Goodbye 2025

May you be the worst year of our future lives.

As I predicted back in January, this year was not terrible for me personally. It's amazing how difference having enough money makes. We own like 26% of a house, we have a reliable car, we can buy whatever we want to eat and if our shoes wear out we can buy new shoes and if we're sick or injured or need new glasses, we can just see a doctor or even go to the hospital without facing financial ruin.

On the other hand: Dr Skull's health has been bad (though he's doing much better now and seems to be heading for total wellness).

On the other hand: Thanks to trans people being the new favorite scapegoat of MAGA and the GOP, my kid and his husband are losing rights one after the next. They have an escape plan, if necessary, but they really want to stay here in Fayetteville if they can. Our governor and our senators and our federal government are doing their best to make that impossible. 

(Side note: I can't believe people are still buying the "ooo those immigrants are destroying the country / ooo those trans people are destroying the country" con-job, but from what I have seen on "conservative" blogs and sites, they either actually are, or are pretending to be, buying it.)

On the other hand: Trump's circus of a government seems bent on destroying any progress the country made toward fixing global climate change.

On the other hand: GOP state governments seem determined to destroy the American education system. Ignorant people make good conservatives, after all.

On the other hand: GOP state governments and the federal government alike are stripping as many rights as they can from American citizens, including the right of due process and the right to control our own bodies, with more scheduled to be removed soon if they hold power.

On the other hand: Trump's circus of a government and the rest of the GOP are grifting every nickel they can to bribe billionaires and give tax breaks to the 1% and leave the rest of the country sick and poor and desperate. And the cost of living continues to increase.

Right now we seem on track to take back the government in 2026. May things get better after that. Please.  

Still Cold

It was nineteen degrees here when I took the dog to the dog park at dawn. There were ducks on the duck pond and the dog, despite the literally freezing temperature leapt into the pond after them. (They flapped away honking in a very satisfactory manner.)

Brrr!

Yesterday the temperature dropped from 72 degrees at 10:00 a.m. to 29 degrees at six p.m. This morning when I took the dog for his walk it was 16 degrees.

Brr!

It's so cold the dog doesn't even want to sit on the back deck and guard the yard, which is his usual occupation at this time of day.

White Men Are Being Excluded from Publishing O No

This is suddenly a new talking point on the MAGA Right:

 

The premise is that all of a sudden white men cannot get publishing contracts. All the books being published are by trans people, or brown people, or gay people or, you know, girls.

Is this true? (Spoiler: No.)

(It's interesting, also, that they don't count gay men as men. Or brown men as men. Only cisgendered white guys are actual men in this view of the world.)

The author of this opinion piece tries hard to make it seem true by setting her terms very carefully: white men who were born after 1984 (Why 1984? You got me). Her "evidence" is other opinion pieces which make exactly the same argument. She also notes that people's lists of favorite books have fewer white men on them than previously.

(Since I follow several threads about books on Reddit, where very nearly no one except white men ever gets recommended, I suspect she is setting her terms carefully here as well.)

Does she give evidence? Does she look at who is actually being published, who is actually being reviewed, who is actually winning awards? Don't be silly. She feels like white men can't get published, and her feelings are what count.

A. R. Moxon takes a deeper look here. As she notes at one point, the only actual primary source cited in any of these opinion pieces notes that while women are published more now than men, white men are publishing more ever, and clearly more than they did in the past.

Having to share space in the publishing world is, for the reactionary MAGA and for (some) white men apparently, the exact same thing as being discriminated against.

Since we're going to talk about feelings and anecdote instead of evidence, I'll retell a story I have told here before. When I was in graduate school, where white men were all we read and all we ever heard about, I did deliberately start reading more women writers. My (right-wing) brother came to visit, glanced at my bookshelves, and said, "I see you just read women now."

I was pretty sure that wasn't true, so I insisted we do a count. No shock, given the reading requirements of my classes, I had about twice as many male writers on my shelf as women. My brother saw a couple of titles by women, and he felt that meant I was only reading women.

Another anecdote: I was in an actual bookstore yesterday, the local Barnes & Noble, looking at the new publications. There were indeed a lot by women and brown people and brown women and LGBTQ people. There were also a lot by white men. I picked up one, which had an interesting title. The author's photo showed a serious young white man looking serious. The book was about some other young white man's feelings. I read the first page and was so bored I could not go on.

There were also tons of book by other white men there, including a new one by John Irving, who I was sure had to be dead by now, and about six by James Patterson (surely he is dead by now?) and some by white guys I feel must be dead by now. But our MAGA opinion holders are insisting we only count men born since 1984, so I guess those guys don't count.

Anyway. White conservatives sure like to pretend they're being discriminated against. It's pretty hilarious.

Chinese TakeOut for Christmas Dinner

We fulfill the obligation:

 

Christmas Day

It's very un-Christmasy weather here -- highs in the high 70s all week, with equally high humidity. When I walk the dog at dawn though, it is very pleasant, except for the damp. Today he chased two squirrels up a tree and then refused to leave the tree, circling it endlessly, sure they were about to come down again.

We're having a traditional Jewish Christmas day, with take-out Chinese. There's supposed to be a movie afterwards, but honestly nothing is playing here that we could stand to watch. Maybe we'll take the dog to the dog park instead.

Happy holidays to all y'all, however you celebrate!

My Reviews are Up at Asimov's

They'll be available for a few weeks, so read'em while they're hot.

Featured in this column:

Mary Soon Lee, The Sign of the Dragon

Emily Yu-Xuan Quin, Aunt Tigress

Chuck Tingle, Lucky Day

Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster

Beth Revis, Last Chance to Save the World

Inspired by a Reddit Thread

This was a person asking how often people get headaches, and I was surprised to see that some people get them never or maybe once a year. 

I can't remember a time when I did not have a headache. I used to get brutal migraines once or twice a week; now I usually just have low-grade headaches non-stop (like on the pain scale, they're around two), with every week or so a brutal headache (seven to eight on the pain scale). Migraines are only once or twice a year now.

Is this not normal? Do any of you never have headaches?

What the fuck is that like?

Convincing a Vending Machine it's a Communist

 This is great:

Doctor or Miss?

