Writing Ruminations

Too Good to .... Again.

2011-01-04T19:56:00.000-08:00

I got an email from a Lisa Davis offering a platform, MyFreeRead.com, where you can post free stories, articles, essays, etc with links to your website, blog, Facebook page, or what have you. You get paid 20 cents every time someone downloads the piece to read and of course you have the nice PR link to other work that may be for sale. How great is this? The pay’s not super, but considering how many people are giving away some of their work in order to get readers to pay for the rest, it’s something anyway. Right?

Being the suspicious person that I am, and lazy to boot (well, when I can get away with it), I checked SFWA’s Writers Beware blog. Sure enough, Victoria Strauss, bless her for the watchdog she is, got the same email and was way ahead of me. This is an advertising gimmick, and a clever one on Mz Davis’s part. You’re just the bait to lure readers who will take an advertising survey if they want to download your piece. And as we all know, marketing information is coin on the internet. So she gets paid much more than 20 cents for that survey. Does it hurt you? Well, readers may be annoyed that they have to do the survey and may decide YOU are behind the obvious information gathering gimmick. I wouldn’t put work up there. She’s not evil (like the fake ‘publishers’ who charge novice writers to publish their books) but she is not being honest, she’s making quite a bit more money from your work than you are, according to the numbers Victoria posted.

Just another bit of proof that if it sounds too good to be true….it is. There ARE nice cooperatives where people pool resources to bring readers to the site, thus helping the members sell their work. Bookview Café is one of these and it’s a very nice one. Start one yourself with some writer friends. Why not put free material up regularly to draw readers who will then be able to find (and buy) more of your work easily? The internet is there and it’s up to us to innovate the New World of Publishing.

The New Year in Writing

2011-01-02T16:55:00.000-08:00

I greeted this new January with enthusiasm, after a couple of tough years. Hey, my indoor citrus trees have all blossomed today, what can be bad about a day perfumed with the scent of orange blossoms in January? And it's a new start for many writers, as well. I have quite a few students and the trend to self publishing is accelerating. It's so much easier to simply self publish your book than to suffer through the tiring and discouraging process of querying agents and getting a lot of rejections. And you have no editor, nobody to tell you that the story or memoir you love so much isn't perfect.

But increasingly, I'm seeing sad results from students who blithely published that mystery, romance, or memoir. They sell three copies or maybe ten in a year. Most go to family and friends, one or two to strangers. Alas, the really tough part is that many of these hopeful new writers have paid thousands of dollars to 'publishers' with the profound belief (usually supported by these 'publishers') that they'll make all that money back and more, that a New York editor will notice their book and probably buy it or at least buy the next one.

These 'publishers' now tell novices that in 'today's' publishing world, it's now accepted that authors share some of the risk and pay for the production costs.

This rapidly growing cottage industry saddens me. These 'publishers' are preying on the dreams of novices and they know exactly what to say in order to make the novice believe that All Will Be Well and Lucrative.

Now there ARE reasons to self publish, and you can make decent sales in the self published market, but it takes a LOT of work on the part of the author. The 'build it and they will come' belief is a lovely Hollywood myth, but doesn't apply very well when your book is swimming in a sea of (often very poorly written) self published books.

Where does today's reader look for their next read? Sadly, most of the people I ask still mention a brick and mortar bookstore like Barnes and Noble or Powell's here in Oregon. And they're looking on the shelves, not in the data base that allows a 'publisher' to tell that hopeful novice that his or her book will be 'available from Barnes and Noble'.

Self publishing does open up a world of possibilities, but it requires hours and hours of self promotion on the author's part. The internet is a great way to reach a lot of potential readers, but you have to REACH them. Aha, therin lies the rub!

If you're considering a non-New York publisher for your book, by all means do yourself a huge favor and visit Preditors and Editors and the SFWA Writers Beware pages. These sites both carry a list of publishers who have been flagged for charging fees for their services.

Remember....if it's a REAL publisher, the money flows FROM the publisher TO the writer. It does not EVER flow the other way. If you are paying to publish your book you are self publishing. Since you're writing that check and buying that publisher's services (no matter what that publisher claims) then be a good shopper and see who will give you the most service for the best price.

Oregon Spring

2009-03-23T16:23:00.000-07:00

This was one of those weekends where I remind myself that if I got the same workout at a gym, I'd have to pay a lot of money. But then, if I was getting that same workout at the gym, it probably wouldn't be raining and hailing on me. But hey, that final shower finished with a rainbow (while it was still raining on me), so it was at least, quite pretty. And not very cold. Since I was doing Chainsaw Calisthenics, I stayed pretty warm. You know that old saying about firewood and warming you twice, right? I was dealing with one of those 'gifts' that come with a bit of a price tag. I have all these big branches you can have for firewood translates to I don't want to have to deal with all those twigs so you can have 'em. So I trimmed off all the really fine twigs (and I burn stuff down to a size smaller than a broomstick) and my beloved chipper even started, first time out after its winter sit. So it was a good day, rain, hail, and all. And I don't even have a pile of branches blocking my driveway. Woohoo.

