delagar

Laundry? What's That?

2012-02-14T17:03:00.002-05:00

I am off to Boskone this weekend -- leaving on Thursday, flying all day.

This requires me to do laundry today. Well, only if I actually want to have clean clothing to wear at the convention. Which I suppose I do.

(Picture our house, heaped with piles of undone laundry. Towels, we have managed to keep up with, and dish towels, because those are vital, and usually socks. But jeans? Shirts? We just pull those from the least filthy pile...)

I'm also doing dishes, since it's Valentines and I'm Being Kind To Dr. Skull.

And prepping for Chaucer, some time in here...

All those things I don't usually do (except teh Chaucer) because I am busy being a writer.

Snow Day!

2012-02-13T16:51:00.001-05:00

First, and only I suspect, snow of winter 2012 here in Fort Smith has resulted in a snow day -- classes cancelled at UA-FS. I had to take the kid to the orthodontist, and the dog escaped, but all my adventures are concluded (I hope) and now I am holed up with the cat asleep on my feet, drinking ginger tea with honey and milk and writing my novel.

More sleet tonight.

I love snow days.

Reading List

2012-02-11T14:39:00.004-05:00

I've mostly been prepping for classes these days, reading Chaucer and for my American Epics class this summer; but in my infrequent free time I've discovered a couple interesting writers.

1. John Green. YA. Start with Will Grayson, Will Grayson, a book he co-wrote with David Levithan. But don't stop there! I've read nearly everything he's written now. All winners. His plots are interesting enough, but it is the cast of characters that keep me reading -- always a small group of friends in their late adolescence, slight misfits, smart, deeply attached to one another. And! Real women characters! Always a plus.

2. Nisi Shawl, Filter House. I'd actually read this one before. But we published a story by Nisi, "Black Betty," in a recent issue of Crossed Genres, and my kid liked it so much that I recommended Filter House to her; she liked the book so much I read it again. I'd forgotten how good it was. It won the Tiptree Award in 2009. Science Fiction stories, but not the time-anchored sort.

3. Inhuman Bondage, by David Brion Davis. Slavery and slave revolts in the New World. I'm not done with this one yet, but yowza. Found it via TNC, who makes me smarter every time I read him.

Now if I only had an extra month every week, to get all my work and writing done, and time to read as well...

Fly Our Fascist Skies

2012-02-08T22:41:00.005-05:00

So I'm getting ready to fly America for the first time in about ten years.

My long hiatus is due partly to the fact that flying tends to give me migraines and mostly to the fact that I object to being treated like a criminal because for the sake of security theater.

(Deleted: about three hundred words of ranting on civil liberties and the idiocy of surrendering them for putative safety, etc.)

Not to mention how uncomfortable airplanes are these days.

BUT IN ANY CASE. I haven't flown for a long time, and now I am flying to Boston, to attend Boskone, and (among other things) reading from Broken Slate.

Anyone have any tips for how I might make this adventure less adventuresome? Shoes not to wear? Things not to include in my pockets? Things not to say to airline security dudes? The sort of carry-on luggage that works best?

Any & all help appreciated.

What's This?

2012-02-05T19:20:00.000-05:00

It's cold here. Overcast. GREY.

Like an actual winter day.

How odd.

Reading American Epics

2012-02-04T14:34:00.004-05:00

I'm reading novels -- I guess auditioning novels might be the right word for it -- for the American Epics class I'm planning to teach this summer. Right now I'm in the middle of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a novel I read about fifteen times between the ages of 12 and 19 and not since then at all.

It's a book that formed me, in other words; but at the time I thought of it as history. I was already, then, mostly a SF writer at heart -- I always read every kind of book, but I've always read thinking about the SF novels I was writing or planning to write, and how this book I was reading might help or inform that.

So Grapes of Wrath, well, I looked at it mostly for what it could tell me about structuring big fat novels and building novels with multiple characters. I don't think I was paying much attention to its politics at all (at least consciously) in those days. Because, you know, we'd fixed that problem.

Ha.

Reading it now, as with Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, it's a gloomy trip. Romantic to have expected Americans to have learned anything from experience, I know, or to have been paying attention at all -- but these books, they might have been written a month ago. Same arguments. Same issues. We've got food stamps instead of soup kitchens, unemployment and prisons instead of chain-gangs, but other than that.

Like none of the gains we made made any difference. Like no one has been paying attention.

People are even making the same arguments -- the market has to decide; if we divide things more fairly, the rich will have it all again within ten years; poor people just like not working, that's why they're poor; well, poor Americans aren't really poor, I mean, not compared to the poor in OTHER countries; you can't tax the rich, because they'll just take their money and leave!

I've heard every one of those arguments within the past two months. They're in Lewis and Steinbeck, novels written in the 30s, the last time rich thieves broke our country.

As I said, it's a been a gloomy ride.

Slavery By Another Name

2012-01-18T14:49:00.003-05:00

Look here.

Douglas Blackmon's Slavery By Another Name, an excellent book, which was a big influence on my novels, is being made into a documentary.

Can't wait.

Working

2012-01-18T12:47:00.001-05:00

Got up at dawn with a short story in my head, wrote it (600 words), and submitted it.

I think that's a record.

Now I will eat something.

What's That, An Avalanche?

2012-01-10T23:49:00.004-05:00

Aside from the four preps I'm doing, and Aikido, and the novel I'm getting in final shape to find a publisher slash agent for, and writing a couple short stories, three of which already have publication venues, not to mention deadlines, I'm also putting together a new course for Summer I.

This is a class I've been wanting to teach for a couple years. It's had a couple of titles over the years -- I was calling it Working Class Fiction for a time -- but now it's called American Epics. A better, because wider, title.

But it's require lots of prep, and I'm as pressed for time as always.

Right now I'm using five novels:

Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here
John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Octavia Butler, Seed to Harvest

I want to include a number of movies as well. I have, vaguely, some ideas about which movies I might include. But I'm not as strong on movies as I am on novels. I'm thinking True Grit (the new one), Groundhog Day, The Searchers, Jaws, and Unforgiven.

Any other ideas?

Stuff You Can Read!

2012-01-09T11:37:00.006-05:00

It's the first day of classes here, so I oughta be dealing with that, but look!

My story, "In The Cold," is up at Strange Horizons (this is one of my favorite stories, so I am very pleased), and -- two events in one day! -- and I have an interview up over here, at RexRising, where I tell you all my deep secrets about Martin, Broken Slate, and the revolution.

Okay, some of them.

Happy Monday!

The People's Museum -- No!

2012-01-03T00:23:00.003-05:00

(X-Posted at Fansci)

On New Years Day we went to the museum which, according to Forbes, refutes the DFH's claim that the 1% have been oppressing and exploiting the workers of the world for the past -- oh, what is it now? Forever?

Crystal Bridges, Bentonville. Built by Alice Walton, according to a very sweet story told to Dr. Skull and me and our daughter, as we painted pictures in the Walk-In Art Studio, because when she (Alice) was a child, as she and her Mama traveled all over to the world to visit various art museums in Paris and Chicago and Italy and New York, Mama Walton would tell Alice that she hoped that someday the people of Arkansas might have museums like these -- that someday someone might bring great art to our benighted state.

Okay, she didn't say benighted. But she should have, because it is so. Arkansas has indeed been bereft of anything like a decent art museum. In Fort Smith, where we live, where the university had a surprisingly excellent art department, we have a tiny museum; one of the orthodontists in town, John Udouj, who collects art privately and hangs it in his place of business, has a bigger collection, frankly (and a more interesting one).

Crystal Bridges, while not the best art museum I have ever been to, is the best art museum within 150 miles of Fort Smith, Arkansas. It is clearly the best art museum in Arkansas. And it had a lot going for it.

(1) An excellent building

(2) Beautiful surroundings -- the Boston Mountains are among my favorite landscapes, and the museum includes biking, hiking, and walking trails, plus playgrounds for kid, plus a skate park

(3) A nice cafe with very good food: healthy food available, and none of the food very toxic

(4) Medium to excellent art. I liked the modern art quite a bit, and the pop art selection, while small, was just great. The 19th century had a few really good pieces among a lot of mediocre works; the 20th century was better.

(5) There are a number of rooms, like the Walk-in Art Studio, and the Art Education room, set up for people (kids, yes, but adults are encouraged to engage as well) to mess around with art -- to paint, to learn how art is created, to see what artists do. I can't tell you how much I liked that part.

(6) All through the museum, scattered at random, are little rooms like sitting rooms, living room areas, beautiful little spaces looking out on the Boston Mountain landscape, with comfortable chairs and sofas, and tons and tons of art books and art education books, for you to sit around and rest between exhibits and read about what you've been looking at -- the books are keyed to the exhibits around you. Again, wow. What an amazing idea. And the books are at all levels: kid level, adolescent level, adult, graduate level.

(7) It's free. That means a lot in Arkansas. Unless you live here, you can't know the level of poverty many people face. Getting to the museum is going to be a hurdle of most people in the state. If they had to pay an entrance fee, even a small one, it would be a deal-breaker.

So why am I complaining?

Art generally comes from oppression. That's a given. (We often tell our kid, who wants to be a graphic artist, that we need to start beating her more and locking her in a few closets.) Art is the language the oppressed use to speak the truth when they can speak it no other way. This is why when people say they don't like political art I just laugh at them. Holy crap. As if there were any other sort of art. (And this is why parents forbid children -- the very first oppressed class -- to lie: because what is lying, after all? It is the child's way of using the only art he has, or she has, the art of language, to fight back.)

On the other hand, once art is created, what happened to it? In some societies -- on Le Guin's Urras, for instance, and among those at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith -- the artist gives or trades the work to his friends, for small favors or work in return. (We have paintings on our wall that we got from artists we know in exchange for teaching them writing or grammar.)

But in large, capitalist societies, where the Gini Coefficient is wholly unbalanced? Well, art, like everything else, ends up the property -- exclusively -- of the obscenely wealthy. Artists end up owned by the wealthy. Artists (often) end up being controlled by the obscenely wealthy. (Since if an artist isn't saying what the wealthy want to hear or see, they won't pay for it, and if they don't pay, it doesn't get done. Think contemporary mainstream movies, publishing houses, television, music prior to the internet.)

Alice Walton, the Forbes article claimed, with her largess, makes OWS look foolish.

Well, this is not the case. True, I am glad she built Crystal Bridges, and glad she did the things she did right. I am also glad, as they point out, that she did not spend the money on jet planes or baubles instead, as she very well could have.

But, despite what Forbes claims, she did not do everything right.

Here is what she did wrong: she built her museum on the misery of others. As I walked through those beautiful rooms, as I ate a lovely salad in the sunlit cafe, as I painted with my child in the wonderful art room, it was hard for me to swallow the bitterness in the back of my throat, the knowledge that all this was possible because Alice Walton had amassed a huge fortune by thieving the wages of literally millions of women and men; by working them long hours in horrible conditions, with few or no benefits; by wearing their bodies out and then firing them when they could work no longer; by underpaying and overworking the poorest and most desperate in our society; by driving down wages at factories all over our country, and, in effect, forcing other companies to exploit their workers as well, if they wanted to sell to Wal-Mart -- as many must, in order to stay in business.

Doing this, and then building an art museum? If Alice Walton and those like her had not systematically destroyed the American economy over the past 40 years, we'd all be taking our kids to Paris and Chicago and New York. We wouldn't be so fucking poor that Crystal Bridges is the only museum we've been able to take our kid to in the past three years.

Who builds the art museums if not Alice Walton, you ask? (As Dr. Skull asked me, while we were arguing about this over our Autumn Salad and tea at lunch in the lovely cafe.)

We do. Think of the National Art Museum, in DC. Taxpayers build an art museum, or anyway they can, if they have enough money -- if the 1% haven't taken it all. Why should we be dependent on the whims of the wealthy, who might build a museum, and might buy a jet plane instead? Art is a necessity, just as education and health care are necessities; and frankly it is very unlikely that the obscenely wealthy are going to fund true art -- subversively art. (Why would they?)

The People's Art Museum must be funded by the people!