When I was teaching, I expected my students to call me Dr. Jennings because the alternative was usually "Miss," as in, "Miss, when's the essay due again?"

I do not insist that other people call me Dr. Jennings, although Dr. Skull does. I do put "Doctor" as the choice on those internet forms, because honestly it's the only gender neutral form of address listed, though if "Comrade" was available I'd go for that.

Anyway, I did earn that doctorate, and I do prefer that to "Miss" or "Mrs." or even "Ms." However, I don't correct people who call me "Ms Jennings," or (worse) "Mrs. Jennings." 

Why do I bring this up?

Because the Right is having yet another tantrum over Jill Biden being called Dr. Biden. How dare anyone address her as anything other than Mrs. Biden, I guess? I don't know. It's not misogyny, they insist. It's because she's not a "real" doctor, by which they seem to mean medical doctor. (Notably, none of them seem to have doctorates.)

It's got nothing to do with her being a woman, they insist. Or Joe Biden's wife. NOTHING AT ALL. It's just the principle they care about.

God.

One Year in Our House

We've been living in our own house (which we own like 24% of now) for an entire year. Here's what I like best so farm, in no particular order:

(1) Oddly, I like not having to call the landlord when something breaks. It is true this means I must call someone when something breaks, and also pay for it, but somehow this is less stressful. I probably have PTSD from that asshole landlord we had two moves ago. Also, I like that since we own the house we could put in a walk-in shower and a screened porch and a gas stove. Love my gas stove.

(2) I like where we live. The greenspace behind the house, the dog park only a few blocks away, the Harps and the Walmart two minutes away -- it's a good place.

(3) I love the city, of course. Living in Fayetteville is the best.

(4) Love the public library.

(5) Love living near my kid and his husband. It's close enough that we can have dinner together whenever, and go to the grocery store together, and watch out for each others pets as needed. Very nice.

(6) Almost nothing I need is more than 10 minutes away. This is also very nice. The exception is a few things that are in Rogers (the next town north) which is 20 to 30 minutes away by interstate, depending on the traffic.

(7) I don't love the traffic, but honestly it's not that bad. Just more congested than Fort Smith, but on the other hand, in Fort Smith, we were living in Fort Smith.

(8) The weather so far has been okay. A few really hot days in the summer, one or two really cold days this winter, but okay otherwise.

(9) I *love* being retired. It helps that we have enough money -- everything is better with enough money, who knew? -- but I also like having all this leisure. I can sleep as late as I want (which turns out to be about 7:00 a.m.), I can read books all day if I want to, I can write all day if I want to. Because we have enough money, I can order out for food if I don't feel like cooking. Conversely, I can cook if I want to. For example, tonight I'm making a chicken pie.

(10) We're close enough to Crystal Bridges and to Devil's Den that we can go whenever. Though, to be fair, so far that turns out to be not at all. Maybe soon!

Shamus is 9.5 Months Old

He has moved up to his Big Boy collar, which he celebrated by chewing his old collar to shreds.

He does this Border Collie thing where he crouches and stares at me intently. Reddit (r/bordercollie) says this means he wants me to play with him, which makes sense, since he mainly does it when he wants me to go outside and throw the ball for him. Which, yeah, is all the time.

He does sleep sometimes now however.

We have convinced him (mostly) not to chase the cats.

The dog park is his favorite.

First Night of Hanukkah

The first night of Hanukkah went very well. We had deli, chocolate pie, and latkes. I managed to get out and buy the dog a toy for his present, so he's happy.

I made the latkes, as usual. 

We had a moment of silence for the dead in Australia. 

Advice for Writers

 I love this list.

My favorites: 

You do not need to write like your favorite author. You need to write like you, caffeinated and slightly unstable.

You can write the climax before you finish Act 1. You can rewrite Chapter 1 thirty times and then delete it anyway. You’re not behind, you’re in hell with the rest of us.

This Might Be Real Winter

We're having a cold spell in Arkansas -- frost on the grass at the dog park today, high of 33 tomorrow. Shamus likes the cold. It does not in the least deter him from leaping into the stream or the lake at the dog park.

The first night of Hanukkah is tomorrow. We're having the kids and Uncle Charger and maybe SIL. We ordered corned beef and pastrami from Katz's, which is crazy expensive; and with that we're having latkes and chocolate pie.

It's Shamus's first Hanukkah! And I didn't buy him a present. 

Also the kids adopted a new cat, Rosie:

She's six years old and an epic cat. Also very cuddly. They found her through a local cat cafe:

What I'm Reading Now

As always, this is what I'm reading NOT for review columns.

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

KS Robinson writes these massive SF novels that are filled with intricate, splendid, convincing worldbuilding. They don't really tap into the reader's emotions, which is a characteristic of hard science fiction, but they're interesting to read. This one is about climate change. It starts with a really grim chapter about a heat wave in India that kills very nearly everyone in the area, 20 million people, and gets more hopeful (a little more hopeful) after that. It's more or less about what we might do if we want to survive the next century. It's also the most accurate portrayal of how to change the world that I've ever read. Bit by bit, one thing and another, lose lose lose lose lose win.

It's less hopeful than it might be because I'm dubious that we will do any of this stuff. (Robinson makes it clear that we will have to do hundreds of things -- there's no silver bullet.) Instead, we will keep shoveling profit into the maws of billionaires, destroying our ecosystem so a handful of people can make a little more money. 

Fair warning: this one is massive. It took me three days to read it. (Usually I'm a book a day reader, though sometimes two days if the book is particularly long.)

Still, it was an interesting read. I wish I believed in the future Robinson shows us, that's all.

Andrew Joseph White, You Weren't Meant to Be Human

Another good but depressing book. Written by a trans author, this is SF/Horror. A possibly alien intelligence located in a bug/worm swarm recruits people in dire situations, making them members of its swarm and using them to do things. Some of the things are fairly awful. The main plot line concerns a trans man who the swarm causes to become pregnant, despite the fact that pregnancy makes the man suicidal.

It's a very grim book about what happens when people are denied rights or agency, and gives us an engaging look at what it is like to be trans or a woman or poor in our current world. (It's set in the near future, but things have just kept going the way MAGA "Christians" want them to go.) Crane, the trans man, is particularly well done. A horrific read, but worth reading if you can take it.