Then, today was a good flight. We had the Scappoose airpark to ourselves, mostly because everything else was already getting weather, and I got in one really nice crosswind landing (they've been giving me trouble) before rapidly decreasing visibility and rain chased us back to Troutdale, where I got to perfect my crosswind style a bit more. I've been having to unlearn my winter's worth of landing in 30 mph headwinds.... The rain came in on our heels. Classic Oregon spring, but cold. My calendar is what's growing, and right now, according to that calendar, it's early March, not late March. Ah well, the seasons do what the seasons do. We're the ones with the inflexible calendar.

Nice Writing News

2009-02-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

I got a great call today. Was a classic Oregon February day; rain, wind, sun, more wind. So I was working on students. And Deborah Ross called, editor of the Lace and Blade anthologies, very nice fantasy collections. I've written two stories for her -- Night Wind in the first anthology, and Dragon Wind in the second (not out yet). She called to tell me that Night Wind, a sort of historical fantasy (well, they both are) was on the final Nebula ballot! I had to pry my jaw off my chest. That's way cool. I really enjoyed writing that story.

Slow Spring

2009-02-14T19:35:00.000-08:00

Well, my ewe delivered twin ram lambs and now all four of the lambs are out bounding about together in between snow showers, violating at least a couple of laws of physics with their antics. Two more ewes to lamb yet. They're keeping their legs crossed for the moment. Cricket has decided my chickens aren't enough of a herding challenge and is eyeing up on the sheep. But when I took her out to walk steers around with Trudy and her brother, she wasn't quite so sure about those big critters. Dunno why. She's quite ready to keep watch on George's horses and they're much larger than the yearling steers. We'll try again next week and I'll bring Annie along. She loves to make steers move.

Winter Lambing Reality Check

2009-02-08T18:58:00.000-08:00

We've had our lovely February break from winter -- sun, mild temperatures. I planted peas and fava beans. Two ewes lambed and I wondered if I even needed to put them in the lambing pen, why not let them stay out in the new spring grass?

Then, my black ewe decided that Today was The Day. She dwadled around in the mild temperatures, not really sure it was time to lie down and Do It yet. And the clouds gathered and the light waned and it sprinkled and yes, we're likely to...again...get snow tonight. Sigh. With a wind, and 30 degree temps. Lamb killing weather, when you're wet and newborn and out in the field.

So it's crunch time. She's pawing, lying down, not really pushing the lambs out yet, but thinking that it's soon. Do I leave her out? Then I have to go out in the dark with a light, which spooks the rest of the sheep and probably her as I pick up her new lambs and coax her to come with me to the warm, dry, lambing pen. Or do I get Annie The Enforcer out there and let her put the ewe in? That's pretty stressful for the ewe. I don't want to do that. So I went out to feed the rest in the waning light, fingers crossed. If she' s not really ready to push she'll come in. I serve alfalfa at night. They love that.

I put out the hay. And hear her bleat 'wait for me'. Closer than the far back of the paddock where I've been keeping them penned (major coyote pressure this year). She's coming! I wait until she's in, everybody is nose deep in the manger, slip through and close the barn gate. Then I have to get her into the lambing pen. No Thank You! She weighs 200 lb, she is wet, and not at ALL interested, never mind clean straw, alfalfa in the feeder and fresh water. Bruce, the ram, watches me balefully, but I snapped a lead to his collar while he was happily eating and tied him, so he can't butt me, like he really wants to.

A bit of wet-sheep wrestling later, she is in and I'm panting. She immediately starts munching on the alfalfa, quite happy to be here. I mutter a couple of not-for-family-viewing comments under my breath as I latch the door. Now, she's FINE with being in there. Hay all to herself!

Sheep!

That is not what I muttered. I am quite soaked (winter fleeces hold a lot of cold rain) and the ram is letting me know that as soon as I unsnap the lead he's going to Discuss my behavior with me. I call Annie in to ride shotgun as I unsnap him. They face off, he decides that really, he'd be better off eating, Annie and I depart. Cricket The Puppy is Really Disappointed that she didn't get to help. I tell her 'later'. Annie tells her 'I'll handle the ram, squirt'. I agree with Annie.

So I'll sneak down there in another hour or two and see what's up. Or out, should I say. It can snow tonight, that's fine. Lambing season is never dull.

Spring Arrival with Lamb and Skies

2009-02-06T18:15:00.000-08:00

Well, I declare it officially spring. Two of my ewes have now lambed, each with a single lamb -- I'm blaming the nasty weather earlier, they usually twin. But both are nice, large lambs, one ewe, one ram lamb. This is the first born, the official 'spring is here' announcement. He's a couple of hours old in this picture, nice and dry and already has his belly full.