So while I did enjoy my visit to Crystal Bridges, no, I cannot support Alice Walton's endeavor 100%, and I do not believe, despite the contention of Forbes Magazine, that she makes those DFH look silly. Quite the contrary.

Grades are IN!

2011-12-13T16:55:00.002-05:00

Once I have gone to commencement (tomorrow) I will be done done done until January 5, when I have to return to school (;-<) for some charming sessions on how to be a good teacher. You would think I would know by now, yes.

But! Between now and then! Days and days in which I do nothing but read and write and learn Aikido! And pet the cat!

And Hanukkah! I have actually managed to remember to buy all the kid's Hanukkah presents on time this year. I know, it's amazing. I can't think how I did it.

I have a new idea for a SF story. About a revolutionary virus. No, seriously.

My kid: "Why are all your stories about the revolution?"

Me: "Shut up, that's why."

Tidings of Great Joy!

2011-12-11T00:30:00.002-05:00

My craptop caught a virus and I did too!

Plus it's finals week here. So as you can imagine it has been much wailing and gnashing around the delagar household. However! Dr. Skull was able to extract my data from the craptop before I surrendered it to our tech support guys (who did, by the way, fix it -- killed the virus, mended the craptop yet again) and while the craptop was in the shop let me use his MacBook -- which I used to finish a draft of Triple Junction. Yay me!

Now it is winter here and I am still sick as shit, though the computer is mended. I am grading papers and drinking NyQuil. The cat is sleeping on my feet. The Hanukkah lights (yes, I am serious -- we found some at the Harps, they are multicolored Stars of David) are shining in the window. I am sipping ginger ale and soon it will be winter break. If I felt better I would be utterly content.

Hey!

2011-11-28T00:45:00.002-05:00

I forgot to tell you about our TNXgiving! I know you want to know.

It was wonderful. Dr. Skull cooked, everything except the sweet potatoes, which I make every year, mystically creating my own recipe anew each time (this year it was vanilla, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and lots of clarified butter, they were perfect); and the stuffing and brussel sprouts, which Uncle Charger's sister made, also wonderful.

Art Boy and Musical Genius Girl also came -- we hadn't seen MGG in some time, since she got a scholarship to faraway U, so that was nice -- along with Uncle Charger's sister's huband, and Uncle Charger's mom. Dr. Skull made turkey and butternut squash soup, his lovely French bread, green bean casserole, two kinds of pie, and ginger ice cream. We drank I forget how many bottles of wine and talked until quite late at night.

We still have leftovers. Thanksgiving might be my favorite holiday!

Saturday Afternoon

2011-11-26T16:57:00.004-05:00

When I was a kid, Saturday afternoon was my favorite time of the week. Nothing to do, and no one leaning on me to do it. I would usually wander around in "the woods," a scrub area out back of our subdivision in Metairie, Lousiana. In the spring, snakes were everywhere out there; in the summer, bugs and rats and nutria; in the winter, just me. Or sometimes my brothers and their friends, notorious for starting fires with stolen gasoline, or shooting at one another with B-B guns. I'd climb trees and poke snakes with sticks, capture bugs and caterpillars, try to figure out what kind of insect made that pod and which that. The "woods" was actually a giant landfill, so anywhere I dug, I'd turn up rusting trash and filth, old shoes, boxes. My first archeological event! Every hole filled with soupy red water, stinking and foul.

I made up epic stories as I wandered around, of course. When I was with my friends, as I occasionally was, these stories were less interesting. Their stories always had current television stars, or worse, local boys in them. Plus, they wanted to direct my plots. No, I would say. No, no, no. That can't happen. Because it doesn't make sense for her to act that way, that's why.

Saturday afternoons are a little less fraught these days.

I spent the morning at Aikido, and all morning I have been working on Triple Junction. Made some turkey soup for dinner, and did some laundry. Now it is back to work on this epic novel. It is raining and raining here, perfect weather for soup and writing.

I need some woods to wander around in. And many, many Saturday afternoons!

Watch This

2011-11-19T20:54:00.003-05:00

I watched the video clip at this post last night at two in the morning, with my kid circling me nervously, demanding, "Why do you keep watching these things? Why? You know it's the same thing! You know the police are going to keep hurting them!"

"I know," I said. "I know, I know. But I have to know. They're fighting for us, baby. They're fighting the revolution for us."

And at the end of this clip -- well, you have to watch it. You have to see what happens at the very end of the clip. Feel free to fastfoward through the middle bit (Cut back in around 6.30) though I watched the entire thing, and it's worth watching the entire thing, I have to say.

The end is glorious. I cheered aloud in my living room. I felt like dancing.

Mic Check!

2011-11-19T14:06:00.006-05:00

I've been obssessing, just a little, over #OWS.

Well, how could I not? It's the Revolution!

Anyway, here's hoping it is.

This morning, the kid asked me, wistfully, "Has there ever been a revolution that turned out well?" and I listed for her, zealously, all the ones that had, I mean, you know, both of them.

(I keed, I keed.)

Meanwhile, did you see that shit at UC Davis? The students and faculty there are now my heroes.

Though all those involved in Occupy are my heroes, really. They are giving me hope when I thought hope was lost. A different world is possible!

Good Reads GiveAway of My Book!

2011-11-14T10:24:00.002-05:00

Free book/My Book! Good Read is giving away Broken Slate.

Let me see if I can get this clicky/Pasty thing right....

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Broken Slate

by Kelly Jennings

Giveaway ends November 22, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Not Actually a Post

2011-11-12T18:36:00.003-05:00

Been working working working here: editing for Crossed Genres, also revising this fucking novel (oh yes, we're at this point in the revision) also it's just past midterm, the time in teh semester when all seems hopeless, so. Also the weather here has just sucked this year and I am tired of of it, tired of heat and wet and heat and rain and heat heat heat.

Also I am tired of being so fucking poor.

But! This morning as I was driving to Aikido, the light was so lovely under the slatey clouds, and all the leaves were blown off the trees, so even though the weather is still warm and damp, I could see that maybe winter might be coming, eventually. It cheered me up a tiny bit.

Maybe I will post something besides whining tomorrow!

Grammar and Aikido

2011-10-30T13:30:00.004-04:00

This Saturday morning I was the only uke at Aikido -- just me and three instructors, all black belts.

"You look a little nervous, delagar," said the head sensei cheerfully, as he was strapping on his hakama.

"A bit," I said, doing my stretches. "I was just thinking, all three of you black belts, me over here with my lonely black stripe." (I'm a white belt, one stripe, nearly as low a rank as you can get.)

They all laughed. The lowest rank of them just got his black belt last month. Also, as I think I have mentioned from time to time, I am not an Aikido genius, and all three of these guys are -- the sensei who just got his black belt (we'll call him New Sensi) is one of the most gifted students I've ever seen. (I've been watching Aikido for about eight years now, since the kid started in it at five, so I watched him go from a white belt to a black belt.)

Over the past four months, New Sensei has been struggling to teach me, who is probably the least gifted of all his students. My brain may be very clever, but my body is an idiot. It won't remember how to do anything, and it certainly can't do anything twice in a row, or learn any sequence of events. Worse, when I have learned to do something with my right hand or right foot, frequently then in Aikido we have to do the same thing with the left hand or the left foot. And this is just impossible for me. I can't seem to transfer knowledge from one side of my body to the other.

Well! Especially for New Sensei, who finds learning sequences of events natural, who can do everything the first time he sees it, who can transfer physical sequences not just from one side of his body to the other but backwards and forwards and probably, for all I know, upside down and standing on his head, this was frustrating for him, trying to teach me (and Head Sensei made him spend a lot of time teaching me, Idiot Student, because that is how Aikido works -- my kid is spending a lot of time teaching the five year olds, down in kids' class).

Anyway! Saturday! I could see he had made a breakthrough. He has figured out how to teach me. He broke the steps of each throw and pin and body movement into micro-steps, and fed them to me one tiny bit at a time. Do this. Do this. Now this. He let me practice each one sixty times if I needed to, before we moved on to something else. He gave me a lot of reinforcement at each step. He didn't add anything new before I got that step. He treated me like the Aikido special needs kid I was, in other words, and it absolutely worked.

I recognized this, because this is what I do in grammar classes -- I mean, I have a few students, maybe eight or ten, each time I teach grammar, who are absolutely gifted, who grasp grammar on an instinctual level. But the rest just can't get it, their brains don't see the connections. They're grammar idiots. So I break it down: I go one steps at a time, I break the explanation into microsteps, I give them lots of reinforcement, I explain fifty different ways, I show them, from various angles, why they're having trouble with this point. And I practice, practice, practice with them.

And I don't assume they're idiots, just because they're idiots at this.

We're all idiots at something. That's a fact. You should hear my father the rocket scientist talk about movies.

Correlation is Not Causation

2011-10-28T08:33:00.005-04:00

New post over at Science In My Fiction, on a subject I try to hammer into the heads of my 1203-1213 students every year -- the problem of untangling cause and effect.

It's a tricky one, even for those of us who think we're clever educated critical thinkers. Dr. Skull and I, for instance, duking it out with the kid recently. She doesn't want to learn to play a musical instrument; Dr. Skull wants her to learn one. He argues that learning to play an instrument well makes you smarter. She argues (we've made her a little lawyer, this kid) that correlation is not causation -- that maybe it's just that smart people tend to make good musicians. I have to agree with her that this makes sense.

It's something we want, though -- to believe that if we do this, that will follow. If I get my PhD, I'll have a job & finacial security & a happy life. If I wear my seatbelt, I won't die in a crash. If I wish upon a star. If, if, if. We're looking for a way to control what is, essentially, not within our control.

On the other hand, who can blame us? The anxiety that comes when we admit that our fates are outside of our control can be, in fact, a bit unnerving.

The Kid's New Favorite Site

2011-10-27T15:00:00.002-04:00

Many of these jokes I do not get.

But I'm told they're very funny.

This Makes Me Sad

2011-10-26T14:30:00.003-04:00

So I'm at Aikido last night, talking to another student while we wait for class to start. She's student teaching in a local school, just across the state line in Oklahoma, a first grade class. I was reading my grammar text, prepping the next day's lecture. She starts telling me about teaching grammar to the first graders.

"We're not allowed to call nouns nouns," she informed me. "We have to call them naming words. And get this: adjectives are called sparkle words."

"What?" I said. "Why?"

"Well, I get that nouns are the names of things. But what I don't get is why we can't tell them that they're also called nouns. Like, these are nouns. They name things."

"But," I said, stuck on her last clause, "sparkle words? Really?"

She shrugged.

"But not all adjectives sparkle," I protested. "But -- and what do you call adverbs?"

"Oh, we don't teach adverbs."

And then! Today! I'm teaching my 1203 students! It's grammar week in there too. We're on pronouns, the importance of clear antecedents, and when to use what case. So I give them this sentence:

Dave told Ethan and (I/me) the game was over.

and I asked them which pronoun was right.

Nearly all of them said I was the correct pronoun. So I showed them why me was correct -- that it was the object of the sentence; and that they would never say "Dave told I the game was over" -- and the cries of delight that rose in the room you would not believe.

I did the same thing with these sentences --

Both Sarah and (I/me) had dinner at the mall.

Ethan gave a ride to Sarah and (I/me).

--showing them the right pronouns, and why they were the right pronouns.

"You're the first one to ever explain this," one of the students said.

"That makes so much sense," said another.

"You know what my teacher in high school told me?" said a third. "She said never use me, no matter what. I got counted off every time I did."

I would put down the name of the high school he says he went to, but it is too depressing.

Oh Look!

2011-10-25T14:31:00.003-04:00

The Bloggess and I are cousins!

Except Dr. Skull and I feel the same way about phones. Generally I just leave mine in the car until it runs down and then two or three days later we're like, hmm, wonder why no phone calls for a week now? Oh, yeah...

Hey Look

2011-10-25T13:57:00.002-04:00

I posted about class issues in writing over on FanSci!!

You should go read it.

Instead of a Post...

2011-10-22T12:35:00.001-04:00

...cool news!

I've had the flu all week, and am just beginning to recover. But! Look here!

EoTW is back! Best news in weeks!

We don't need no liberals and their arts...

