienced Europe (if they’re Americans) or America (if they’re Europeans.)

Yeah, distance doesn’t dress us in our best smile, but I don’t care.  I’ll take the joys and little conveniences of life here, and be grateful everyday.  L’amour de l’art can wait.