It has been quite the week. Crocuses blooming, lambs. George is doing great, his surgeon calls him 'one tough guy' and said he could go back to flying at the end of the month. Nice to see him looking good. I miss my rides in the back seat of the twin Comanche he flies. The season has really changed. The sheep always know. So happy spring to you all, even if you do have snow up to your backside.

Puppy Herding

2009-02-01T18:51:00.000-08:00

This has been a tough couple of weeks. A lot of things converged and I didn't have enough hours. But hey, life is like that sometimes. And today, I had a date with Trudy, my Aussie puppy Cricket's breeder, to put her on ducks. And I went. Cricket's mom, Tick, is a stunning herder with a lot of herding trial trophies and I wanted to see how she measured up.

So today, on a foggy, cold afternoon, Trudy sorted five ducks out into the small paddock and I...with some trepidation...took a VERY interested Cricket out into the arena. We're looking for natural behavior right now. You can add a lot of training as a pup gets older, but right now, you get what that pup has, unadulterated. And it can be good...or bad. Trying for duck cutlets is bad. So is saying 'uh, got other things to do'. It's a test of what ya got under the hood.

Well, the 'got other things to do' was not an option. Miz Cricket was fighting the lead, ready to party. I grabbed the plastic leaf rake (for scooping puppies off stock), took a deep breath and let her go.

The ideal in herding dogs is one who stays just on the fight/flight zone so that the stock doesn't bolt, but will 'give' to that pressure, especially if the dog uses 'eye' and stares aggressively, and will move off the dog in a calm and organized fashion. Rather than in a panicked route. The ideal dog will find 'balance', positioning the stock between it and the handler (we gotcha!). Mostly you get much less perfection than that. The pup charges into the flock, grips, scatters the stock, what have you. You can fix it later, but it's nice if you don't have to.

So. Miz Cricket. She took off and flanked around the ducks like a pro, came to balance, eyed up. When a duck bit her...twice!....she just backed up a step, stared hard, and pushed it back into the flock. Naughty duck! Now if that had been a rottie puppy, I'd be having you for dinner tonight. Even when a single duck took off screeching, she flanked out and brought him back to the flock, stopping on balance to me and simply holding them.

Wow. Who trained this dog while I wasn't looking?? Trudy was VERY happy. She says she has never seen a pup work this well. Cricket was very happy. Until I finally got hold of her and made her stop working. I think we'd still be out there. Sheep are next. She was all ready when we went down to feed tonight. Well, I'll have a nice lamb crop for her shortly. Just her size.

New New Millenium

2009-01-21T20:18:00.000-08:00

Tuesday was quite the party. I found myself wishing I was there on the crowded mall, freezing my patooty off, and at the same time, looking back to life and riots in Pittsburgh in the late sixties, I found myself tearing up. After being amazed at my grandmother, who rode a steam train in India in the last years of the 1800s and lived to see a man walk on the moon, we have indeed seen some major changes in my lifetime, too.
It was quite the party.
My friend, and another SF writer (and glider pilot) Alexis Glynn Latner summed it up just fine, so I'll let her speak for me tonight. Her blog post says it all.

New Start

2009-01-16T18:55:00.000-08:00

Well, after the snow and drama of the turn of the year, things are looking much more sunny. George got out of the hospital Tuesday and his niece is staying with him at the house. The horse routines have settled in. Clean stalls and put them out to pasture if it's nice in the AM. Bring them in at night. Cricketthepuppy plays wildly with Rockythefat, George's overweight mini-aussie. Annie is happy to let Cricketthepuppy chew on Rocky (who has a nice thick coat to protect him) and only steps in to smack Rocky once in awhile when he gets too rough. Annie can beat up the puppy. It's her puppy. He can't.

George is looking good and doing WAY more than most people do a week or so after open heart surgery. Keeping him away from cleaning the stalls is gonna be a challenge. Meanwhile, I've managed to get airborne in spite of the river of rough wind spilling down the Gorge. I've got to get a little more precise with my roundout and flare on landing and then I think my instructor is going to solo me. I'm just about there. That will be cool. Very.

I think I'll try to plant peas this next week. My weather sense tells me that serious winter is over, even if we get the brief deep freeze. Of course, planting anything with a puppy is SO fun. As I said, I'll try.

Beneficence and Wings

2009-01-09T20:19:00.000-08:00

Well, the weather gods, after punishing us for a solid month decided to give us a breather. Sun. Wow. The pasture, protected by snow, survived the cold and is actually growing. My sheep are dissing the very nice grass hay I give them, and my Cheviot cross ewe, the one I never saw get bred, is giving me 'any day' signals. So the lambing pen is ready. Spring. Maybe I'll plant my peas. I do that this time of year. With a puppy. Oh...yeah... that's right. She'll LOVE it.