T. Kingfisher, What Stalks the Deep

The third in her Sworn Soldier trilogy, this one takes the gang to a coal mine in the Appalachian mountains. It's always nice to hang out with Alex Easton and Angus again. This one has a great monster, and also some really claustrophobic stuff that I had to skim through. There's one good dog and one bad, except the bad dog isn't really a dog.

A quick, enjoyable read, except for the bits where they are crawling through the mine that might collapse on them at any moment.

Weather Report, Other Report

It is foggy, damp, and cold here. I took the dog to the park at dawn and since no one was there I could let him off the leash, his favorite thing. He ran and ran and ran. There were squirrels! There were birds! Once he lost sight of me in the fog and panicked, but when I whistled he came charging back. Squirrels! Birds!

I have gotten approval on the structural edits of my third Velocity novel (Down the Core, watch for it in early 2027) and now am messing about with ideas for the fourth. I'm also reading for the next round of book reviews.

And I plan to make soda bread this morning. Retirement is a full life!

The soda bread -- with black currants

Weather Report, Bird Report, Dog

It's been very cold here lately -- sleet and freezing roads yesterday, and today sunny but 22 degrees when I took the dog to the park at dawn.

A good time was had, but when he spotted three Great Blue Herons in the stream that runs through the park he plunged into the woods along the bank for a closer look, and got hopelessly tangled. I had to wade into the brush and take him off the leash to get it untangled from the trees and liana vines and brambles and -- you guessed it -- he ran off further into the woods, trying to find the herons (who had long since flown lazily and gracefully away).

Eventually he came back, entirely unrepentant. "What a ridiculous dog you are," I said, and he wagged his entire body at me happily.

The Current State of Academics in America

EDITED TO CORRECT MY ERRORS:

I'm sure most of us have heard about the TA in Oklahoma who gave an Evangelical student a bad grade on her paper because (1) the student's paper did not meet the assignment criteria, which required the student to demonstrate that they had read a specific article, and to write a reaction to that article and (2) the only source the student alluded to was the Christian Bible. (She didn't cite it.)  Among other things, this student apparently said that trans people were demonic.

Evangelicals are having screeching tantrums, even though Oklahoma University is kissing the student's feet and giving her everything she wants. This is discrimination, you see, to require a student to write a paper that fits the assignment.

ETA: Also, apparently this student's mother works for Turning Point, and the student may have taken the class in order to get the instructor (who is trans) fired.

ETA: I also once had a student refuse to read an assignment (a James Baldwin short story) because reading it went against her religion. (It had the words 'damn' and 'hell' in it.) I failed the student for that assignment, and my university supported me. AS THEY SHOULD.

In my last few years of teaching, I had a student very much like this one. She wanted to write a paper explaining how Jesus was an historical figure. I discouraged her from choosing this topic, because I said she would not be able to find legitimate sources to support that claim. She insisted she could. Reluctantly, I allowed the topic.

What sources did she cite? You guessed it. Verses from the Bible and an interview with her pastor. I taught students to write papers by doing several drafts with them and holding conferences. Over and over, I told her she either had to find legitimate sources -- not the Bible, not her preacher, but sources published in reputable, peer-reviewed journals -- if she wanted to stick with this topic.

She ended up with a very low grade on the paper, because not only did she never find -- or as far as I could tell, try to find -- reputable sources, she couldn't write a grammatically correct complete sentence or a structurally correct paragraph either. Because that was the major paper for the semester, she had to repeat the class. She didn't complain to the dean, fortunately for me, because -- like OU -- I suspect my dean would have caved.

After that semester, I began assigning topics instead of letting students choose what they wanted to write about. I still got a lot of terrible papers, but at least none of them could accuse me of failing them because they love Jesus.

This TA clearly is doing a great deal right -- requiring legitimate sources, explaining clearly and calmly how the student's paper does not meet the criteria. I would not, myself, have allowed a student to write about why trans people should not exist, but she is a student herself, and still finding her way. At her age, I did indeed allow topics like that, but I always knew my university would support me if I treated the student fairly (as this TA did). Now every Evangelical/MAGA student knows they just have to claim that they are being persecuted for their religion and the university will fall over its feet giving them whatever they want.

There is no way to educate students if this is how the system works. 

Social Commentary

I now live, as many of you know, in the nearest thing to a socialist city you're going to find in Arkansas. Our governor and legislature and much of the rest of this MAGA state hate us with a passion because so many progressives/hippies/liberals live here that it's easy to fund our library, the bike trails, the free busses and the food banks.

And yet. People are homeless here. People are living in their cars. (I encounter them often, since I go early to the dog park, when they're still in the parking lot there.) Some, I am sure, have addiction problems. Many just can't make the rent, which is high in this city, considering it's in Arkansas -- a single shabby one-bedroom rents for $1200/month, and requires passing background checks, providing paystubs, and putting up a sizable deposit as well as the first and last month's rent. Plus you have to sign a year long lease, and if you default before the year is up, you're evicted. Trying getting another apartment with an eviction on your record.

(Why so pricey? Everyone wants to live here, and then also we have a yearly influx of rich kids from Texas who come to attend our R-1 university, probably not because it's a good university as because it's got the Razorbacks. Razorback football is a cult.)

The city is working at building (a) affordable housing and (b) affordable housing aimed specifically at artists. This is what cities should be doing, obviously, but it's not here yet.

A lot of the people living in their cars, or occasionally in tents deep in the trees around the dog park, have jobs. Many also drive for door dash or deliver for Amazon. They're not "lazy," and they're not "illegal immigrants." They're unable to rent an apartment on minimum wage plus a side hustle. (We do have immigrants, but they're mostly working construction, which I assume pays better.)

Are they hungry? They're not eating well, I can guess that from the fast food wrappers scattered around their cars. (There are trash cans, but I guess I might not want to get out of my car when it's 20 degrees out either.) Food banks are useful, but frequently they require a kitchen, which someone living in their car will not have. They don't look healthy, or happy, on the few occasions I see one stumbling back from the single bathroom in the park.

Why do I bring this up? Well, I saw this clip from 1984*, over on PZ Myers' site. It reminded me of a boyfriend I had at about the same time -- 1983, this would have me -- who assured me that no one starved in America, no one was hungry in America. I didn't know enough to push back at him. My own brother said the same thing, a few years later: people were homeless in America because they wanted to be. None of them were starving, or even hungry.