2011-10-11T12:37:00.002-04:00

Over on LGM, Erik has a post discussing the on-going campaign by the Right to gut higher ed.

Well, it's education in general, of course, but we're focusing on higher ed at the moment.

The present trope is that "We don't need any fancy-pants liberal arts education," that kids should be studying something at college they can get a job with, as if English, history, and anthroplogy did not lead to jobs: when in fact, yes, they do. (More on this in a moment.) As if the liberal arts were a giant waste of money, and only business schools and the hard sciences and tech schools paid off.

Now I have nothing against hard sciences and tech schools, which are excellent fields of study (business school is another fucking matter), but those are not the only fields worth studying, and not everyone is interested in or able to study tech or science. I speak as someone who has run up against the limits of her ability more than once -- most recently this year, when Aikido is teaching me about the different natures of intelligence.

I have excellent linguistic and abstract intelligence. Language is my business and I'm brilliant at it. I might even be a genius. I've certainly never met anyone who is better than me -- not yet, anyway, though granted the competition in Fuck Smith is limited.

What I'm not a genius at is physical skills. When it comes to getting my body to move is certain patterns, and remembering those patterns, I'm an absolute idiot. If you had to judge my intelligence by how clever I am in the dojo, you would think my IQ was about 89. I swear. I can't remember anything from one end of the lesson to the next, I can't do what I'm told two minutes after I have been told it, things that eleven year olds can do, I fail miserably at.

I'm fairly good at math -- and by fairly good, I mean I can get the math if you explain it to me slowly and I pay careful attention. If you evaluated my intelligence via my math skills, you'd think my IQ was about 110, probably. Bright, but not really promising. I would never, this is what I am saying to you, be able to make it as an engineer, or finish a chemistry degree, or -- probably -- a biology or geology degree, though I might have a better shot with those. Math degree? It is to laugh.

(I'm pretty sure I would also crash and burn in a business degree or an education degree, for other reasons.)

Whereas I sailed through the Comp Lit degree. I was the star of that program.

Because, despite what RW likes to argue, there are different kinds of intelligence.

And why does this matter? Why do we even care? Besides the whole a-mind-is-a-terrible-thing-to-waste factor? (Though that is true and we do care?)

Because we need these different sorts of intelligences -- these are all the different tools of the human experience, all the different ways of approaching the world, and they all are, in fact, important, no matter what Rick Scott seems to think. ("Why does the state need to have more anthroplogists" he demands.) When you have a problem, a hammer and a bigger hammer are not, in fact, the only tools you may need to solve that problem. You might, in fact, need an anthropologist. Or an English major.

Which is what major companies (like Wal-Mart) are finding out, as I learned from one of the presentations at the APA this weekend. Hiring business majors often turns out to be the wrong move. As it turns out, business majors aren't taught to reason, or to write, or to think for themselves. They're taught to memorize and to dress properly. It's English majors and other liberal arts majors who learn critical thinking and the other vital skills needed in the business world -- they turn out to be what the corporations need. (Though we may not be that interested in working for them, sadly.) Business schools have, according to the presentation I sat through, started trying to model their programs more on liberal arts programs, trying to mimic our success in turning out students who can think and write and be creative...Why not just let them be liberal arts majors, you wonder?

Yes, well. Different sorts of intelligence, again. If they could be anthropology majors, they wouldn't be business majors, would they?

My point! And I do have one. It's not destroy the business schools. Or the STEM programs, God knows. It's get the idiot politicians out of education.

Because seriously. What's their qualification for even meddling with this? Have they ever taught? Do they have a clue? When was the last time they were near a classroom?

Would you let someone who had never been in a medical school tell you how to run a hospital? Or someone who didn't know the first thing about the theory of flight start fucking about with your jet engine?

Go back to fucking up the country, why don't you, Rick Scott?

Or here's a better idea. I know a Sunday school looking for a pastor. Have at it.

Interrogating the Tropes: A Columbus Day Post

2011-10-10T10:21:00.005-04:00

Almost all my writing, from my very first scrawl, when I was a tiny little novelist (and yes, the very first writing I ever wrote was a science fiction novel), has been what we call in the field "writing that interrogates," though obviously at eight I didn't know to call it that.

You see, basically, there are two kinds of writing.

(I crack myself up when I say things like this. No, obviously, there are not two kinds of writing. There are a bazillion kinds of writing. What I mean when I say things like this is, Let's pretend for the sake of this discussion that there are two kinds of writing.)

Two kinds of writing: Those that reinforce the standard tropes of the society, and those that interrogate those tropes.

Now what do I mean by tropes?

This is a word that just means turns, figures of speech, dohickeys, gizmos. I'm using it so I won't have to use the more specific words like ethics, mores, standards, ethos, norms, all those words that make me itchy. For tropes here, read things that make society work -- the unwritten rules, the warrants we all accept without (usually) understanding we're accepting them.

For instance: warrants in this society include (among others) that the two-parent family is the best family; that a child growing up and leaving home to start its own life is a good thing; that violence is sometimes necessary to solve problems; that people should work to support themselves; that material wealth is a good thing; that ambition is a good thing; that romantic love is a good thing; that love and loyalty to one's family is a good thing; that women loving their children is a good thing; I could go on.

Fiction can either support these tropes, these warrants, or it can interrogate them.

My argument is that science fiction should always interrogate its society's tropes -- bring them into question, ask why we hold them, and whether they are worth holding.

This is, of course, disturbing, especially when the trope in question is close to our hearts. (It's easy to interrogate a trope we despise. Men should be in charge of the household? Bah! I'll interrogate that one all day long! Romantic love is a good thing? Let me at it!! But women should love their children...well, um...) But as Plato pointed out to us, an unexamined trope is not worth holding.

As I think I have mentioned, I've been reading Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's Mothers and Others, which in fact (among other things) examines the trope of the two parent family, the notion (close to the heart of many) that the best of all families is the married man and woman raising children together. In fact, as Hrdy demonstrates, that is not how most children have been or are being raised in human societies -- ever -- and that is not the best way for children to be raised. The trope of the two parent family is an absolutely myth. Alloparents (a mother, a grandmother, aunts, older siblings, uncles) who raise children together turn out to be the best way, and the most common way, for children to be raised, both in pre-history, in hunter-gather societies, and currently. Children raised this way do better emotionally and nutrionally.

Further, apparently, this need to raise children this way -- with alloparents -- is the basis for all human society. Because raising children is such a pricey enterprise humans needed a giant society around them to do it. Despite what conservatives believe, in other words, it does not take a family to raise a child: it does, in fact, take a village.

My point! And I have one!

The best science fiction and fantasy should not support the warrants and the tropes of the society -- as conservative SF/F tends to do -- but should challange them, interrogate them, question them. The best SF/F should say, well, what if this happened, so that we had to do it this way? What would the world look like then? Or what if a society did it that way? Then what? Would that be better, or worse?

What if Columbus had not destroyed the American peoples? What would the world look like then? What if?

Ain't No Racists Here

2011-10-05T23:24:00.003-04:00

Dr. Skull taught Frederick Douglass in his WLIT today, and got into a discussion of racism with his class -- a road, as you know, that I too have gone down, often, in these parts.

His white students, he said, insisted racism was no longer an issue in America today. His black students laughed in disbelief.

Which brings me to this video: Part one, Part two. Required viewing, I think, for every American with his or her white privilege intact.

The best, and worst, moment, I think, is the kid who walked out -- who can't take surrendering her white privilege for two hours on a Saturday morning; and who quotes Martin Luther King Jr. while she does it.

As if.

My First Fan-Fic

2011-10-03T01:53:00.014-04:00

Look! My very first Fan-Fic for Broken Slate! (Written by the Kid: she says I should explain to you that it is a My Little Pony crossover, though I told her everyone knows about the MLP: FiM universe.)

Ragnar slammed open the door to Harper's room. He ran up to Harper's worktable, stopping behind his shoulder.

"Harper, why did you insist on putting that cot on the committee? It is an insult to all Lord Holders."Ragnar paused. "What is that you're watching?"

Harper paused his handheld, freezing the strange animate in a blur of pastels. "Well, good morning, Ragnar. Should I fetch you some tea?" Harper said.

"What is that on your worktable?" Ragnar pointed to a purple fluffy thing.

"It's a disguised surveillance camera," Harper said. He stood up to his full height. "If you don't have anything important to say, could you please leave?"

Ragnar scurried out the door.

Harper sat down with an exasperated sigh. He unpaused his handheld, and music drifted from it:

My little pony, my little pony

I still wondered what friendship could be

Until you all shared it's magic with me!

Harper patted the Twilight Sparkle plushy sitting on his worktable.

"Twilight Sparkle," He said. "You are the best pony."

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

2011-09-30T09:32:00.003-04:00

It's a good year for fiction writers on the market this year. Or maybe just a good year for me!

In any case I am finding many jobs I want to apply and am actually qualified for in places I actually want to live. This is splendid, as you can imagine. I am kept busy applying for jobs, and spend probably too much time researching various universities and university towns, considering which I would chose to live in, if two of them decided to make me offers at once (oh, happy problem! and very unlikely, I admit).

Dr. Skull is also applying for jobs, and there are also many jobs for his two various specialities, film and poetry. We spend a bit of time tormenting ourselves with that possibility, too -- what if he gets a job offer and I get a job offer and both are good job offers and then what?

Yes, I know. We should have these problems

Meanwhile, due the fact that we teach at a university that does not recognize the existence of any religion except far-right Christians, we are celebrating Rosh Hashanah tonight. There will be a nice chicken, challah, apples and honey, and we will go down to the Arkansas river to throw bread in the water and repent our sins.

Happy New Year, y'all.

Reading and Writing

2011-09-28T19:45:00.005-04:00

I'm having, on the whole, a bad week -- mainly work-related crap I can't blog about, but its very wearing stuff that makes me want to sell all my stock in humanity short. I mean, really. If this is what we're like, why bother? It's just disheartening and exhausting and I hate feeling disgusted by people in this fashion. I'd rather read Chaucer, who demonstrates the other end of the spectrum. (Not his characters, gah, no. Chaucer himself demonstrates it!)

But! For every human character who makes me want to condemn the lot of us to extinction, because really, what is the point if this is what we're like -- there is Chaucer; and there is George Eliot and Eleanor Arnason; and there is Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, who I am reading now, and her latest book, Mothers and Others, is just brilliant.

Of course, Hrdy always is brilliant -- I started reading her with Mother Nature, a look at infanticide, among other things (I'm really selling it short) and have since read everything by her I could get my hands on.

Mothers and Others is an examination of how humans became co-operative -- as Hrdy argues we are (rather than competitive, as most anthropology textbooks claim we are). Hrdy argues that it is the enormous expense of raising (provisioning and protecting) a human child from birth to adulthood that caused humans to evolve into co-operative creatures. We needed alloparents to survive as a species, more or less. (Translation: it did take a village.)

Not only is this an excellent book, well-written, supported, and researched, it explains why what is happening at my university is depressing me so much. Well, rats.

Win Free Book!

2011-09-23T11:12:00.003-04:00

Look over here!

Crossed Genres is holding a book giveaway -- you can win a free copy of Subversion: Science Fiction and Fantasy Tales of Challenging the Norm, which -- yes! -- is the anthology my new story, "Cold Against the Bone," appears in.

Details here.

Slightly Related Thoughts...

2011-09-22T12:40:00.005-04:00

...in lieu of an actual post:

Today I applied for two jobs I really want to get and one I sort of would like

Applying for jobs takes an astounding length of time

Which really annoys me, because I haven't got any spare time these days

But I guess it's like that marshmallow thing they do with toddlers

By which I mean, if I can delay gratification (WTF that means, in my situation, where I'm not seeming to get much gratification these days) by suffering now...

Future happiness!

Though when, I would like to know. When? One of my students was exalting about gas prices being "only" $3.31/gallon yesterday. Ai.

Protests on Wall Street continue. I try to be cheered by this. Revolution now?

22nd of the month and we are already out of money.

But! My novel is going well and besides applying for jobs I have submitted 3 stories this week.

Upwards and onwards.

And!