George came through open heart surgery just fine. I visited less than 48 hours after. His nurses do NOT love him. He feels fine. Why can't he just get up and use the toilet when he needs to? I suggested that their 'we'll find you on the floor' threats were probably valid. When that man hits his call light, the nurses show up quickly. As I said, they do not love him. But I cheered him up today. After getting grounded by either an unplowed runway or pouring rain or gale force winds or all three, I finally made it back into the air today. Perfect day. No wind, lots of visibility. Gee, I may not have mentioned that I'm a student pilot at the moment? George's doing. He got tired of my 'I always wanted...' riff and bought me a first couple of hours, knowing full well, sneaky guy, that I'd be hooked. (He just wants someone to talk flying with). Well, he got his pilot's certificate a month before I was born. And still flies...and will, after this. So now he has someone to talk flying with.

So anyway, everything came together today. Everything. All the stuff I've been working at...altitude, airspeed, banks, stalls, final approach, roundout, flare, landing... Everything stopped being 'stuff to work at' and just became 'doing'. Even the power on stalls, where the little Cessna 152 that I fly wants to corkscrew into a righthand spin, worked just fine. What a good feeling. I love it up there.

And George's barn is dry, the drain I dug is working. And I have the sheep barn clean and the lambing pen ready. And it's time to plant peas. Okay. I declare it spring.

Not Dull, Farm Life

2009-01-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Well, the next big wave of super rain is on its way. George is in surgery today and this morning I'm looking at the weather and thinking flooded barn event number four, coming right up now. The pile of soaked shavings waiting to be hauled down to my place (where they become nice garden soil) is getting scary. So I took my trusty and recently sharpened shovel up there, determined to figure out just why this barn, dry for thirty years now, is flooding. Prowling the uphill, southwest side, where the water seems to be coming from, I spy a bit of water welling up through the grass. Stuck the shovel blade in. Eureka! Someone turns on a fire hose down below and it spurts into the air. A mole hole. Carrying, apparently, the entire drainage of the development at the top of the hill right down to the corner of the barn. Woohooo!! Gotcha, you sucker!
So now, I dig. It's warm, raining and blowing, but I'm wearing my totally uncool and totally practical saddle slicker with cape shoulders and my sou'wester. I look like a hybrid between a lobsterman and a resident of Dodge City in the 1800s, but you know what? I can work and stay dry so nyah! So I'm digging and the fire hose, er mole hole, is pouring into the ditch I'm aiming toward the south pasture sloping down to Mitchell Creek. Meanwhile, Annie is doing the Pasture Check and Cricket, the fuzzy puppy, is bouncing in her wake.
We were at it pretty much all morning. Five acres of pasture checking took ''em awhile. Then Annie taught Cricket how to dig mole holes which Cricket loved because most are running water on this saturated slope and she loves water. And of course if they aren't running water, then you can dig in all the nice mud. So finally, I get the ditch nice and deep and sloped out to the pasture where the water spreads out and heads for the creek a 1/4 mile away. By now, Cricket is sort of a soggy mudball and she really looks like a Rottweiler. White feet? White chest? What white? So we head back to the barn to put the shovel inside, so I can deepen the ditch some more when I do evening chores (I want a mini Grand Canyon by the time that big storm hits!) Ah, the shavings pile! Cricket dashes up to the top and tumbles down a couple of times. She does a really good soccer ball imitation, which delights Annie by the way. Annie is really good at soccer, Cricket and I have discovered. So now, we have a black, wet, soggy, muddy puppy well frosted with sawdust. At this point I am leaning against the wall of the barn laughing like a loon and really really sorry that I didn't bring my camera up with me. I think when I do chores this evening, I'll just bring a nice big five gallon water bucket up with me and fill it up. Before we head home, I'll just grab her by the scruff, slosh her around in it and we'll walk home through the nice, clean, grassy field. That should get the mud off!

Right now she is sleeping quite peacefully. And looks remarkably clean. Well, this is why we have vacuums and brooms.

Off to work while the working is peaceful.

Moving Forward

2009-01-04T21:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks all, for your comments. I really appreciate them. Well, George was looking and feeling great today when I brought him his mail and his reading glasses. They're going to do a triple bypass on Tuesday, as long as they're in there. The prognosis is still for a return to that active life and his flying. I hope I am in as good shape when I'm 83. I'm working on it! This is going to be the only holiday season when I end up weighing less after than before! And the puppy loves the 1/4 mile hike to and from George's place. She sleeps VERY well. An added benefit.

Movie plug. If you have not watched Black Sheep, do so. This is the 'killer sheep' movie from New Zealand . I rolled my eyes when I heard of a horror movie where sheep eat people. How dumb. But you know what? It's not dumb. It's a total riff on all horror movie tropes..every last one of them. With some private jabs tossed in to boot. (Not real fond of the enviro-types are we?) I kept repeatedly falling off my seat laughing, and when I wasn't laughing I was having fun figuring out who was doing what to get the real sheep to do that. :-) The gore is SO over the top it doesn't have much impact. Do rent it. It's a total hoot.