I'm hearing the same rhetoric from conservatives today. MAGA conservatives, anyway. People are homeless because they choose to be homeless. People begging on the street corners are making a fortune, they all have nice cars and five bedroom homes. People going to food banks are driving there in BMWs.

It's the Welfare Queen lie Reagan started in 1980. MAGA loves to believe it because it justifies their bigotry. It's okay to persecute the poor and the immigrants, it's okay to strip food assistance from people because those people are just junkies anyway, spending their money on cigarettes and booze. Hate becomes a virtue in their little bubble. That so many of them claim to be Christian is pretty...I was going to say hilarious, but actually it's disgusting.

They aren't just disgusting. They're immoral.

*I'll tell you what really astonished me about that clip -- how polite Pryor was the the wealthy old lady. He treated her with so much respect. I'd have lost it by the second lie she told. He slips a bit when she tries to take the moral high ground, but he's still saying, "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am," to the very end.

Random Sunday Stuff

Thanksgiving went well, though I had to open the windows because so much cooking made the house too hot. Also, Dr Skull got stove up from the cooking, even though we did as much of the actual work as possible.

It was extremely cold -- well below 30 -- when I took the dog to the park this morning. He loves the cold. He got the zoomies and would have leapt into the (ice-crusted) pond if I hadn't yelped in alarm.

I need to go to the library today. But it is SO COLD. Hovering at 32 right now, with a sharp wind. Also sunshine, though, so maybe things will warm up by this afternoon.

Thanksgiving Morn

I took the dog on a frosty walk before sunrise and since then have been involved in preparations for dinner, even though in theory I have very little to do with the cooking. But Dr Skull is not able to use his hands well at the moment, so I am doing a lot of prep work for the dishes he is cooking.

It is beautiful weather here: about 50 degrees, sunny and crisp.

My part of the menu:

Bread

Sweet potatoes

Dr Skull's part:

Butternut squash soup

Cornbread stuffing

Pumpkin pie

(I made the cornbread and peeled and cut up the squash. I will probably roll out the pie crust as well.)

The kid:

Mac & cheese

Brussel's sprouts

Mashed Potatoes

The Turkey

The kid's husband:

deviled eggs

Uncle Charger is coming to dinner as well.

Novel Revision Submitted

I sent off the revision of the third Velocity novel (titled Down the Core) yesterday and so today I am at loose ends. I have reviews to write, of course, and I suppose I could do all the things I put off so I could work on the novel non-stop, like cleaning the bathrooms and dealing with the recycling.

Or I could re-read novels and drink hot tea. Maybe take a nap later.

Hmm, hard decision.

What I'm Reading Now

Stella Hayward, The Good Boy

On her 30th birthday, a woman is granted a wish by her magical grandmother. This is a family tradition -- every grandmother gives every granddaughter a wish on their 30 birthday. But Genie, a bit drunk and traumatized by life, accidentally wishes her beloved dog was human -- and voila! 

This is an adorable book. The best part is Rory, the dog turned human who still acts and thinks like a dog. He's a golden retriever with his own traumatized past, and he's just great. (The trauma is off the page and kept non-explicit.) There's a romance (not with Rory) and it's fine and charming as well, but Rory is the best part. If you're looking for a well-written, charming read with a happy ending, this is your book.

Elly Griffith, The Frozen People

This is sort of science fiction, so I suppose I could have included it in one of my review columns. But it's really SF-ish, so I decided not to. It's a good book, mind you, and kept me interested all the way through -- this division in the English civil service handles "cold" cases (so cold they're frozen, get it), by which they mean cases that can only be handled by sending witnesses back through time to observe the murder. That's the only science-fictional part about the novel, the time travel. Otherwise it's a straight-up murder mystery.

The main plot concerns a powerful minister in the government, bruited as a possible Prime Minister some day, who is writing a book about his family history and wants to clear up the rumor that one of his great-great-grandfathers was a serial killer. So our main character is sent back to 1850 to act as a witness, and gets stuck there. Meanwhile in the future/present, the minister is murdered. Are the two connected?

I love time travel novels anyway, but this one is also very well done. Good writing, great characters, and a couple of cranky cats. If you like a little SF in your murder mystery, this might be worth picking up.

Helen DeWitt, The English Understand Wool

Helen DeWitt wrote one of my favorite books, The Last Samurai. This is a bit different, and much shorter (really a novella) but every bit as good. An 18 year old, raised in Morocco and various cities (Paris, London) by fabulously wealthy parents, reared by those parents to be spectacularly well-bred (never doing anything mauvais ton), suddenly learns that (a) her parents are not her parents and (b) she has very little money left indeed. What she does about it is one of the surprises of the book. 

As with Samurai, DeWitt plays with form and structure here. She does it very well. This book is a delight, and it's short enough to read in a few hours. 10/10, no notes.

Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow

This one is also (sort of) science fiction/fantasy. A woman on the eve of her 40th birthday figures out how to return to her 16th birthday. There's a portal, sort of. But it will only ever take her back to that one day, her 16th birthday. She can, however, change things, which changes her life in the future. The one thing she keeps trying to change is the death of her father, who in the initial story is dying of lung cancer. The thematic arc is she has to learn to accept her father's death. 

It's not a bad book -- nice writing, and the characters are pretty well done. But it's the kind of SFF which people who don't read much SFF end up writing. (To her credit, Straub knows this and lampshades it in the book.) The science fiction convention that features heavily in the various timelines is really well done. Straub's father is Peter Straub, so that makes sense. 

The notion of 1996 being the ancient past kind sent me.

Harper Lee, The Land of Sweet Forever

I read this one so you won't have to. Lee is famous for having written every high school teacher's favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird (I also loved this book as a kid) and then never publishing anything else. Because of this, it was a truism among the (male) writers in my MFA program that Truman Capote had "actually" written Mockingbird. 

Anyway, now that Lee is dead, her heirs are publishing her trunk novels and uncollected works, including Go Set a Watchman in 2015 and this collection of short stories and essays this year. It contains several short stories written when Lee first started writing, none of them terrible but none of them very good, and several pretty bad essays about nothing in particular. 