The kid wrote a fan-fic of my novel. My first fan-fic! It is very funny and I will share it with you soon.

Fall! Yay!

2011-09-15T15:08:00.004-04:00

Woke to cool winds and gray skies this morning. Fall! My favorite season. Next to February, of course.

Last night, the kid and I stopped at the Harps on the way home from school. She's sitting in on my WLIT I night class this semester.

Wednesday is my long day at the university -- I'm there from seven in the morning until 8.30 at night, teaching all day, mostly, although I have a five hour stretch between my last afternoon class and the start of my evening class, which I use for prep and office hours. Yesterday, though, this got taken up by a lengthy and boring, ah, I mean extremely useful meeting. My, do I enjoy academic meetings. So useful. And so many things get done at them which can't be more efficiently done though e-mail!

Where was I?

Oh, yes. After a 14 hour workday, the kid and I stopped at Harps, so that there might be something to eat in the house for once, as well as to get something for dinner.

As we're rounding the dairy aisle, I said, "What about yeggs? Do we have any yeggs?"

"Yes," she said, in her best sarcastic voice, "we have EGGS, MOM."

"Okay," I said. "Don't get EGGS, then."

"Why do you always say that. Yeggs."

"Because it's what your dad always used to say. It's an old joke."

"Well, there's no Y on the word, you know."

"Jeez. Really? Thanks for pointing that out."

We rounded the corner to frozen food, and suddenly she laughed. "Ow!"

"What?" I said.

"Nothing. I just rolled my eyes so hard I think I sprained my eye muscles."

My kid, folks. Thirteen! She'll be here all year.

Poetry!

2011-09-09T23:04:00.002-04:00

The kid, cashing in on the zombie craze sweeping the nation, has written a zombie haiku.

Here it is, for your enjoyment:

Zombie Hitler

Evil when he was alive
Now really, really evil 'cause he's a zombie
Where are the zombie hunters?

My Story! It haz Sold!

2011-09-08T17:25:00.003-04:00

I heard from Strange Horizons yesterday: they are taking my short story, "In the Cold." Hurray, hurray!

I must say, of everything I love about being a writer*, the bit where you open the email and it begins, "Dear Kelly, We're pleased to accept your story..." -- that there is one of my favorite bits.

*and I love almost everything about being a writer, the thinking up new plots, the cold mornings and hot coffee, the revising, the editing, the research, the part about how reading other people's stories and novels is reseach

Doing Too Much

2011-09-07T00:29:00.003-04:00

It's barely September here and I'm already worn out.

Too much to do, as usual. (Sad me!) I've missed Aikido twice this week due to too much prep work. I'm teaching four different preps this semester -- WLIT I, English Grammar, Fiction Workshop, and Comp I -- as well as homeschooling the kid and trying to hammer together this novel, edit the magazine, and apply for jobs.

Oh, have I mentioned that? I'm applying for jobs in the slim hope that maybe we can move out of Arkansas. Not that I don't love my work and my students here -- because I do -- but because I have had my bait of Fort Smith, Arkansas, with its two bookstore (well, wait -- one bookstore, and one Bibles-a-Million) and its two decent restaurants and its two movie theaters that show exactly the same six movies on fifteen different screens and they are never the movies I want to see and its tiny little art museum, which I know is doing the best it can with the tiny little funding it gets, but still, and the strictures that are always on me and worse on my kid -- why should she have to grow up somewhere where she is afraid to speak what she feels aloud on the street? Where she is afraid to use a public restroom, because of how she looks and dresses? Where she is afraid to admit her religion to her best friend in case that friend stops liking her? (And no, I am not making any of this up.)

Anyway! I did make it to Aikido tonight -- where I got banged around merrily on the mat. It is strange that this experience should cheer me up, but it did.

Also, I have joined the AWP, so now I can begin assembling a packet and applying to even more jobs.

Meanwhile! All four of my classes this semester are brilliant classes, even if they do take enormous prep work; and my novel is going very well; and don't I love Aikido!
Once more into the breach, dear friends!

Labor Day Weekend Arrives

2011-09-02T10:29:00.003-04:00

And I am pleased.

I've been hard at work on the sequel to Broken Slate, which I am currently and I think finally calling Triple Junction (this is I think perhaps the fifth name this novel has been given, but that reflects more its transformations than my indecisions this time): and what I need most now is time to work on it. It's going like a rocket. I just need recording time.

Which I don't have, with four different classes with four different preps.

Good classes, all of them. Just labor intensive.

Elsewhere, this weekend, I will maybe break down and make some bagels. Which I haven't done all summer, because of the oppressive heat, but the weather guy says we'll get highs in the 80s, so maybe.

And I've got Aikido. And Dr. Skull is going to Green Egg an organic chicken. So there's that!

What about y'all? Doing anything cool for the long weekend?

Armageddon

2011-08-31T10:05:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow is the first day of September.

According to the forecast, we have YET ANOTHER high of 102 degrees coming straight at us.

I've lost count of how many days of above 100 this has been. Like a gazillion. It hasn't been under 90 here since May, I think.

Just WRONG.

Yeah, but Rick Perry says the scientists are inventing global warming to pad their funding. So, okay, then.

New Crossed Genres Release!

2011-08-30T13:36:00.004-04:00

Crossed Genres is releasing a new title -- a very cool one!

I've known about this for a bit; in fact, I submitted to it. How could I not? It's my favorite subgenre! Subversion!

Subversion: Science Fiction and Fantasy Tales of Challenging the Norm.

My story made the cut! It's coming out in December.

(This story isn't a Martin tale, but it's on the same world.)

Strange Horizons Needs You!

2011-08-29T16:05:00.002-04:00

I've been a fan of Strange Horizons for five or six years now -- they were the first SF/F magazine I found that was publishing the sort of writing drew me into science fiction in the first place: speculation, new worlds, new ideas; as opposed to conservative apologia, retreats into old ideas, or science fascism.

They are also one of the best markets for fiction -- paying professional rates, and buying new writers. (I can tell you this is true, since I am one of the new writers they bought this year.)

Beyond all that, of course, the fiction, reviews, and essays over there are consistently worth reading.

Every year they have a fund raiser. That time is now. Chip in if you can.

Coolness!

2011-08-26T18:51:00.002-04:00

Via Crooked Timber, I find this site:

The International Digital Children's Library.

Basically, the site lets you link to online texts of children's books from all over the planet. Seriously, you spin a graphic globe, point and click New Zealand, say, and are presented with dozens of picture books and children's novels from New Zealand which you can read on your PC or your iPad, from all different eras. I'm having so much fun.

Not all of them are in English, but plenty are; and even among those that aren't, many have been translated, and others are picture books.

We're living in the future!

No Grils ALlowed

2011-08-26T09:05:00.006-04:00

Over on Fansci, Barbara links us to this charmingly portentuous bit of work, published (oh where else) in the NYTimes.

Robert Lipsyte, who apparently writes books for boys about boy-stuff like football, is of the opinion that literature is being ruined by (you guessed it) the infiltration of girls.

See, back in the good old days, when those rotten girls kept off his lawn, I guess, it was men who wrote the books: men like Hemingway and Steinbeck.

And when YA fiction got invented, well. Men were still writing it: Paul Zindel, Robert Cormier, John Donovan. If an occasional girl did slip it, she had the decency to pretend she was a man: S. E. Hinton, M. E. Kerr. And she wrote about men, and about manly manly things.

Now! All these "young female novelists fresh from MFA programs" are writing books with "overwhelmingly female" imprints! (Whatever that means. Mr. Lipsyte is a writer, but half the time I can't tell what he's talking about, except that he doesn't like girls. That comes across clearly. For instance, he claims all the books he loves from those "good old days" which are entirely about "men," written by "men" about "male" problems are "not gender specific." However, books being written today, by "young female novelists" which contain girl characters -- not even entirely girls, mind you, they just have girls in them -- are "simplistic" girl's books.)

Lipsyte seems to believe it is the fault of the women and the girls that boys do not read; or, more specifically, that girls read more.

He reminds me of the conservative thinkers who are all in a knot because more women are enrolled at and graduating from universities now, and doing better at those universities, than are their male counterparts; and more young women are doing better at academics in high schools as well lately too. This, too, is the fault of women, I will have you know. (Or specifically, feminists!) We have, nefariously, corrupted the academic process...somehow...so that boys can't win anymore.

I suggest to you, rather, the fault lies elsewhere -- perhaps with the culture itself? The culture that tells boys (and girls, but to a lesser extent) that reading is a stupid activity, a sissy activity, not something a Real Man would waste his time on?

A culture that says reading isn't as important as video games and football and American Idol?

A culture that does not, in fact, seek out, pay, and publish decent writers or their books? So that it is only crap writers of either gender who end up in the bookstores? (No, I'm not entirely serious with this last one -- but yes, 98% of what is ending up on the shelves these days, you gotta wonder what they're thinking at the big publishing houses.)

A culture that thinks teaching students to score well on a ridiculous standardized test is much more important than teaching them to love books?

Students reach my freshman classroom never having read an entire book through in their entire academic career: in their entire life. That's got nothing to do with "young female novelists from MFA programs," Mr. Lipsyte. It's got to do with misplaced priorities in American culture.

Or maybe it just is American culture. Sports, guns, God, and NASCAR, yeah? What do books have to do with America, really?

Goodbye, Summer. I said GOODBYE!

2011-08-23T19:37:00.004-04:00

I've had enough of this summer. Over a hundred here today all day, plus humid as an armpit, forecast says 102, 103, 104 for the next five or six days, nothing below the high nineties as far as they're bothering to look. If this weather was a dog, I'd take it out and shoot it.

Meanwhile, the semester has begun, so I'm working like a dog. Grammar and comp, WLIT on the side. Haven't met my Fiction Workshop yet -- that's Thursday night -- but the rest have me booked and overbooked, especially since I'm doing Aikido and writing the novel at the same time.

Good thing I don't sleep anymore, I suppose.

Seriously, what is it with the insomnia? Ever since about July, I seem to have lost the ability to sleep. I don't fall asleep anymore, and even when I do get to sleep, I wake up after only about five hours. It's not because I don't need sleep, either -- I'm worn out all the time. I'm blaming the weather, because, you know, everything is the fault of this suck-ass weather.

Meanwhile the kid is having the same insomnia. I blame her adolescence, though. Because everything is the fault of her being 13.

Back to prep work.

Ooo Baby!

2011-08-21T17:32:00.002-04:00

Mitt needs a tax break so he can make his big house bigger.

Meanwhile, here in Arkansas, I haven't had a raise in five years, my husband has been unemployed since May, we're so broke I can't buy shoes, and most months we have to decide which bill we're going to pay -- the water bill, the power bill, or the phone bill: because if we pay them all, we can't eat the fourth week of the month.

But Mitt? Well, he needs a bigger house on the beach.

Ooo, baby. Gimmee some of that sweet, sweet class war now.

My New Favorite Website

2011-08-14T19:08:00.001-04:00

Because around here every day around 3:00 Dr. Skull says, "What are we doing for dinner?"

Now I can just hit this.

(Just a bit NSFW.)

My Tiny Summer Break

2011-08-11T14:05:00.003-04:00

I am in it now.

We get about nine days between the end of Summer II and the beginning of Fall term -- which kicks off with two days of "pre-school training," as the 8-5:00 fun fest is called. Hours of meetings and lectures about subjects as fascinating as what to do about plagiarism to why not to sexually harass your students and colleagues to here are the federal rules about ADA regulations again (we have to get that one every year; I believe it's federal law).

I'm spending the break working feverishly on my novel, while huddled in front of the fan, though actually the weather has become reasonable. (Although, as one of my FB friends remarked yesterday, it's amusing when a high of 99 is reasonable weather -- but yeah, in Arkansas that's the new standard now.) I'm also sending out all the stories I worked on while the Summer sessions were running, when all I really had energy to do was short stories. I've got seven of them up and shiny, so I'll get them all out in circulation, see what comes of it.

This fall I'll have (and this is kind of ironic, I guess) more time to write than I did this Summer, which was a real bitch of a summer, altogether. I'm hoping to get Triple Junction done and in shape to submit somewhere. It's going really well right now.