New Years Pay It Forward

2009-01-03T21:22:00.000-08:00

New Years night, the wee hours after, actually, I got the dreaded phone call. My neighbor, George, who lives up the hill a bit. Eighty three years old, more than 50 years as a pilot, loves planes and horses, has two. Wife dead, keeps the place immaculate. He, sneaky guy, bought me my first two hours up in the air, knowing, I swear, that it would be enough. 'I'm in trouble," he says to my groggy, 2:30 AM ears. "I'm having trouble breathing." So I bolt into clothes, downstairs. To find three inches of snow, coming down hard. Lovely. Jump into the truck, slither up his 1/4 mile driveway and miraculously did not slide off the narrow place and roll. I take one look and do 911.

Long story short, Clackamas Fire arrived quickly in spite of the snow, he ended up in the hospital, (although the ambulance had to do three runs at the top of our street to get out and nearly took out the fence corner on the SE side). He will get a new heart valve, and his doc, a pilot (of course) says he can even pass his FAA medical after. Everything will be fine.

It matters to me. Well, George is a very nice guy, he does the Right Thing no matter what anyone else on the planet might think about that. And if I'm ever in a plane in trouble, I want George in the cockpit. He'll consider the options, make the right decision, and get everyone down in one piece if it's at all possible. If it isn't, he'll still be trying when it hits.

Partly, it's that he, like me, lives alone, has acreage and animals, is very independent. He has no family this side of the Rockies. And doesn't like to ask for help.

Sigh, there but for thirty years go I.

So I'm feeding the horses, mucking the stalls, letting the dog out and I'm really glad that George is coming home. Pay it forward. In any way you can.

New Year With Puppy

2008-12-31T18:20:00.000-08:00

How did it get to be the last day of 2008? I don't think we had Christmas yet, did we? Oh yeah, that's right. That happened while we were buried under two feet of snow up here, bermed in by the one snow plow that scraped the first 18 inches off Clatsop Road. And then I got The Puppy and of course all spare time vanished instantly as I kept track of my small whirlwind of exuberant Australian Shepherd. Actually, she -- Cricket -- who arrived Sunday evening, has spoiled me for puppies forever. She looked for the list of rules posted by the door, read them, said 'okay, sure' and that was that. Well, yeah, she still rockets around the house like that tasmanian devil out of the Bugs Bunny cartoons when she does the puppy equivalent of the two-year-old windup for a crash. And she has proved that Annie, my four year old Rottie, has a sterling temprament, considering that Cricket much prefers to swing from Annie's jowls than bite my ankels. I growl louder.

Cricket is from a very strong line of working Aussies, destined to work sheep, cattle, and ducks (actually she has already worked ducks a bit). She loves to retrieve, but I think that's written into the Aussie genetic code. And she's rottie color, of course. With white feet. Which aren't white very long, once we get out into the now-muddy pasture. My friend Trudy's bitch, Tick, had her just for me, of course.

So I'm too busy to notice that we've finished up a year...especially since I have two weeks worth of Long Ridge students, sent by Second Day Air, lost in one of what the UPS guy (who delivered THIS week's worth on time) told me is four huge semi trailers full of undeliverable stuff. Oh well, gonna be a long week, and when I come up for air, it'll be time to plant peas and hey, that means spring has started eh?

I hope so. Happy New Year!

Bachelorism

2008-12-29T20:40:00.000-08:00

I am a bachelor. Okay, I know that's considered to be a masculine noun. But bachelorette just doesn't have the same connotation. Makes one think of someone jumping out of a cake or something. So why have I decided that a: Bachelor is a neuter gender noun and b: I am one? Well it had to do with Christmas. I do a brunch for family. Everybody arrives, I have fun food -- home made sausage rolls always, plus good cheeses, pate, olives of various sorts, something sweet and interesting, not fruitcake (although really well brandied fruitcake has been known to be on the table), you know. Eat, drink, be merry, including ME, open gifts, no kitchen drudgery required. But this involves cleaning the house. Well, cleaning off the table at least, which is my hardcopy workspace, as opposed to my digital workspace, my computer desk. So I have all kinds of orderly (yes, really!) piles of things like the financial stuff for my stepmom's estate, magazines that aren't read yet, manuscript that need that final hardcopy read, critique manuscript, and various things that need to be dealt with not now but soon. And some of these piles have been moved to other available spaces, such as the floor.

So, now it's family brunch time AND I'm getting a new puppy the day after. Well, the obvious thing to do, the one that makes me a bachelor, is to move all piles from the table to the floor, out of sight in my office would be fine. Uh, except for the puppy. So now I have to put away, file, find some home for the piles already on the floor, and then I have to do the same with the piles on the table. And on other horozontal spaces. Good thing we had a nice, week long, serious snow storm that left us all snowbound. I needed it! Cabin fever? Didn't have time. I was too busy taking care of piles.