Only read this if you're a completist like me.

James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I read this as an undergraduate and again as a graduate student, so this is a re-read.

It's a lovely book. Joyce writes like an angel. Sadly, this one is overshadowed by his (incoherent and frankly overrated) later novels. If you actually like to read and don't just want to look like a hipster, this one and his short stories are where you should spent your time.

Deer

 Two deer were grazing out behind my house this morning:

There were also two squirrels in that tree. Shamus was in a puppy quandary -- which to bark at first?

Reading Before the Internet

Getting a review copy of Martha Wells' new book in literal seconds made me think about the world previous to the internet, when probably I wouldn't even have found out Wells had a new Murderbot book coming out until I stumbled across it in the New Fiction section of my library branch.

That's if my library happened to buy the book. Not always a given.

Back before the internet, if the library didn't have a book, I didn't have any way to find that book. Often I didn't even know that book existed. I do remember looking at the front of books I liked, where there was often a list of other books written by that author. Then I could (1) fill out interlibrary loan books and sometimes the library would find me a copy or (2) hunt used bookstores, hoping to run across a book or (3) go to the Walden's in the mall. This was after the Walden's bookstore opened in the mall, when I was about thirteen, I think. And Walden's didn't usually have the book anyway.

There were no bookstores anywhere within my reach before I was old enough to ride busses on my own (again, around 13). Drugstores had a section with paperback novels, as did the 7-11 about a mile from my house, and I would sometimes get books there. But mainly I got books from the library and from used bookstores.

When I was in graduate school, I ran across a catalogue for a company that sold books through the mail. I can't remember the name of the company now, and usually the books weren't the kind I wanted to read, but I do remember the delight with which I greeted this catalogue every month.

Amazon began selling books in 1998, the internet tells me. That sounds about right. I didn't really become internet savvy until around 2000, but one of the first things I hooked into was online bookstores. One of these was Alibris, I think. I don't think I started buying books from Amazon for another couple years. 

I was still haunting used bookstores and relying on my local public library at that point. We were in Charlotte, NC, which has an amazing public library. And they would buy any book I asked them to. Our local library here will do that too, or at least so far they have.

There were also more bookstores in Charlotte I could get to, since I could drive. Charlotte had a lot of bookstores. Here, there's only one, and it's a Barnes & Noble, which usually doesn't have any books I want to read, though I do get my magazines there.

I still rely on my public library for a lot of the books I read. But now if I want a book and I know it exists, I can usually get it -- from Amazon, in a few seconds if I'm okay with reading an e-copy; from Thrift Books or other sites in a few days or weeks if I want a hard copy. 

There is also a great used bookstore here, the Dickson Street Bookshop, which I bought tons of books from when I was in graduate school and still visit sometimes.

In whatever ways the future has disappointed me (waves at everything happening in the country), thirteen year old me would have loved this aspect of 2025. No flying cars, meh, okay. But the books I can have!

Not to mention phones and tablets. Honestly I'd rather have these than flying cars.

Wooooo!

I scored a review copy of Martha Wells' new Murderbot book, Platform Decay. WOOOO!

That's my Friday night sorted.

Buy Comic Now!

Support my artist son! Support an independent artist! Support a trans artist!

Beautiful and disturbing horror comic about a pregnant trans man living with an abusive wife and a ghost.

It's available on Ko-Fi and domestic shipping is free.

Other work available on the same page, including stickers and mini-comics. Get'em while they're hot!

Apropos of Nothing

This morning I was remembering a period of about nine or ten months in my 20s when, as a new feminist, I was determined to stop being "nice" and deferential. I quit laughing at things men said, for example. And I didn't smile as a reflex, just because I was a woman and my face was in public. And I started arguing. I did not stay quiet when I thought people were wrong. 

But also, I would take a stand and hold that position, refusing to give in even when I knew I was wrong.

I must have been so insufferable.

Sorry, everyone who knew me then.

But How To Retire?

Over on Reddit, someone asked an apparently sincere question: "If I don't start drawing my social security until I'm 70, how can I retire at 65?"

The longer question was that this person was seeing other people retire at 65 and did not understand how they were doing it.

I can't believe that level of cluelessness is actual. But maybe this person was like 20? Who knows.

The replies were all like, well, when we were in our 30s we didn't buy boats or jetskis or immense houses, we didn't spend a month in France, we put our excess money in the stockmarket and....

The notion that people exist in America who do not have "excess" money appeared nowhere in the discussion. I mean, I was making a middle-class salary (sort of) and there were many (many, many) months when we barely made it to payday. When the car broke down or someone got seriously ill, we had to put that on credit cards. "Just don't buy it if you can't afford it" did not apply.

I was only able to retire at 65 because I inherited my father's money. If I had to depend on social security, I would never have been able to retire. Never. My SS check is just a little over two thousand a month and if I had retired at 70 it would have been a little under 3000 a month. Try living on that.

I do have TIAA money, which has had from three to five percent of my salary per month added to it since I was a baby professor back in 1995. (There was frequently an option to increase that amount, sometimes by as much as five percent more, but we could never afford to do without those $$$.) TIAA pays out another couple thousand a month. We could have scraped by on that, maybe. 

But we couldn't have afforded six hundred a month for Medicare Part B, D, and G on four thousand dollars a month, and frankly we're only doing as well as we are right now because (due to my father's money) I can afford to buy those. If we had to depend on Medicare A (the only one the government pays for) we'd be literally thousands of dollars in debt right now.

If you're depending solely on your social security, you can't retire. Period. 

Heat Wave

High of 76 today and 80 tomorrow. UGH.

After that, winter returns.

Destructo Dog

Of course, when you get a puppy, you can count on losing at least a few items to their need to destroy the world.

So far Shamus has chewed up:

(1) One of my Birkenstocks

(2) A stuffed tiger that was a gift to Dr Skull

(3) My favorite blanket which I crocheted last winter

(4) About fifteen of his own toys, which, fine

(5) One of Dr Skull's slippers

(6) A book from my childhood which I really never expected to read again but STILL

(7) Dr Skull's copy of Proust's A la recherche de temps perdu, which he claims he was reading

He's now eight months old, weighs 50 pounds, and would love to spend his life sitting on my lap and chewing on my fingers.

