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I've started teaching Summer II. One class meets at 8:00 a.m. and the other at 10.20. They're two different comp classes (Comp I and Comp II), which means I'm doing two different preps.

I'm busy, is what I'm saying, and also exhausted, since in order to teach at 8:00 I have to be awake by 6:00. And even though I mean to go to sleep at 10:00 p.m. like a sane person, every single night I look up from what I'm working on (usually writing fiction by then) to find that somehow we have skipped straight from 7:00 p.m. to midnight.

DIY Dryer Repair

Inspired by a post at Nicole & Maggie's blog, I took apart my dryer venting system yesterday, using a vacuum and leaf-blower to clear (what I hope is) all the lint out of both the internal and external venting line.

The W/D hookups in our current house are the worst ever. Originally, this house (built I think in the mid-1960s) had no hookups. At some point, one of the previous owners added a laundry space. But rather than locating it, sensibly, against an exterior wall, they located the laundry room (really a closet) in the middle of the house. Thus, our vent line has to travel about sixteen feet underground -- yes, they dug an underground line, under the house's slab -- to emerge in a dug-out hole exactly where the AC vents its water.

Here Comes the Dragon

In the kid's comic, Fragile, the dragon has arrived. (The dragon is the best.)

Remember, you can support our young artist on Patreon for as little as a dollar a month!

I'm Not Blushing...

I swear I don't know Leslie Gornstein. OTOH, she obviously has excellent taste in short fiction:

Think you can't write brilliant short spec fiction in under 5,000 words?  @delagar's short in @fandsf will prove you wrong. So, so wrong.

— Leslie Gornstein (@famefatalesays) July 4, 2017

Yes, This is the REAL Problem

Trump's EPA administrator is axing rules against dumping toxic chemicals in our environment, Trump's Secretary of Education is bent on destroying public schools, the GOP-dominated Congress is destroying Medicaid, and Trump himself has pulled us out of the Paris Accords -- but this is the real threat to America's children.

Seriously, how much of a wanker do you need to be to write a post like this?

Scott Pruitt has rolled back 30 environmental rules in the past 4 months, with apparently 0 regard for children's nervous systems, the earth pic.twitter.com/N3E8HWI1EF

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) July 2, 2017

Saturday Links

Still working on the novel revisions. Have some links!


I like this LJ post on Being Jewish


What it would take to replace the government-backed social safety net with private charity

What I'm Reading Now

I'm working hard on the edits for my new novel (tentatively titled Fault Lines), so I'm getting less reading done than I was in the early months of the Trump Regime.

But still! Here's what I've read lately:

Josephine Tey, Daughter of Time

Organizing our books turned up a number of books I hadn't read in years. This is one of them.

The Kid Gets Orientated

We took the kid up to Fayetteville for her orientation session yesterday. Dropped her off at 8:00 a.m., picked her up at 3:00 p.m.

We saw lots of parents who were participating in orientation -- going through the sessions with their kids, in other words. Some kids had both parents with them. I was a little surprised. I don't think the kids at my university take their parents with them.

Also, why would you want to do orientation with your kid? First, your child is now (nominally, at least) an adult. Get your mitts off and let them do this (very simple) thing for themselves.

#2, holy hell, orientation is boring. Why submit yourself seven hours of mind-numbing lectures about technological opportunities on campus and how to find the library if you're not going to need the information? You're not the student! Why do this?

Maybe I'm missing something.

The kid did fine -- she didn't precisely enjoy the experience (because it was boring) but she said it went okay, and she met some other artists when they got divided up to be advised. Also, turns out her ACT score was high enough that she's exempted from having to take Comp I and Comp II. Which is excellent, because boy would she hate those classes.

So she's taking nine hours of studio arts, an honors-level anthropology class, and US History I. No classes on Friday, which she's very happy about.

Meanwhile, Dr. Skull and I talked to the treasurer about the tuition discount I get, and then hung out with Charger, Dr. Skull's BFF who lives in Fayetteville. I worked on my novel edits while they watched a movie. We also drove around visiting bookstores and looking at houses. I'd love to rent a house in FV. Oh, well, one day maybe.

Excellent News

So today I signed the contract -- Candlemark & Gleam is going to publish my new novel. (Title is still in progress.) This is one set in the same universe as my previous novel, but with different characters -- some of the characters appear in the short story I published with Candlemark & Gleam, "Velocity's Ghost."

It's tentatively scheduled to come out in Spring 2018. Between now and then, I'll probably be posting less, since I'll be working on the edits.

I'm so pleased!

The Kid at the University

My kid has her orientation session at the university on Monday. She is very much ready to be out of this town and in the university, so this is good news.

Also, though, we got the tuition statement this week. Holy hell, y'all. Four years at this university -- which is a state university -- will run in the neighborhood of ninety thousand dollars.

She's got a scholarship for some of it, and I get a 40% discount on the tuition (due to working in the state university system), but how would anyone who didn't have these things afford a four year degree?

"Loans" seem to be the answer the university itself is pushing. Nearly a hundred thousand dollars in loans for an undergraduate degree? That's the answer?

When I was at university, back in the eighties, my tuition was less than five hundred dollars a semester at a state university.

Fragile

It's not too late to support our favorite artist on Patreon.

You can get previews and free drawings for as little as $2.00/month!

Saturday Links

Links for you:

A student on campus speaks about the situation at Evergreen. (Big shocker: The white male professor, one who believes we should do "honest research" into racial issues, is not the saint he portrays himself as; nor is the situation at all as the Far-Right blogs and Fox News have presented it. Once again, white fragility has a tantrum, and people of color get the blame.)

What I'm Reading Now

It's been interesting (and by interesting I mean entirely predictable) to watch the reaction of the Far-Right to the recent shooting of five members of the Republican party at a DC baseball practice. Somehow they have been able to shrug off all the other mass shootings and killings in our country over the past years. But this one! Oh, this goes too far!

See this thread by Sarah-from-here for more.

Meanwhile, here's what I've been reading:

Kaoru Mori, A Bride's Story 

This is a manga, translated into English (or anyway my version is). Set in various locations along the Silk Road in the 19th Century, it's beautifully drawn and a lot of fun. There are a number of plot lines, including arranged marriages, women who don't perform their gender correctly, family life, women's lives, and a visiting European anthropologist who runs into some trouble.

Interestingly, given the presence of that anthropologist, A Bride's Story is less plot-driven and more of an anthropological look at the lives and traditions of the characters and their families. One of my favorite sequences in Book One in which a carpenter explains his work to a small boy from one of the families. The art in this section is spectacular.

Pew Research Center Makes My Point

Here's a post from Anna Brown at the Pew Research Center, "5 Key Findings about LGBT Americans" makes exactly the point I made in my post earlier today.

 63% of Americans said in 2016 that homosexuality should be accepted by society, compared with 51% in 2006. LGBT adults recognize the change in attitudes: About nine-in-ten (92%) said in a 2013 Pew Research Center survey of adults identifying as LGBT that society had become more accepting of them in the previous decade.

Perhaps as a result of this growing acceptance, the number of people who identify as LGBT in surveys is also rising. 

Yeah, this isn't rocket science.

The rest of the post is well worth the read.

These Kids Today

Rod Dreher writes yet another ridiculous post. This unhealthy obsession with LGBT people is really damaging his ability to reason.

In "Born That Way," Dreher argues that the rising number of young LGBT people means that those people aren't "really" gay. (Apparently it's a fad, or a lie, or a conspiracy by us powerful SJWs.)

The comment section is even more ludicrous than the post --