Meanwhile! The Boston Mountain Writing Group is reviving! We found a new writer to join and maybe two, Zelda is coming back and maybe bringing a fourth writer. All may still be well. This would make me happy. I don't feel right without my writing group.

And, the last two nights, we've had massive thunderstorms here in the Fort. Very exciting.

That is all the good news. As for the bad news, well. I don't have the strength for that today.

Maybe tomorrow.

School's Out!

2011-08-06T19:57:00.003-04:00

And I have figured out how to fix the sequel to Broken Slate.

(Basically I am going to morph Martin's War INTO Triple Junction. This is going to work like you wouldn't believe. It will fix the terrible issue I was having with Efram's character, it will front-load the plot with the Pirians, which was the other vicious issue I was having, it will super-charge the front half and middle of the book -- YO! PROBLEMS SOLVED.)

Now all I have to do is get most of it done over the next 14 days while school is not in session.

No, not really: because this next semester coming up is so sweet: I am teaching four classes, two of which are night classes (Wednesday WLIT, and Thursday Fiction Workshop) which leaves me only 2 day classes, both on MWF (9:00 and 11:00) which means, you guessed it, two whole days with NOTHING to do but write.

Now, if Fort Smith would ever stop being the hottest place in the USA, I would be a happy camper.

112 today.

112 yesterday

110 tomorrow.

No relief in sight.

Success!

2011-08-06T00:05:00.001-04:00

The Republicans have been shooting for this for 30 years.

Do you think they'll finally be happy that they broke the country?

Idiots.

New Issue!

2011-08-02T01:04:00.002-04:00

A new issue of Crossed Genres is out.

Some excellent stories this month, I must say.

Go read.

Also, the next month's genre is up -- MONSTERS!! -- so start your engines.

Oh, Come ON Now.

2011-08-01T10:39:00.004-04:00

Just checked the weather report.

High of 108 today. High of 108 tomorrow. High of 109 on Wednesday.

Lowest high we'll have -- for as long as the forcast runs -- is 103.

Lowest high we've had, for the past 40 days, was 97. (That was on a day when it rained half the afternoon.)

But you know what? Al Gore is still fat.

Update: But! To cheer you up! The Bloggess!

The Sky! It's Falling!

2011-07-30T18:31:00.003-04:00

Or about to catch on fire, I am not sure which.

For well over a month now, the highs in Fuck Smith have been over a hundred degrees. No end in sight either. This month, my electric bill was $377.00. Which is more than half my rent, just to give you a yard stick. And that is with the AC turned up to just barely tolerable, and fans buzzing away in every room, and all of us going around in such skimpy clothing that we shock the mailman and even so it takes until about 2:00 a.m. until the house is cool enough to sleep at night.

And then, in DC, apparently the Rethuglicans have decided to destroy the country just to show they can. Because they're thugs, and don't have anything else to do with their giant dicks.

And meanwhile, out here in the real world, none of us have enough money to pay the medical bills and the power bills and the rent and buy groceries. That's those of us with jobs. Because lots of us don't have jobs. Which I guess the Rethugs forgot that bit.

Or maybe they don't think it's true? The way they think Algore made up global warming? Because it's not hot in their chilly little enclave? And they have plenty of money, so obviously poverty's not an issue?

Here. Watch this for me. I'm off to stew in this fucking heat wave some more.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

2011-07-24T18:49:00.003-04:00

So I've been doing Aikido for, what, three weeks now? Maybe a bit more.

It's a salutary experience.

Aside from physics, aerobics, and that logic class when I was 20, I don't think I've ever actually done anything I've been bad at. I don't mean a little bad, either: I mean as in astoundingly bad, wincingly bad, OMG worst in the class you gotta be kidding bad. I really suck.

And physics, aerobics, and that logic class I all quit, like, at once. As soon as I realized I was hopeless, I was fucking out of there. Yeah, no, okay, let's not, I said, and that was that.

But aikido, it's kind of like the algebra and finite math classes I took when I was 19. See, I wanted to do those (I also kind of had to, if I was going to get a degree) so I stuck it out; and also I started getting better at them almost at once, which helped a lot.

With aikido, I'm not getting better very much faster. Maybe a little better, which is nice. I mean, I'm not the worst person in the class anymore. (Only because a newer worser student has added. But still!)

The salutary part! For the very first time in my life, I can see what it is like for someone to want to be able to do something, to be actually trying to do something, and to not be able to do it.

Yeah, I know, smack me with a clue stick. And I've got it coming. Especially given I'm a fucking teacher, I should know better. And I have always tried to give my students the benefit of believing they were trying. But that's different, of course, from this: knowing what's like on the other side. I just can't do any better than I am doing.

Well, okay, maybe this is what it is like for my students who write me those sad emails, saying, I don't know what you mean by write an essay explaining how to fix a specific problem in my life -- how do I do that? What problem in my life?

Maybe that's just exactly like me saying to sensei I don't know what you mean by katatori ichio. What do I do with my feet exactly? Where do I grab? Turn which way now? I don't get it...

My friend Zelda used to talk about all kinds of literacy. This is what she meant.

My Novel! They reviews it!

2011-07-22T17:39:00.001-04:00

Every time I see someone mentioning my novel anywhere I start to giggle.

Because, jeez, wow.

So Much Coolness!

2011-07-20T22:43:00.004-04:00

I'm still chortling with delight every time I run into one of those new film clips you can find, sometimes, on entries on Wikipedia.

(Or this one!)

It's like living in the future!

(I'm such a geek.)

Here's a Shocker

2011-07-16T17:58:00.003-04:00

Over in Georgia, a real shocker has developed: schools where administration has been encouraging and even forcing teachers to cheat on those mandatory standardized tests in order to inflate the scores on which the school's funding is based.

Can I get a d'oh?

When you based a school's funding on how well students do on a given assessment, WTF do you think will happen next?

Here in Arkansas, the governor and the legislature has just decided to base 25% of the funding of the higher education on our graduation rates. Yes, that's right. How many students we graduate determines how much money we get from the state.

WTF do you think happens next?

Even if professors have integrity (and I happen to think most do) if they don't have tenure (and these days most of us do not) what happens when the dean calls a professor or an instructor into their office and says something to the effect of, you've been giving too many D's and F's, this kid had some bad breaks, give him another chance. Let him take the final again.

Or: This kid didn't mean to plagiarize. He just didn't understand the rules. Let him write the paper again.

Or: This kid had too much pressure on him, that's why he missed half your classes. Give him a B instead of that F.

Do you think the professor says No, I won't?

And if the professors (or adjunct instructor) does -- what do you think happens next?

Because it would be nice if higher ed (or education) was about learning and the transmission of knowledge and enlightenment.

It would be nice if pigs could fly too.

Look!

2011-07-16T01:23:00.001-04:00

A review of my novel!

Go here.

(He likes it.)

My Book!

2011-07-14T10:58:00.010-04:00

Look here! You can buy it!

Or on Kindle!

Or from Smashwords.

(Isn't Martin so hot? I love that cover.)

You can also hear my Outer Alliance Podcast interview about the book.

Twenty Years of Hair!

2011-07-12T13:15:00.002-04:00

Bart Leib is donating 20 years of hair if you buy Broken Slate this Friday!

Well, if enough of you do, anyway.

Go here for details.

A Party! For My Novel!

2011-07-11T13:20:00.001-04:00

Look here! It's a party for Broken Slate!

If you're at ReaderCon, you should go.

Good News, Bad News

2011-07-11T00:07:00.001-04:00

I got an excellent rejection today. I guess that's good news AND bad news.

Plus it got to 104 degrees again here today (got to 107 yesterday). I think we're all gonna cook, frankly.

I'm working on my novel and it's going so well nothing can upset me. I love it when the writing is working!

Hey, Coolness

2011-07-09T15:28:00.003-04:00

Look! My novel has its own FB page.

(I swear I didn't create it!)

Oh, And While We're ON This Point

2011-07-09T01:00:00.001-04:00

God, do I want a job somewhere where half the year it is not so hot your ass blisters when you sit down in your car.

If the universe could arrange to send me that job BEFORE next summer, that would rock.

TNX

Living In the Climate Change

2011-07-08T23:23:00.003-04:00

So I've started Aikido, as I think I probably mentioned. And I love it to bits, it's probably the most interesting physical activity I have ever done. But (you heard a but coming, didn't you?) my shit is it exhausting.

We meet four times a week for two hours each session. The entire two hours, except for a brief bit at the beginning, where we stretch, is spent either throwing people or being thrown. Once you're thrown -- getting thrown doesn't really hurt much when you're a white belt, which I am -- but once you're thrown, you have to get up from the mat. Now that sounds easy enough, until you have done it like 75 times. I come home from each session so exhausted I am loopy. And my muscles haven't stopped aching yet, though sensei promises me eventually they will. After I'm dead, maybe he means?

Anyway! The point of the post! It's been 100 degree or over that for nearly a month here, and will be a hundred degree or over that for the next ten days at least, and sensei likes to turn off the AC in the dojo after the kid's session is over. Yesterday, Thursday, it was 102 when we set out for Aikido (I always check) and even after the sun set it was still frakking hot. By the time we're done, we're all soaked with sweat. But during the session, interestingly, though you're sweating, of course, you don't notice the heat. Too busy working I guess. "Didn't get above 90 in here," sensei noted, after the session. The giant thermostat on the wall said 89 degrees.

Now this is not true of mental labor, I can assure you. When I'm writing or or editing or reading for class, if the tempature gets above 75, I stop being functional. Which is adding up to some huge electric bills at chez delagar, may I mention. Because this is the hottest June/July I can remember, and no end to it in sight.

I guess this is also living in the future. But not one I like.

What, Already?

2011-07-05T10:57:00.003-04:00

It's the first day of Summer II. I'm only doing one class this semester, but it's WLIT II, so very dense on the reading. Lighter on the essays. Eh, it's a trade-off.

We went up to Fayetteville yesterday and visited my parents. Also saw Uncle Charger and went to the movies (lots and lots and lots of theaters in Fayetteville, including a massive new stadium theater called the Malco Razorback with a giant fountain in its center, like something out of the Roman Empire, which is where we went). We saw Midnight in Paris, in one of those tiny little auditoriums that seat like 75 people, all of them exactly like us -- i.e. liberals and probably English professors or at least Art History majors who wish they could live in Paris. We all laughed in delight as Gil, our hero, met one of our old friends after the next. My kid, who was sitting next to me, kept leaning over to whisper to me, confirming her guesses about who each person was. And, when the movie was over, she said, wistfully, "Let's move to Paris."

I wish, kid.

Then we left the theater to go out into the blistering 101 degree Arkansas July, blasting sunlight, a huge field-sized parking lot filled with SUVs, to drive down College Avenue, a highway filled with car dealerships, liquor stores, fast-food shops, and strip malls. The closest we'll ever come to Paris is Paris, Arkansas.

Which is, among other reasons, why this solemn little apology for our betters and why it isn't right that they pay their share of running this country really got down my neck this morning. Oh, it's so sad that Mr. and Mrs. Jones can barely make ends meet on $250, 000.00/year -- after, you know, socking away $8000.00/per kid in college savings a year, and investing the maximum amount in their 401(k) accounts, mind you -- they're so poor, what with the high cost of living in Manhattan, they can't afford expensive vaccations, it's tragic.

Though of course if they moved to Texas or Alabama (the horror) they'd have plenty of money, the article adds. But who can actually do that, the article hints.

I can't afford a dentist, much less to sock away $8000.00 for college savings for my kids. ($8000.00/year is my rent.) I don't have a house. I don't put any money in my 401(k). If you don't count TIAA-CREF, I don't have a 401(k) -- and my university puts money in that, I can't afford to match it. I haven't gone anywhere on a vacation, if you don't count the odd trip up to Fayetteville to see a movie, in almost three years now. And mind you, I count myself well off enough, because I can look around me and see my students, who are living on, probably, a fourth of what I make. They're the actual poor. I'm doing all right, even if I feel kind of desperate toward the end of the month (okay, by the third week in the month, usually, these days).