But hey, it's my house and I'm happy with the pile system. So I'm sure that after the puppy is past the Eat Everything stage and my life once more has order, the piles will return. Good thing I do that Christmas brunch every year!

More Winter Fun

2008-12-24T13:18:00.000-08:00

Well, we're up to two feet of snow now, but today it's above freezing and ice is falling from the trees. Woohoo! Of course, right at dusk, after shoveling a path up my neighbor George's 1/4 mile long STEEP gravel driveway, I went down to feed the sheep only to find that a rafter with rot had given way and my roof was buckling. Oh joy. I could just see the whole section coming down as the rains started and the light, dry snow turned wet and heavy. But it was dark, in the twenties and I figured it would keep until morning and I could get it fixed before the thaw started. So this morning I was out there, up on a ladder, scraping two feet of snow and ice off the buckling section. Heavy stuff. I didn't dare add my weight to the roof, so I couldn't clear as much as I wanted. Gonna be a new roof this summer for sure. I was going to do it, but then the development juggernaut seemed poised on my western boundary and why spend the money if I'm going to sell and move in a matter of a year? But now...I don't know that we'll get forced off any time soon. So. New roof. Next summer. For now, I got the buckled rafter braced back into place, the weight off it. The whole thing is going to be a soggy mess as all this snow thaws and seeps but my hay is tarped and off the ground so we'll live. And after we got done...well, hey. It's above freezing, the dry snow is now damp and sticky and it's perfect for a snow man! How many times do you get to build a snow man in Western Oregon? When I take my midnight walk tonight, I think I'll bring a big rubbermaid bin and slid down the nice sled track the kids have made near the top of our street. Can't let the snow melt without at least one sled ride! Preferably at midnight. What a great way to celebrate Christmas Eve!

Snowlight Magic

2008-12-23T22:06:00.000-08:00

It’s eleven thirty and I just came in from a walk in the snow light with Annie. I didn’t mean to take a walk. I spent much of the day shoveling my truck out, chaining up, shoveling paths so the sheep could get water and I could bring them food. Shoveling a path up my 83 year old neighbor, George's, steep drifted over driveway. Done with the snow!!! All done! Blasted stuff, I moved here so that I wouldn’t have to shovel….and so on.

And then I booted up, put on my parka, the old Alyeska one from Prudhoe Bay that my friend Page gave me, the one that always feels like a warm embrace, and took my wood carrier out for the nightly ritual of bringing in the morning’s load of wood for the stove.

Only the night was bright with reflected snow light, there was no wind, tomorrow...well pretty soon now, is Christmas Eve, and the cold felt crisp and clean. I dropped the wood bag and headed for the gate with Annie bounding gleefully ahead of me. My neighbor had chained up to take his wife shopping for Christmas dinner and the tracks gave us a path in the 14 inch deep snow. Instead of floundering we could stroll.

It was beautiful. Nobody has been out, no tracks, only a single set of tire tread in the whiteness. My neighbor’s icicle lights painted the swelling mounds of white with yellow light. As we left them behind and walked along the road toward Clatsop, the paved main road, the trees took my breath away. Rimed with ice, the heavy Douglas fir branches iced with white snow, backed by low, misty clouds, the scene was right off a Christmas card. Wow.

And then Annie alerted at one of the drives that leads to a few houses on the western slope above our street. A man shoveled snow. We said hello and I made a pleasantry about being out late in the snow. He wanted to get tout in the AM. And I walked up to Clatsop, promising him a road report when I got back. Packed snow on Clatsop, no sign of asphalt or other civilized accoutrements. It might have been a cart track though the Sweedish countryside. We talked a bit more…me about '79 and the week long power outage, he about '68 ‘when he was a kid’ andsix foot drifts blocked the county roads then Annie and I walked on and took Koelhers old driveway, watching for coyote spoor. Annie found plenty, I did not.

What a beautiful night!

2008-12-22T16:25:00.000-08:00

Well, we're over 12 inches of snow now, in a city that doesn't get snow. Even TriMet is having trouble keeping the buses running and never mind on time. Annie and I spent the day shoveling out barn doors and gates so they work, shoveling a new path to the heated water tank since the four inches of snow had drifted in the path I shoveled yesterday. Filling the feeder and thawing the hummingbird feeder so that my cold little Anna hummers didn't starve (and one Black Chin who should have gone south looong ago). As I was shoveling out the truck to chain it up for when it was finally less nasty and worth getting out, a big V of geese went over just above treetop level, staying below the very low clouds. Clearly they were flying VRF. I hope they found some open water. It's still in the low 20s. So now that my shoveling is done and all critters are fed I can go back to learning CS4, a remarkable version of Dreamweaver and a program that makes Adobe Photoshop seem highly intuitive. My head hurts!

Snow-Sheep Convergence with Dog

2008-12-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I need to dust off the blog that's for sure. I never have been good at keeping any kind of diary. Too bad.