Such a good dog!

Winter Arrives

Or I guess it's a false winter, to go with the false fall we had earlier: i's 38 degrees here now, going down to 20 degrees tonight. A high tomorrow in the 40s. 

My kind of weather, though when I took the dog to the dog park this morning at dawn, it was too cold even for me. Tomorrow I'll have to wear my winter gear.

Tonight I'm making a chicken pie for dinner. Soon it will be time to make soups and beans.

Dawn is Nice

I've become one of those people who wakes up early even though they don't have to.

Partly this is the dog, who wakes up at six every morning and starts demanding his walk. Partly this is because I have a nice medication (Temazepam) which for the first time in my life lets me lie down and go to sleep, like in ten minutes. (Before I always lay awake for two or three hours, or got up again and stayed up until three a.m.) 

Partly, I think, it's because I don't have to get up. There's no alarm clock, and nothing to  resent. When I wake up, the whole day is mine. I could go back to sleep (the dog, though), but why would I? I have coffee to drink and walks to take and writing to do.

So I'm up at six, usually, or sometimes as late as seven, and off to the dog park ten minutes later and by 8:00 I am at my computer, hot tea at hand, ready to start writing.

This is the life I always wanted, and I have to tell you, it's paradise.

Also, I'm seeing dawn, like, a lot. Almost every day. Dawn is very pretty indeed, y'all.

Random Thoughts

(1) The trees are lovely in Fayetteville right now -- brilliant red-orange, yellow, and red. I like driving around town right now because every time I turn a corner, it's like wow, another beautiful tree.

(2) Conservatives are posting about how young voters will be sorry for voting for Mandami because he'll broadcast Muslim calls to prayer five times a day everywhere. Like church bells, I guess. Horrors.

(3) Liberals keep putting little stories on my FB feed about how this school district or that one is making it illegal to call kids by their "preferred names," and then adding a gotcha about JD Vance not going by his birth name. What they don't get, obviously, is that to conservatives this is not a gotcha. Of course these laws do not apply to them. They're not meant to apply to them. The laws protect, but do not bind them; they bind and do not protect trans people, gay people, or children (or immigrants, or the working class, but neither of those applies in this case).

(4) I'm still in a lot of pain from having the two teeth pulled. The pain medication they gave me only helps a little. 0/10 do not recommend.

(5) Our neighbors keep chickens, including three or four roosters (these are pets, I am pretty sure, not kept for eggs or meat). They roost in the trees of the neighbor's tiny backyard, and sometimes come over to forage in my yard. The roosters crow a lot, which upsets Dr Skull but which I kind of like.

(6) This weekend we're getting a hard freeze. Can't wait.

Scalzi on the Election

Hard agree on this here:

Turns out that out-and-out grifty fascism isn’t, in fact, very popular, especially when the promised benefits of that nonsense — lower food prices and inflation kept in check — are nowhere in sight, and when the only part of the government that is working is the part that floods cities with armed paramilitary violating people’s constitutional rights. 

PZ Myers also has an interesting post, quoting Eugene Debs extensively. (Spoilers: conservatives are clutching their pearls because Mamdani quoted Debs, who honestly I bet 97% of America have never heard of. I have, of course, but I'm one of those educated leftists.)

What Do the People Want?

I gotta say, the delusion from "conservatives" that the people want immigrants deported is pretty bizarre. Most of us know immigrants, and most of us like our immigrant neighbors. 

I mean, not all immigrants, obviously. There are bad people in every group. But I have to say, among the immigrants I know, most of them are hard-working, determined, and not at all whiny. Unlike "conservatives," who blame every trouble (usually imaginary trouble) on someone else. Right now it's immigrants and trans people. Next year it'll be some other group.

But regular people -- which is to say, not weirdos and conspiracy theorists -- are not interested, and in fact oppose, the persecution of immigrants. Regular people are horrified by what ICE is doing. That's one reason the GOP lost bigly yesterday.

Regular people also do not hate and are not horrified by trans people. They're absolutely not interested in laws that persecute that nice kid down the block who just wants to get on with their life.

What do the people want?

(1) A functioning economy, in which what regular people earn matches up with the price of housing and groceries. 

(2) Healthcare that doesn't bankrupt thousands of Americans every year.

(3) Reasonable working hours. The notion that people should have to have two or even three jobs to survive is a real non-starter for most people. 

(4) Time to spend with their families and on their own interests. (See #3)

(5) A government that works for the people, not against them. And maybe one that doesn't fund genocides, either here or abroad.

Doesn't seem like a lot to ask.

Blue Sweep

Apparently the Democrats did well in the elections yesterday (there was no election here in Arkansas), which is somewhat cheering.

Fingers crossed people are waking up to what the GOP actually stands for (which is to say, unbridled bigotry, unbridled liberty for their friends, unbridled oppression for the rest of us. Also, lots of socialism for the very rich, and lots of misery for the poor and working class.)

See PZ Myers for more.

What I'm Watching Now

I'm rewatching Downton Abbey. I don't know why.

It's a very conservative show, with the wealthy people all being saints under their quirkiness, maintaining this huge fortune simply to provide jobs to everyone on the estate. When the new heir (who comes from the middle class) wants to dispense with a valet because why would he need a valet, he gets a stern talking to from the patriarch about depriving someone of their income on such a flimsy excuse.

The servants are all very touchy about their various (really, really) minor indications of status, like who is the first footman and who is the second. Everyone stands up when anyone of higher status enters the service hall. That kind of thing.

On the other hand, it's a low intensity sort of show. When things go wrong, they mostly don't stay wrong. Usually the wrong is only threatened, and then turns out not to happen. Bad things -- really bad things -- don't happen, and everything turns out fine, mostly. Even during WWI, only servants die or are badly injured -- for about half a minute, it looks like the Downton heir will be paralyzed -- and worse, not able to,  you know, have children -- but don't worry, he gets better.

 The exception is Lady Sybil's death, and even that has its impact mitigated by everyone (eventually) behaving well. Even the grumpy patriarch eventually gives in and goes to his grandchild's (Catholic!!) Christening.

And usually it's just things like the dog is lost, and then gets found; or Lady Mary and the heir have a fight, but then they make up; or Mr. Bates goes to jail, but then he gets out.