But it's Mr. and Mrs. Jones we're supposed to feel sorry for?

Shit. The idiots who write these articles don't have a clue.

And neither, frankly, sad as I am to say it, does Woody Allen. Move to Paris? Like that's a choice most people in America even have.

Oh Boy!

2011-07-03T18:06:00.003-04:00

I have finished grading!

Normally this is a big deal, since it signals the start of the between-semester break, or several weeks of pure uninterrupted writing time.

However: in the summer sessions, between-semesters equals three days, so, well, big deal.

In other news! I have started Aikido. My kid, as long term readers know, has been doing Aikido since she was five. Recently she has begun transitioning into the adult class, which seemed a good time for me to join the dojo along with her. (Her in the kid's class and me in the adult class would be impossible, since I'd be going to four adult sessions and driving her to two separate kid sessions, basically ten hours a week on five separate days of the week, impossible in our already over-crowded schedule.)

Anyway! I love Aikido. But man, what a workout. I don't think I've ever done anything, not even during my brief stint of laying roof, that is this physically exhausting. Certainly running the five-K was not this tiring, or riding cross country, thirty miles a day, as I used to do in my prime. That was nothing compared to this.

Sensei Greg says I'll get used to it soon, though. And I believe him.

Ooo! Look at This!

2011-07-01T20:07:00.001-04:00

My novel! Let me show it to you!

I just got the actual physical objects, the novel copies themselves, in a package from Bart & Kay, my publishers, in the mail today; but here, you can see what the book looks like on the announcement page over on Crossed Genres.

It's so pretty!

Somebody Stage An Intervention

2011-06-28T17:26:00.006-04:00

I'm over there on FB picking fights with strangers again. WTF. Not like I don't know better.

My kid is always coming to me -- she has a Deviant Art account -- saying, Ma, Ma, this idiot says this about Furries, this troll says this about women, Ma, you won't BELIEVE what this ridiculous, he says this about, what should I say back?

And with her, oh, I'm so Socratic, I'm so reasonable. Darlin', I say, someone is wrong on the internet? Really? That's what you want to waste your afternoon on? Please. Read a book. Draw something. Let's make some bagels. Arguing with a troll? Not so much.

But when it's me -- oh, the shoe is on the other keyboard then, I see.

Yay!

2011-06-27T18:54:00.005-04:00

I took Athena's suggestion (from comments, here) and suggested to IT that maybe they could give me a loaner craptop with my data mirror'd up; which they did, over the weekend, and called me this morning, telling me I could come and get it whenever.

Now I am back in business.

Yay me!

(TNX, Athena!)

On The Other Hand...

2011-06-25T01:52:00.005-04:00

One bit of good new: less than a month until the official release of my lovely first novel, Broken Slate, on July 15.

The cover art, I have to tell you, is perfect.

(Not to mention smoking. I knew Martin was hot, but my.)

The Purpose of NCLB

2011-06-24T15:41:00.003-04:00

Over on Language Log, Mark Liberman has a post about the latest fuss over Kids Today -- that NYT article which you have probably seen, which claims standardized tests show that 4th graders don't know who Abraham Lincoln is, and high school seniors don't know what Brown v Board of Education did, and so on. Liberman doubts the veracity of the test, and shows us why.

I doubt the value and benefit of standardized tests and assessment in general, frankly, and always have. Assessing art or novels or movies doesn't work (this film tests well with teens in Peoria!); you get crap art. Assessing students -- at least with standardized tests -- does not work either. (How to assess them, then? Well, the way we did for centuries. Put a professional teacher in charge of the classroom and let that teacher say whether the student has learned or not. Does this always work? No. Does it work better than NCLB? My shit yes.)

But! Here is why I am posting about this! A comment, made over at LL:

"The point of the exit exams as they exist in the US today is not to assure that students are emerging with what they need to know in order to take up their next task in life, but to sell tests and programs and charters and other crap to schools which are not being funded for their actual purpose."

And this, I think, is true. The real aim of Mr. Bush's crap plan is not to hold teachers or schools accountable, and that is not why the Right likes it, either, as you can tell if you hang out on their blogs when they are discussing teachers or public schools for the ten minutes you can stand to do this. They hate public schools and public school teachers with a passion. Their aim is to destroy public schools and the teachers who work in them. NCLB is a tool that will do this. If we stop viewing it as an assessment tool that, bewilderingly, doesn't seem to be working very well, and start seeing it as a tool to destroy public education in America while making some friends of the Republican very rich along the way, well, everything becomes very much clearer.

It's like the Voter ID bills, and the drug testing for Welfare and Public Worker bills, and the Union busting bills, which all work hand in hand, notice. The poorer you get, the less likely you are to have the time or energy to be invested in voting, or have the means to vote or the means to be politically involved.

So it's not that Right is actually worried about voter fraud -- they're fine with that as long as it's fraud that aids them, as the 2000 election showed. No, they want to disenfranchise certain segments of the population, and if they can make their friends rich while they do that, hey, that's a bonus.

Whining

2011-06-22T23:54:00.002-04:00

My craptop broke. I am sad.

Good news: the machine is the property of the university, not me, so I do not have to pay for its repair. (Yay! Because as always, we are broke.)

Bad news: the guy at the Help Desk says it will be either days or weeks before I get it back. He does not know which.

Since I do most of my writing and academic work on the craptop these days, due to my busted metatarsal (it's mostly healed, but it still hurts if I don't keep my foot propped up) you can see why I am sad.

They Get Richer, We Get Poorer

2011-06-19T16:39:00.002-04:00

And, as Echidne adds, at her post here, showing how the income share for workers has been steadily declining for workers since 1948, that is probably a feature, not a bug, in the system.

Nor are the rich who own this country now happy with -- what is it? I forget exactly --- earning 250 times as much per hour as the average worker in America. No. They have to buy people like Gov. Walker to break the unions and destroy health care and get rid of minimum wage so that they can be even richer and own even more.

The fact is, the rich in this world will not be happy until we are serfs and they own it all. That's how they thought in Rome, and that's how they think now.

The Ignorance, It Burns

2011-06-17T13:58:00.004-04:00

This piece, in Slate today, about the misinformation / disinformation propogated by Shelby Foote (well, by Foote and Burns) in Ken Burns' Civil War, made me a little happier -- until I started reading the comments.

Apparently my student from a few semesters back is not the only one eager to erase slaves and PoC from "the late unpleasantness," as well as from history and modern life entirely.

Yeah, honor and glory, that's what everything is about.

Honor and glory and white guys.

Whining

2011-06-16T02:10:00.002-04:00

So we're poorer than usual these days. Everyone is, I know.

It means I'm working two classes in Summer I, Bible as Lit and an intensive (High-school students) 1203 class, because these were the classes I could get, and I have to have this work, or we can't make rent and pay the power bills and pay the other bills.

It's not exactly that I mind the work. I'm glad to get the work, frankly, because we'd be seriously fucked if I hadn't gotten it, one, and (B) both of these classes are excellent classes. I'm especially enjoying the Bible class, if you couldn't tell.

But.

Labor intensive? My Christ.

I'm working from nine in the morning until midnight, or sometimes one a.m., Monday through Thursday, just doing prep work and teaching and grading. (Summer classes meet every day, Monday through Thursday.) This is just on the classes. Not doing anything else. I put in four or five hours on Sunday afternoon, too.

This leaves me, as you will see, two and a half days to write in. Sometimes I spend part of Thursday writing too. And sometimes, after I am done prepping (like now) I stay up late and write for a couple hours; except that means I go short of sleep.

WTF, though, right? We'll sleep when we're dead.

But crap, I keep thinking, when I drag myself out of bed at 8.30, so tired I can barely move, and knowing it's for a paycheck that will just barely cover the bills, and I mean just barely -- there won't be a fucking nickel left over on August 31st: this ain't right.

Something has to change in this country.

Teaching The Bible

2011-06-13T22:12:00.005-04:00

Teaching two classes a day in summer session is eating my life. It's worse than having a toddler.

This is especially true when one of the classes is Bible As Lit, since I am not only assigning massive chunks to be read every night (which I then have to re-read as well), I am having to do mountains of research for every class. (Yes, if I had been wise I would have done the prep work over the three weeks I had off between classes. But I was very busy writing short stories then, so.)

I did some of this research the last time I taught the class; except that was five or six years ago, and lots of new research has been done. I am keeping like a day and a half ahead of the students, if that.

Still, it's a great class, one of my favorites. We're on the bit of I Samuel with David and Jonathon tomorrow. That's always a delight to teach.

One of my sources for that one tries to claim that the love between D&J is only a political love. I suppose I'll pass this theory on to my students. And then I guess I'll roll my eyes. Um, yeah. Okay.

The reason this theory isn't total nonsense is that I Samuel can be read as an apology, or a defense, of David's usurpation of Saul's throne. In which case all of Jonathon's protestation's of love for David and his you-take-the-throne, I don't want it, are put in there to defend the idea that David doesn't take the inheritance of his own will: It's Jonathon's idea.

But that's not incompatible with D&J being lovers, either. And so many other things indicate that their relationship is more than just buddies: what each of them says about the other's love being better than the love of women; what Saul says to Jonathon, about him "uncovering his mother's nakedness" in his relationship to David; the oath they make to one another at that very odd ceremony during the New Moon (shooting arrows by a sacred stone -- that looks very much like some buried religious thing to me).

The kid is auditing this class, btw. Part of home-schooling! She's doing very well so far.

Well, Rats

2011-06-11T23:14:00.005-04:00

Angry Robot Books rejected my novel.

I am sad.

But I finished another short story. So that's something.

Wikipedia has this cool new feature -- probably all y'all all know about this -- little tiny embedded movies. So if you should happen to want to know how, say, a hay baler works (my new story has hay baling in it) you can go on over to Wikipedia and look up hay baling and click on the tiny embedded movie and there you are, you are soon informed.

Don't I love living in the future?

There is also, of course, google video. Even more useful.

My Two Favorite Songs

2011-06-08T00:10:00.002-04:00

I can't stop listening to these two right now.

Do You Hear The People Sing?

We Want Blood.

Sing it!

Weekends

2011-06-05T20:10:00.005-04:00

We had a big party yesterday, saying goodbye to one of our friends / ex-students who is going off to Minnesota to an MFA program. Now it is raining (again!) and I am working on editing stories.

And my child has an ear infection.

Now you may think this is no big deal. What kid does not have an ear infection from time to time?

Well, mine. That's what kid does not.

She has hardly ever been ill, per se, in her life. Not that she hasn't been sick -- from age seven to about ten she was sickly, as the 19th century used the term. Failure to thrive, as biologists might call it. Once we determined she was allergic to something about corn syrup -- which this is as far as we ever got, thanks to my useless clinic and even more useless health insurance, which did about thirty thousand dollars worth of tests while discovering nothing at all -- but once we, by which I mean I, took her off all foods containing corn syrup* her symptoms disappeared and she began to thrive at last.

Where was I? Sorry. I'm still miffed about the corn syrup issue. They didn't even test for allergies. Gah.

Okay. So except for that, she's hardly ever been sick. Bronchitis when she was two. The flu when she was six. Croup at eight. A stomach virus at eleven. I can literally count the number of times.

The effect of this is, whenever she does get sick, it's full mode panic on her part. A fever, to her, literally means she's going to die. "What's wrong with me?" she cries. "Does any terminal illness start with an ear ache?"

"It's an ear infection," I said. "We'll go to the clinic tomorrow."

"Am I going to die?"

"You're going to take some Tylenol."

"And then I'll die?"

"And then you'll go lie down. Ai."

I'm not even sure it's an ear infection, frankly. I think it might just be the weather. Another big front is coming through, and my bones feel like someone's been hitting me with sticks all night anyway.

Meanwhile! I'm reading a book Dr. Skull brought home, Earth Abides, written in 1947. Sort of a mid-century The Stand. Only without the religious whackatude. A super-measles wipes out 99.99% of the population, and...absolutely nothing happens. At least so far. I'm about halfway through the book. It's very well written. And historically interesting. Not sure it's any good yet. But it is making me feel very feverish.