We're in the midst of a rather amazing snow event. So far I have almost a foot with two foot and better drifts. Somewhere in there, a few inches down, is a 3/4 layer of ice. Very pretty, but not nearly as much fun when you have to deal with livestock. Yesterday, as I crunched my way to the barn to feed the sheep, they panicked at the unfamiliar sound (sheep really like to panic for some reason). Bounding from the barn to escape the noisy monster approaching, they hit the new ice, which of course panicked them further. Sliding, floundering, and bounding, they made it across the pasture and out into the field about 1/4 mile away where they huddled together, terrified to set foot on the slippery ground. Sigh. That's 1/4 mile from shelter, hay, grain, and warm water. So I dutifully, good sheep keeper than I am, broke a nice path out to them. Think I could get 'em to use it? Grain didn't work. Shouting and waving my arms behind them didn't work. So I slogged back to the barn and returned with some hay. To tide them over. When you get thirsty come in, I told them. It wasn't windy, wasn't snowing, I figured they'd be fine in the dry, powdery snow until they got over their fright.

Ha. I totally underestimated the stubborn fear response of sheep.

Fast forward to three PM. Freezing rain/snow is forecast for the night, the east wind is picking up, they have no water out there and it's 20 F. Time for the big guns. So I tap Annie, who is hopefully recovered enough from her knee surgery that she can work sheep without damaging herself. And frankly, I had run out of other options, short of managing to warm up the terrain and melt all the snow. And all my mental efforts to shift the arctic high to the eastward and let in our nice, warm, wet Pacific weather had failed miserably. So. Back to the Big Guns. Or Gun rather.

Annie was SO up for the task. Sheep are usually so EASY. You give them an 'I want to eat you' look and they run where you want 'em to go. Not this time. She stared, she snapped, she barked. The sheep weren't going to go back in her direction but they did NOT want to go forward. I poked, prodded, whacked hocks with a switch and Annie kept 'em from bolting past me to the safety of their trampled snow. Foot by foot, yard by yard, we made the very slow trek back to the barn. A ewe would bound forward, slip, and break through the ice. The flock would inch forward. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. But we made it. They're in the barn, they have a shoveled path to the heated water tank, they have a bale of hay in the manger, and I'm not going to go near them until I figure they need more hay! Whew! Bless Annie (who seems no worse for wear this morning). I couldn't have gotten them in without her.

Coming Up For Air And Not Starbucks

2008-07-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

Sigh, I have to rant. I had NPR on and came up for air from the novel plot summary I’m working on to hear a segment about the closure of a few Starbucks and a resulting public outcry. I happened to hear a woman from ‘rural Iowa’ who stated that she drove 1.5 hours to visit Starbucks and did so ‘for its consistency’. YIKES!!! Not only is she putting a LOT of carbon into the air in her quest for a consistent cup of coffee (she can’t make consistent coffee?) but that ‘I want it to be always the same’ attitude terrifies me. Is that what we are becoming? A nation of McDonaldites? Let’s go to Paris and have our coffee at Starbucks and dinner at Micky D’s? Ignore that new, locally owned, coffee shop on the corner, it might not taste like Starbucks? I know this isn’t everyone, but it seems an indication of an increasing national fear of ‘anything other’. That’s a disturbing attitude since our planet seems to be shrinking every day. Where does this tendency to withdraw into the safe confines of the ‘familiar’ come from? And what is it doing to us as a nation?

Post Clarion

2008-07-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

My week teaching at the Clarion West Writers Workshop was wonderful...and utterly exhausting! It was a great full-circle for me, since I started my writing career there when I attended it back in 1988. And oh, boy, is it a lot more plush now! Where we slept in a very spartan Seattle U dorm and hiked eight blocks to the community college classroom we used (uphill BOTH ways as I kept telling the students), the workshop now takes place in a lovely pair of sorority houses and comes with three meals a day no less. (I remember living on tuna, ramen noodles, and cabbage for six weeks).

Big discovery. It's a lot harder to be an instructor than it is to be a student! It's not just a matter of critiquing, it's a matter of teaching through that critique, keeping everything in mind that you want to get across and pulling those teaching points from the manuscripts you've been handed. Whole different ball game. But it's a really talented group this year with a nice diversity of writing interests, styles, and goals and excellent critique skills. They're lucky to have each other. And it is going to be so fun watching how these folk develop!

It's a great program, very well run, very focused on giving the students maximum experience and learning in that intense six weeks. One dark note...someone broke into the house while we were in class on Friday and stole four laptops. The SF community rallied impressively and within 48 hours enough money had been donated to replace the stolen laptops. That says a lot about the writing and reading community right there.