Anyway, I think it's like a comfort watch. All the problems get solved, and pretty easily. Rich people are benevolent, poor people live pretty well, the world is clean and well-managed. You know, a fantasy.

Also, the production values are pretty good.

 

Halloween in the Last Century

Here is what Halloween was like when I was four to twelve years old. 

Kids dressed up, usually in costumes they made themselves (a bum, a football player, a dancer), though you could buy masks and cheap rayon costumes at Woolworths or TG&Y. I think one year when I was really little my mother bought us all masks -- I was Casper the Friendly Ghost, as I recall. But kids didn't really like these masks, since they were very hot to wear and also the elastic that held them on hurt your ears.

Anyway, in whatever costume we put together, we went out in packs. Little little kids, like under four, did not go trick or treating. Older than four, you went with a bunch of other kids. By the time I was six or seven, I was going with the kids my age in the neighborhood -- Debbie Moore, Karen Pettus, another girl whose name I don't remember -- and my brothers were going with the kids their age.

There were huge swarms of kids out roaming from house to house, all over the neighborhood. We didn't go outside our particular neighborhood, which was called Willowdale. From about five to about eight, we hit every single house -- there was no such thing as a house that didn't give out candy, though there were houses where "mean" people lived. Down the street, for instance, there was a guy who wouldn't give candy to anyone over six. I mean, really!

We use paper grocery bags to collect the candy, and when we came home, exhausted and triumphant, we poured the heaps of candy out on the living floor and compared our hauls. Occasionally there would be some trading -- like I hated suckers and loved those peanut butter taffy things, so I'd trade with my brother who hated peanut butter.

There weren't any decorations, as I recall, though usually people did make jack-o-lanterns and burned candles in them. And parents had only one function -- they stayed home and gave out candy. No kid would have wanted or needed a parent to walk them from house to house.

In any case, Halloween was one of the important holidays of the year for kids -- Christmas and Mardi Gras being the other two. I still remember the year I got strep throat and missed it. (I did try to go out, but had to turn back a block from the house because I felt so awful. I remember sitting on a curb trying to convince myself I could keep going.)

When my kid was little, we drove to a neighborhood that wasn't full of Evangelicals to trick-or-treat, because of course Evangelical Christians in Arkansas believe halloween is worshipping the devil. I did walk my kid and his friends around the neighborhood, and almost always any kids under about ten had parents walking with them. Kids older than ten still went with their friends. Lots of houses shut their lights off, the accepted signal for 'we don't celebrate halloween here.'

In our recent neighborhood, there was no Halloween. Maybe this was because it was an Evangelical neighborhood? There were a lot of Trump signs.

Here in this new neighborhood, I did see people trick-r-treating. But not only did they all have parents with them, their parents were driving them from house to house. Long trains of cars wound through the streets, stopping every few houses to let the kids out.

Our street is last one in the neighborhood -- surrounded by a green space and a golf course -- and mostly trains of cars didn't make it this far. I only saw a few kids older than ten or so out on their own. They looked lost and confused. I stayed home with the candy, as is my role, but only three different sets of kids came by. This is probably because I didn't put out any decorations, which seems, here, to be the sign for 'we celebrate halloween, come knock on the door.'

I suppose Halloween in the 1960s and 1970s was a bigger (and freer) deal because there were so many more kids back then. Also, the 24/7 news cycle had not yet been invented, and parents didn't know letting your kid run the neighborhood unsupervised was dangerous. 

Next year I'll get some lights and a giant inflatable pumpkin.

True Fall

Frost on the grass when I took the dog to the dog park this morning, and so cold I looked for (but did not find) my gloves. A freeze warning out for tonight.

Brr, fall! My favorite season.

Ow, Ow, Ow

My teeth have been removed. I am in considerable pain, but unable to use pain medication at the moment because I have to drive.

Ow, ow, ow.

Donate to Your Local Foodbanks

Give them money if you can -- they can do more with it than you can. But they'll take food as well.

I set up a monthly donation sometime ago, which I have just increased this month. It won't make up for what the Trump administration is doing, starving kids for political reasons, but it will help some.

If you're in Arkansas:

Northwest Arkansas Food Bank

River Valley Food bank

Arkansas Food Bank

Usually there's a church somewhere also running a food bank. You know how I feel about religion, but if that's your pathway, take it.

Life in the Previous Century

A post over on Reddit about kids today has me remembering when I was four years old, how my older brother and I would walk to the Stop'n'Shop, which was at least two miles round trip, to buy penny candy. This was when you could get candy for a penny a piece. My mother usually gave us each a nickel, probably to get us out of the house for an hour or two.

Now'n'Laters were my favorite. You could also get wax coke bottles, and chalky candy cigarettes. There were also candy bars, but those cost an entire nickel, so we never got those. Bazooka gum came with little cartoons inside the wrapper. Root beer barrels were also great. 

The ice cream truck came by every day in the summer. Popsicles were a dime each, or you could get those chocolate coated ice cream bars. There were more expensive options, but my mother only gave us a dime each.

No wonder I have two abscessed teeth.

Anyway, the most astonishing part of this memory, to me, is that my mother let us walk all that way alone when we were four and five years old. Then again, when we weren't walking to the store, we were often out in the wilderness behind the house (the woods) for hours at a time, playing with matches and dodging snakes.

Also we were always barefoot. Well, I think we wore shoes in the winter. But other than that.

Brush Your Teeth, Folks

They're going to have to pull both my abscessed teeth. Then I'm getting implants. Or I should say, eventually I get implants. (It's a whole process -- they put cadaver bone in your jaw, and let it grow to your own bone; then once that heals, they put in a screw thingie. Then once that heals, they send you to the dentist, who gives you a cap. Two caps, in my case.)

Meanwhile, neither dentist will give me pain medication, because Arkansas hates people in pain. The oral surgeon says they can give me some after the "procedure." The dentist says take Tylenol.

I do have antibiotics, which are helping a little, by knocking back the infection. That's what's causing all the pain, apparently.

I remember reading books written in the 1930s, people talking about tooth aches in their childhood like they were a chronic condition. Before antibiotics, anesthetics, and modern dentistry, I suppose they were.