*It was the blogosphere that helped me diagnosis her! When the useless clinic was doing no good at all, and she had lost 12 pounds (at nine years old) and had chronic stomach pain, and would not eat anything, and could barely move around most of the time -- she spent all day sitting in one chair in our house -- I put out a blag, even before blags existed, and got all sorts of excellent suggestions, and that was one of them, that she might be allergic to corn syrup. We had already taken her off wheat and red dye, so taking her off corn syrup was, frankly, a snap.

Oh God

2011-06-03T16:06:00.002-04:00

It's June.

It's summer in Arkansas.

Weather guy says we're heading for 98 degrees this week.

Four more months of this.

Do you see why I want to move to Barrows, Alaska? How would that be worse than this, exactly?

Okay, Maybe It's Just Me...

2011-06-02T17:44:00.002-04:00

I've been seeing this study popping up in a lot of blogoports lately: confused Americans, who confusedly thinking that 25% of America is gaygaygay, when the actual percentage of Americans who are gayoramic is 3.5%, or thereabouts.

Explanations for confusions? Maybe people can't count. Maybe people don't know what 25% means. Maybe those gay folk are just so sassy and flamboyant, you know, and in your face, that one of them SEEMS like several of them, and SO... well, we get confused. Whereas nice quiet straight people who don't make a fuss, who notices them?

Whatever. All I know is I started counting gay, lesbian, and bisexuals I am acquainted with, and while it is true it is probably not 25% of everyone I know, it is a pile more than 3.5% of people I know.

And it's not like I live in San Francisco, either.

Is what I'm saying.

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T18:31:00.006-04:00

I had a difficult encounter a few semesters ago, which I am not sure I handled well.

My policy for the past few years has been to let -- well, to force -- my students to write on topics which matter to them, which have to do with their majors if possible, and which are small, small topics. You can't write about global warming, I exhort them, because you can't solve global warming. Pick a topic you yourself can do something about. I then tell them the story of my Oklahoma student, an Engineering major, who had an issue with his road and his ditch -- how the road got graded badly by the county, so that it kept washing out the ditch, which made his fence keep falling over, so that his cattle kept getting out on the road. This was a problem he could fix. He wrote about that problem. "You want a problem like that," I tell them. "Find some problem like that to describe for me."

Generally these papers work very well.

However. This student was a History Education major -- going to teach History in the local high schools -- and what he wanted to write about, it developed, though he didn't pitch it to me this way, was how the Civil War was mis-taught in Southern High schools.

What he meant was: he wanted high school history teachers to teach students that the Civil War was not about slavery, but about the right of states to govern themselves. His argument was that by teaching that the Southern States had fought the war in defense of slavery, we were making Southern children feel bad about themselves and their heritage.

Okay, I told him. Except, first, have you done any research? The war was fought over slavery. So if you argue it was not, you're teaching something that isn't true. And second, have you considered that every child you teach is not a white child?

Many people, I told him, fought in that war on the right side -- against slavery, I mean. You're ignoring everything those people did

And for what? So you can argue some false pride for kids today? Why not teach them the truth? Some bad people in the past made bad arguments, which led to some bad decisions on the part of some other people, which nearly destroyed our country?

Which it did, I pointed out to him -- I asked him if he realized how close the Civil War came to destroying our nation. I asked if he had talked to any of our history professors about this theory of his? (Which he had picked up from a local high school professor, of course.) I told him to go talk to some of them, to see what they said.

He asked whether I was going to let my opinion influence the way I graded his paper.

"I just don't want to get an F because you disagree with me," he said.

This is probably the saddest I have ever been after a conference, I have to say.

Thinking About the Revolution

2011-05-28T15:45:00.021-04:00

I've read two books in the past two days, Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, and Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett.

Both were cracking good reads, by which I mean they kept me up until late at night, turning pages. Both I had read before -- Mote, not since I was a kid, Night Watch last year sometime, when I first discovered Pratchett. Night Watch is much more to my taste politically. Mote is somewhat to the right of my politics.

But as I lay in bed last night (or rather, very early this morning, given that I am suffering from the worst insomnia in my adult life, and am hitting the pillow somewhere around five a.m. these days) considering the differences between the two texts, and why one of them annoyed me so much, while the other appealed to me so strongly, well, it really was not just that one is more leftist and the other is hard right military POV.

Because it's not -- Pratchett has a bit of the practical military POV mixed in with his populist-Leftism, and I'm not bothered by that.

And clearly I am bothered deeply by Niven & Pournelle's ridiculous ideas of a women's place in the world -- and while what they do with the alien Moties sex-change and so on is interesting, it does nothing to negate their insistence that "real" people (by which they mean European-ancestry White Guys) will keep their women at home after marriage, doing the child-raising.

No, here is what bothers me most about the Niven & Pournelle worldview: its insistence that the correct attitude of the citizen toward his leaders is respectful trust. (I do choose that pronoun carefully. Only men are actually people in N&P's world, despite his tossing in of a token woman character.) It is assumed -- and then demonstrated -- in the N&P world that those in command, those who are born to command, and given command, know what they are doing, and having taken command, will do the right thing.

It is assumed, and then demonstrated in the text, that those who object to the actions of leaders -- rebels, outies -- are bad people, who deserve to die, who deserve whatever punishment, up to having their entire planet reduced to radioactive glass, is visited upon them: they deserve this simply for having questioned authority.

Since the story is told from the point of view of one of those in authority, Rod (yes, this is his name, nothing phallic here, move along) Blaine, who is written as an earnest hero type who works very hard to get everything right and worries about getting everything right, the reader is reassured that those in authority are Really Good Guys who Really Want To DO Right by those in their purview.

We're not meant to look at the way Sally (his wife) is stripped of her power ("Rod won't let me think about the Institute after the wedding.") or how everyone with any power is a European white guy or how the decisions are made by fiat behind the scenes by the few white guys with all the power -- oh yes, benevolently, and we are TOLD these guys know best, and since those guys have been written as so noble and brave and intelligent, not like the wicked outies, well, it must be true, yes?

This is the worldview of the conservative, who believes -- I guess -- that, so long as he is the right man, the big man in charge can be trusted; and that everyone in the empire will be happy serfs who will be happy to serve, so long as the big man tells them what to do, except for a few idiots, who can be happily shot, or shot down with cool logic. (One scene that made me dizzy with disbelief early in the book was when the parliament -- I guess it was parliament -- met on New Scotland, and everyone in the parliament "pledges allegiance" to a hologram of the emperor, and then bows to it. I guess N&P think this is realistic. I guess they think grown-up people would actually do this. And, since I can see Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, and her ilk actually doing it, I suppose they aren't exactly wrong.)

Contrast this with Pratchett's worldview in Night Watch, which strikes me as much more realistic and adult.

For one thing, the leaders are mostly idiots, or crazy. (Which, watching our own Congress, Q.E.D.) The few who actually know what they are doing and actually intend to do what is best for the land under their purview know better than to expect the people to follow them from blind loyalty. Most people, as Pratchett well knows, are mostly interested mainly in their own lives and what is going to affect them. Who has time for more that that, mostly? Maybe five or six percent of us, tops. And even then, only part time.

"Do the job that is put before you," Sam Vimes says in Night Watch: that's what most of us do, and it's what Vimes, who is one of Pratchett's best leaders, and best heroes, mostly does. Vetinari, Pratchett's other best leader, and other best hero, though a more ambiguous one, also appears in this book, at the very beginning of his career. Vetinari is Practchett's demonstration for why we should and should not trust our leaders -- he is a tyrant, the all-powerful, brilliant, wily ruler of Ankh-Morpork, not exactly benevolent, though he may well have, ultimately, benevolent ends.

Still, Sam Vimes does not trust him; Sam Vimes is always wary of him, and always acts to keep him in check. Sam Vimes, at one point, arrests him, because no one should be above the law. In this book, Night Watch, when the leaders of the city are entirely powerful, Sam Vimes (under the name John Keel) leads a revolution: moving the barriacades, bit by bit, so that, daily, more of the city is under control of the law, and less and less is under the control of whim and tyranny.

Niven and Pournelle's worldview, it came to me, as I was lying sleepless last night -- that is exactly what they want. When you want the government to be under the control of some powerful man who you are forced to trust to be benevolent and good, what you are trusting in is whim and tyranny. Sam Vimes/Terry Pratchett's worldview -- where we do not trust, but hedge the rulers around with laws and rules, and then, warily, warily, keep the rulers at heel with those laws and rules -- that worldview puts the government under our control. Perhaps it means the government is less able to act; it also means the government is less able to put its boot on our throats.

I suppose it all depends on what you want from a government: death to the rebels, or people who are free to quarrel in the streets if they damn well feel like it.

Bang, Crash, Wham! (Again)

2011-05-25T14:28:00.002-04:00

Every third night it seems, now, finds me and Dr. Skull, the kid and the two dogs and the cat huddled in our hallway, listening to hail pelt the roof while tornado sirens wail in the distance.

Last night's storm was especially scary. We considered going to the tornado shelter, which is almost a mile away at the elementary school. We used to do this back when tornado warnings happened once a summer, at the most. Now that they're happening every other day, we've given up. Driving through the hail and rain and wind, climbing from the car, and staggering (or in my case crutching) into the shelter to wait, sodden and over-heated, with two hundred other people who live in shacks without basements -- well, it has lost its appeal. Also, the shelter is actually a gymnasium, more or less -- so horrible lighting, nowhere to sit, and kids running yelling and playing kickball, in and out of the crowds.

Although if these scary, scary storms keep happening we may need to rethink our policy. Last night, the wind and rain were fierce. The power went out (again) and stayed out until about seven this morning. Hail and thunder were continuous. When the wind blew especially hard, the frame of the house would creak in a disturbing manner. The cat ran away and hid under the white chair. We were out of candles -- used them all up the last time the power went out -- and I don't like burning candles during such a bad storm anyway. So we were using my iPad as our sole light source. It works very well for that, btw.

Eventually the storm left, and the power stayed off. Everyone went to sleep but me (I'm having bad insomnia these days) and I stayed up reading the iPad until four a.m., when the power came on briefly. No sooner had I shut up windows and shut off lights and reset the alarm clock (I had a medical appointment at 9.00) than the power went off again.

But we didn't get blown away, unlike many people. As I drove to the clinic this morning, trees were down all over town, the roof was blown off the local lumber yard, traffic signs were blown over, and the local sign on the Harp's store had been totally blown out.

Another storm coming tonight, too.

Wait, what? Raptors?

2011-05-21T15:40:00.003-04:00

My kid is very edgy about this whole rapture thing, even though I keep telling her it's ridiculous.

OTOH, a couple of my students, even though they live in Arkansas (rapture central) have never heard of the idea of the rapture.

So here's a link! In case you care. Everything you wanted to know about the Rapture.

Which, as I keep telling my panicked child, is a totally invented piece of bullshit.

(Yeah, like other bits of religion aren't, I know. I am just more exasperated with this one because of how much it's scaring my kid. What a tool this guy Harold Camping is. Makes me wish for an actual God just so he would have to account to him someday.)

Fun fact! Rapture and rape come from the same Latin root! Rapio, rapere: to seize or to snatch away, to take for your own.

Oh, My

2011-05-17T19:42:00.005-04:00

I know I shouldn't find this as delicious as I do.

It's just so sweet when justice (at least begins) to prevail.

Via Crooked Timber

The comments over there are especially worth reading.

Why, Look Here!

2011-05-16T11:46:00.002-04:00

It's a story by me! At Strange Horizons!

You'll be glad to know that the kid has pronounced it interesting, but strange.

Swearing Is A Really Important Part of One's Life

2011-05-13T17:39:00.014-04:00

(X-Posted at FanSci)

Stephen Fry explains here what I have often told those among my students who explain to me sweetly that swearing is a sign of a limited vocabulary or a lack of imagination: yeah, really, not so much.

In fact, as I point out to students (usually earnest religious freshmen) who tell me this, it is those with the largest vocabularies and the most education among my acquaintence who tend to cuss the most and the mostly foully. So go figure.

That being said, my kid was working on a SF story the other day and came to me with the question that haunts all writers of SF: "Ma. How would people cuss inthe future?"

Now this is a problem.

Because it is true that you don't want your characters just going fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. That does get dull. The last thing you want is dull cussing. Part of the charm is cussing, like the charm of any writing, is variety and imagination. Also, well, we do mix it up. New cuss words are fun. I remember when I discovered fuckwit and tool. Didn't I love those words?

So you gotta figure that in the future (especially if you move far into the future) the way and the means by which your culture will cuss will be different than the ways and the means by which our current culture cusses. We're all into fuck and shit, here in the early part of the 21st century, plus a healthy dose of misogyny/misandry (bitch, whore, tool); but in Shakespeare's day, or the Roman's, things were very different. With Shakespeare, it was all blasphemy. Very little fuck this, and very much "God's teeth,""God's wounds" (Or Zounds, for short) "God's blood," and "marry" (Mary), and "go to (the devil)"; though also some misogyny -- "whoreson" and such are common in his plays.

And Roman cussing is violently sexual, or maybe I mean sexually violent? What isn't about farting and shitting and pissing is about rape and who is whose whore. Not so much misogyny/misandry as just misanthropy. As I tell Dr. Skull when we are watching Rome or Spartacus and he asks whether the Romans were actually like this, The Romans were very bad people, and the fact that the GOP keeps wanting to compare themselves to that culture tells you all you really need to know about the GOP.

So what you need to think about is what's powering your culture -- what's their central engine, what matters most to them? -- as religion powered Shakespeare's world, as sex and shame powers ours (and money, but where is the cussing about money? Hmm), as power and dominance powered the Roman culture: then your culture should make their vile words, their taboo-breaking insults, around those topics.

Also: cuss words in my exerpience are generally short words with hard consonants at at least one end, and short vowels in the middle. Not invariable, obviously. But often. Just saying.

Go, and cuss some more.

Bang! Crash! Weather!

2011-05-13T16:29:00.002-04:00

Another big storm here last night, as if we had not had sufficient stormage.

Just thunder, hail, and rain this time, no tornados that I am aware of. Flood waters, though, with the water coming right up to our back door sill, and the power went out for several hours -- from nine o'clock to about one in the morning. We sat around with candles and flashlights and my iPad (you can still read on your iPad when the power goes down! Score more for the iPad! Though, sadly, the internet stops working. I am not sure why. Because the wifi isn't powered up anymore, maybe?) and the kid wondered if this was what it was like back in the colonial days of 1950, before we were all wired.

Yeah, I said. Sort of.

The kitty does not like thunder. Neither does Big Dog. He tries to climb in my lap. (And he is big.) She streaks around the house, hiding under things under the next burst of thunder, and then bolting for new cover. Anyone who tries to pick her up and comfort her gets clawed for their trouble, and occasionally bitten as well. Today she is a little calmer, but still wary. "She wants to know why you made it thunder like that," I told the kid, who is fretting over her.

"My poor kitty," she frets.

Meanwhile, the backyard still looks like a swamp, all the rivers are flooded, and more rain is on the way.

Almost Mother's Day....;

2011-05-08T00:16:00.004-04:00

...and my kid has returned from New Orleans, where she was visiting our family.

And she has come back with purple hair!

She is so cool.

This is something she's been wanting for about three years, but since I am not a trained girl, I had no idea how to go about it -- even with instructions from several blog friends, I could not make it happen. I even went so far as to take her to a "beauty" "salon" one time, when she was eleven, I think, but though they were very nice, they claimed they could not do such a thing. (I was dubious, even if this is Fuck Smith.)

Luckily! She has an aunt who is not only a trained girl, but who used to work doing hair and such. She has connections! She arranged for the work ( after first talking the kid's grandmother into letting her have it done) and went with her to have it done. It's beautiful, I have to say -- not all of her hair is purple, just a wide thatch on the right, above her temple and eyebrow; and very dark purple, just brighter and lighter than the brown of her hair, so that you don't see it and then you do see it and then you say, ooo, that's pretty.

"It's so pretty!" I said, when I saw it.

"I know," the kid confessed. "It's making me narcissistic -- all I want to do is look in mirrors."

Okay, I surrender

2011-05-06T13:07:00.004-04:00

Here's proof that English majors are idiots.

111 Male Characters from English Literature in Order of Bangability.

Nothing is said about the methodology, but I am assuming the list was compiled by English majors or English professors, because who else would have read all those books?

But here is my issue -- issues --

Will Ladislaw at 84? My Will? The love of my (fictional) life? Are you people high?

James Steerforth beats out Will Ladislaw? Really?

Why is Casaubon on the list at all? The whole point was that he was not bangable -- could not do the bang, as it were. Did none of you actually read Middlemarch?

Algernon Moncrieff at 14? Are you fucking kidding me?

Randolph Henry Ash, from Possession, is on this list, but Jackson Brodie is not? Aren't you people paying attention?

And Mr. Rochester at #1. Le Sigh.

Going Through the (Right) Channels

2011-05-02T12:10:00.003-04:00

This, from over at Unfogged again, disturbs me for many reasons, not the least being that, a few semesters ago I had a situation, not nearly this serious, play out in a way that made me at the time uneasy.

It was a young woman in one of my classes who came to me for help -- a fellow student, male, in the same class, was sexually harassing her: he'd hit on her, and she had turned him down. Since then he had been sending her dozens of text messages (they had been in the same study group in another class, so he had her text address) every day, including all night long; and he was sending her photographs of himself, including nude photographs; plus he kept sitting behind her in class; she had gotten her friends to sit around her so he couldn't, and now he would sit across the room from her and made faces at her; and frankly, she wanted it to stop. "I'm thinking about dropping the class," she said, "but I need it to graduate."

I told her not to drop the class, that if necessary we would make him drop the class; that we would handle it. And I went to my chair.

Who told me that it was not an academic matter. That we would pass it on to the Dean of Students.

Who told us that the girl would have to talk to the university police about it. That he could do nothing.

The chair told me I could not talk to the kid about it. Because it wasn't an academic matter.

When I had to tell the girl that she had to go the police -- that the Dean of Students was not going to give her any help -- I remember feel like filth. I did offer to go to the police with her, but she said no, she would handle it. I told her she might go to the Dean of Students and talk to him (figuring he'd be less cavilier listening to the details in his office) but she just walked away.

Probably it wouldn't have made any difference anyway.

She didn't drop the class. And as far as I know nothing happened to him.

At the time I attributed the problem to just a jurisdictional problem -- we were caught in the bureaucracy. Now, though, I am not so sure.

Why Can't 'They' Learn to Talk Right?

2011-04-29T01:06:00.007-04:00

Right being white, of course.

I didn't make it to the PCA this year after all, having busted my foot and my finances simultaneously (my insurance being the sad item that it is); I had intended to present my paper on RaceFail09 there, talking about why Characters of Color are under-represented in SF/F world and why Writers of Color are under-represented on the SF/F bookshelves and in the SF/F magazines.

I was to be on a panel with other papers on similar topics, including one being given by my buddy Zelda, who has been working for several years now on the effects of ignorance of or prejudice toward Black English among school teachers and administrators on the continued low literacy levels of black children in the Delta region of Arkansas.

Anyway, this paper (correct me if I'm wrong, Zelda!) was about how, rather than hyper-correcting and failing students out of the standard classroom, teachers could use knowledge of Black English to increase literacy in black students (who make a majority of students in the public schools in the Delta).

Sadly, since I wasn't there, Zelda was on her own when she was attacked by an elderly professor who was of the Black English isn't a language school of thought, who accused her of being a liberal professor filled with the bigotry of low expectations. (Not in those words.) She held her own, citing him linguists who know otherwise-- Zelda takes no shit off of no one -- but I feel bad anyway. If I had been there, at least we could have both argued with him.

All of by way of saying: Here, cool, look at this! (Hat tip Heebie at Unfogged)

The "up" as in "all up in my place" is one I have heard not only among my black students, but among my white students too. "Don't come getting all up in my Kool-Aid, now," being my personal favorite. But, as Zelda likes to remind my students when she comes to give the lecture on Black English to my HEL class each semester, most of them, whether they know it or not, actual speak a version of Black English too.

Poetry For A Rainy Day

2011-04-25T18:01:00.009-04:00

Questions from a Worker Who Reads
Bertolt Bretcht, Trans. M.Hamburger (Hat tip Unfogged)

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rocks?
And Babylon, many times demolished.
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
Of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the wall of China was finished,
did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did Caesar triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song,
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis,
The night the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caeser beat the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Years War. Who
Else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feasts for the victors?
Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bills?

So many reports.
So many questions.

Yeah, We Just Thought This Was The Future

2011-04-24T11:16:00.002-04:00

You've probably heard about this charming incident, where two adolescent women at a McDonalds in Baltimore beat another young woman -- a transgendered woman -- until she had a seizure, because she had dared to use their bathroom; while meanwhile an entire store full of employees and customers stood about, most of them doing nothing at all, some of them laughing, several of them filming the incident?

(A few of them did something: at least one of them called the police; and a manager, ineffectually, attempted to stop them.)

Many people are upset and outraged. As am I.

But I'm disturbed for yet another reason. Long-time readers know my kid does not perform her gender especially well. She has short hair; she does not wear or want to wear make-up; she doesn't wear or want to wear girly clothing. She looks, on first glance, to the ignorant, somewhat boyish. (When we took her to be tested with the homeschoolers, for instance, all the boys thought she was a boy all through the testing, and she never informed them otherwise.)

So when we're out in public and she has to use a public bathroom, she's always terrified that someone -- some girl, she means, but anyone -- will attack her. I've been telling her it's silly, that that will never happen. But now this.

Shit.

Still Broken

2011-04-23T12:53:00.003-04:00

I don't know how people did this before they got wired. Thanks to the net, I can sit here in my giant (if ancient and battered) overstuffed white chair, with my broken foot on a pile of pillows, and my craptop on my lap, drinking gingerale and eating pain pills, and run my classes my remote; I can edit stories via the net and wing them out to various States in the Union and countries all over the world; I can write my short stories and work on my novel; I can check up on the blogosphere and monitor the weather and the situation in Wisconsin; I can edit the proofs of my soon-to-be-released novel (and how fucking cool is that, I cannot even tell you); I can holler at Dr. Skullto bring me more ginger ale and more tea (and sometimes he will even do it) -- none of this except the last two would have been possible, or possible with such ease and speed, fifteen years ago.

Fifteen years ago, I would have been locked in a room with a huge cast and some library books, I guess, reduced to smacking the cat* with my crutches, grumpily cut off from everything, waiting for the mail -- remember mail? -- to bring me bits of data from the outside world.

I still want my flying car, mind you. But the future is cool.

*The cat loves me now that I'm injured. All she wants to do is sit on me and purr. WTF?

Crutch, crutch, crutch

2011-04-19T17:36:00.004-04:00

The kitty finds it very puzzling, how I crutch around the house. She crept up on the crutches when I left them propped next to my chair (I now write propped in a huge pile of pillows, surrounded by all the paraphenalia I need to write with -- cup of tea, books, bottle of pain pills, kitten, crutches) and sniffed them suspiciously: what alien beasts are these?

The bone doc agrees: six to eight weeks until I heal.

You would be amazed -- well, I am amazed -- the things that cannot be done when one cannot walk.

Where's My Pain Meds?

2011-04-18T00:11:00.001-04:00

Of course, I was being (mildly) ironic in the previous post, when I pretended not to understand why the ER doc under=medicated me for pain.

More on the charming War on Drugs and what it is doing to our world.

Limping, Broken, Halt

2011-04-17T23:47:00.002-04:00

I stepped off a curb wrong yesterday, visiting my parents in Fayetteville, and busted my foot.

A spiral fracture of the fifth metatarsal, according to the ER guy, who gave me, I might add, entirely insufficient pain drugs.

As an aside, what is it with the American refusal to give sufficient pain medication? I mean, ow.

Anyway, I've got a temporary splint on it, but I have to go to the real doctor tomorrow. Then, I don't know. Not surgery, probably, he said. Probably a walking cast. According to the internets, about six to eight weeks healing time. (My face when I read that OMFG -- NR?)

Being immobile is not making me happy.