What I'm Reading Now

 A lot of SF for review purposes, and also these books:

Ursula Le Guin, Birthday of the World

This is a collection of stories and novellas, and a re-read for me. I love Le Guin, of course, but mostly I re-read this for the novella "Paradises Lost," which is set on a generation ship. I'm reading a novel for revieew by A.D. Sui which also involves a generation ship, which made me want to read this one again. Written in 2002. the novella is influenced by the increasing political power of the Religious Right, which was just beginning to grow at that point. In the small community on the generation ship (4000 people), a new religion is born and soon becomes prevalent enough to attempt a takeover of the governing committees on the ship -- the education committee first, and then others. This is an excellent novella which is even more relevant today than it was in 2002. A quotation:

"One kind [of person," Luis] said, "has a need, a lack, they have to have a certain vitamin...Vitamin Belief."

[Hsing] considered.

"Not genetic," he said. "Cultural. Metaorganic. But as individually real and definite as a metabolic deficiency. People either need to believe or they don't."

She still pondered.

"The ones that do don't believe that the others don't. They don't believe there are people who don't believe."

"Hope?" she offered tentatively.

"Hope isn't belief. Hope's contingent upon reality, even when it's not very realistic. Belief dismisses reality."

(snip)

"What's the harm in believing?"

"It's dangerous to confuse reality with unreality," he said promptly. "To confuse desire with power, ego with cosmos. Extremely dangerous."

Helen Philips, Hum

This is sort of like science fiction, in that it is set in the near future. I'm not reviewing it for either of my columns, though. It's the story of a woman who has lost her job. Her husband works gig jobs, doing things like emptying litter boxes for the very wealthy. The woman volunteers for experimental surgery to (slightly) change her face, so that surveillance cameras can't identify her. She does this because it pays a lot of money, but then she uses the money to take her husband and two kids on a visit to a botanical garden, which is extremely expensive because all the actual forests and flowers and insects and so on have been killed off by climate change. 

There's a lot here about kids using screens non-stop and AI doing the parenting and gig work and the flaws of capitalism and precarity and blah blah blah. Nothing new, to be honest, and nothing new to say about any of it.

This is an extremely depressing book. Maybe don't read this unless you like novels where the characters are powerless and their lives are catastrophes.

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. 

This is a re-read. If you haven't ever read this book, I highly recommend it. It's about Francie Nolan, a poor kid in Brooklyn from her birth to when she leaves the city in the first two decades of the 20th Century. Based on Smith's own life and memories of Brooklyn, it was originally published in 1943. I've been reading and re-reading this book since I was about ten years old, and I re-read it after watching the 1943 movies on YouTube (it's free, though you do get a few ads).

The movie is pretty good, but the book is better. Much more realistic than you might expect from a book written in the 40s, and centered almost entirely around the women characters -- Francie's brother and father are main characters, but it's mostly a story about her mother and sisters and grandmother, as well as Francie herself.

Fumi Yoshinaga, What Did You Eat Yesterday?

This is a manga which is mostly about cooking in Japan, though there's a little peripheral drama among the people doing the eating and cooking. Also quite a bit about shopping in Japan. The main characters are the lawyer, who does most of the cooking, and his boyfriend who is a hair stylist. The series started in 2007, and there's a bit of angst from Shiko, the lawyer, because he's not out while his boyfriend, Kenji, is. Shiko is a tightwad, and Kenji a spendthrift, so there's some squabbling about that. 

Apparently the manga was made into a TV show, but I haven't seen that. I haven't read all the volumes either-- there's a billion of them -- but if you like cooking and representations of quotidian life, you might like this one.

Fumi Yoshinaga is also the creator of Ooku, which won the Tiptree Award/Otherwise Award in 2009.

UGH TIMES TWO

One of my teeth had been hurting, so I went to the dentist today. Not one but two abscessed teeth.

Consultation with the oral surgeon guy at dawn tomorrow.

GOD.

How the GOP Governs

In Arkansas, as in much of the United States, grocery, fuel, and rent prices are climbing. I paid ten dollars for a dozen eggs last week, and flour prices have doubled over the past few years. Even things I used to live on because they were cheap -- rice, chicken, potatoes -- are now expensive. A whole chicken is $4.99/pound, when you can find one. You can't always even get a whole chicken. And white meat and thighs are even more expensive. 

In Arkansas, our education system is failing. We're 44th in the Nation. 

Housing prices have skyrocketed over the past ten years.

Farms are failing.

Health insurance prices are climbing.

What is our GOP government, led by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, doing in response? Why, they're mandating that every school, including universities, including our flagship university, put copies of the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. This is, obviously, blatantly unconstitutional, which bothers absolutely no member of the GOP, which daily wipes their asses on the Constitution.

They're making it illegal for trans people to pee in the bathroom that matches their gender.

They're keeping all three trans women in the state from playing sports.

They're forbidding Fayetteville from becoming a "sanctuary city." (Fayetteville was not a sanctuary city. We're just relatively liberal compared to the rest of the state, which is, of course, a crime.)

They are, in other words, appealing to their bigoted base by harming the least powerful people in the state. That's how the GOP operates. It doesn't solve any of the problems, it doesn't help the people. It just gives them someone to hate, and makes their bigotry feel virtuous.

That's our country. That's what conservatives want.

Why does it matter if Sanders forces universities to put religious displays in university classrooms? Let me tell you a little story. This is from when I was teaching History of the English language. One day early in the semester I was explaining the Great Vowel Shift, and how it worked. To do that I had to back up to the Proto-Indo-European language, and how sounds diverged as dialects grew into separate languages over the vast arc of time.

After class, one of my students came up to me and asked why I hadn't talked about the Tower of Babel and how that had caused the one language that everyone spoke to become many languages. She was a sweet student, who had been educated in an Evangelical church school, so I had to gently explain to her the difference between religion and science. "In universities," I remember saying, "we use evidence-based data to understand how things happen, how they came to be. Religions rely on revelation and faith, and that's not how we work in the academy."

Imagine me trying to say that with religious texts plastered on the wall. Imagine trying to do science, or explain about deep time, or get students to understand evolution, when Sarah Huckabee Sanders has told them their religion, their version of that religion, is the ultimate authority, in the universities as well as in their churches.