So it was a wonderful week, I'm not sure I would have survived a second one without collapsing, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Star Ship Sofa and Clarion

2008-06-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been very quiet. Mostly because I've been reading 100,000 words of Clarion West mss before my week as instructor at that excellent workshop, and between that and making about a 1/2 ton of hay by hand to keep my sheep fed for a week, there hasn't been a lot of energy left over. Except for selling a new story Lion's Walk to Asimov's. But I'm back with writing news instead of garden news or an environmental rant this time. Starshipsofa a VERY cool audio ezine, is posting a reading of RainMaker, one of my drylands stories from the past. They'll have a live discussion on July 2 and then the story, read by a professional, not by stumbling me, will be up on the site on July 5.

If you have a few minutes, drop in on the discussion or hear Rain Maker read aloud. And do check out Starshipsofa. The 'zine of the future. :-)

http://www.starshipsofa.com

Meat Miles Oversimplification in Science News

2008-06-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

In the latest issue of Science News (May 24,2008) I turned to an article in their ‘Environment’ section on the global warming impact of food purchases. Their position was that in terms of meat, buying local has little importance, that only 4% of the carbon emissions come from transport and 86% come from fertilizers used to raise feet, methane and nitrous oxide from rumination and manure decomposition. I find most articles in Science News to be well researched and balanced, but the oversimplification of this particular piece disturbed me quite a bit.

As a major proponent of the eat local and grow sustainably movement, this quick dismissal of local meat particularly worries me. Yes, their suggestion that everybody should eat less red meat is a good one for many reasons. But it also suggests that there’s no particular benefit to buying from a local meat producer and that there’s no particular difference between a cow or lamb raised locally and one feedlotted in another state.

BUT…all is NOT equal here. The carbon footprint of an Angus steer raised to slaughter in a crowded feedlot, fed on corn that has been raised using a lot of fertilizer and tractor power is one thing. Certainly the manure pits from large scale dairy and feedlot facilities are a major producer of nitrous oxide among other things. BUT…what about the small livestock producer who raises a few steers on pasture, where the manure is scattered on the pasture by the animals and broken down more quickly and with a different biochemical environment than you see in a concrete manure bunker? They are grass fed only and the pasture has received minimal if any fertilizer application and minimal if any diesel equipment work.

The local pasture raised meat industry is small and new. I would hate to see it get lumped in with large feedlot practices in terms of carbon footprint. If consumers feel that it makes no difference whether that meat comes from a local pasture or a feed lot in Nebraska, the local farmers who lack the economies of scale are going to suffer. Think it about it folks! All meat is not equal, even if the personal contentment of the animals isn’t important to you!

Bio-Fuel Alternative....ZAP!

2008-04-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

As world food shortages continue, thanks in a large part to the diversion of cereal crops for bio-fuel production, lo, a ray of hope glimmers through the murk! Technology Review reports that a novel lithium-ion battery has been developed by A123 Systems, a startup in Watertown, MA--one of a handful of companies working on similar technology. The company's batteries store more than twice as much energy as nickel-metal hydride batteries, the type used in today's hybrid cars, while delivering the bursts of power that will let people feel as if they're actually driving a car rather than a kid's toy. There is hope for an electric car after all, since the real hold-back has been battery technology. Apparently General Motors is testing them for their Volt, an electric car and may have them in mass production in 2010. Boy, I hope. Using food for fuel is...as we are immediately finding out...a serious ethical and humanitarian conundrum. You want to drive or eat? Unfortunately the wealthier populations get to make the choice, and the poorest populations get to suffer the result. This really cannot go on.

Algae Biofuel Anyone?

2008-04-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

CSInman commented on my tree rant that algae is less sexy than trees but very efficient at dealing with CO2. So true. Blue-green algae would be one way to terraform Mars, producing oxygen for us folk. Hey, I AM a SF writer after all. But speak of the devil, or algae for that matter, and what did I turn up in the IEEE Spectrum online, but a very cool little project to vertically raise algae for biofuel production. Not only is is a smaller footprint than a soybean field, those soybeans, or rice, or wheat can have their good, arable soil. All you really need for the algae is solar energy, nutrients, and water. Take a look!

The Trees Are Coming!

2008-04-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

All right, I can’t stand it. Turn on the radio, hoping for a ray of sunshine from the weather guy, maybe duck yet another report of vitriolic Clinton-Obama sparring, and what do I get? A bit about bottled water shipped to the US from Fiji. And you know what? They are planting so many trees that the plastic bottles, shipped 9000 miles or so are carbon negative! Wow, drink up. But wait, now I’m remembering those automobile manufacturers who promise that they’re planting enough trees for every gas guzzling, pollution belching SUV they sell to make their cars carbon neutral, at least for a couple of years (and then you’ll sell it and buy a new carbon neutral model, right?) And what about all those other companies and clubs and schools and suburban SUV owners paying to plant trees and thus become carbon neutral and guilt free. My gosh…I have this image of every square meter of the planet bristling with densely planted forests.

You know, these are great numbers. What do people think ‘planting a tree’ means? That this tree will grow up to a nice, healthy mature specimen and suck up that CO2? Obviously. What really happens? Bet you a bunch of low-pay laborers mostly range over all kinds of terrain with a pack full of 6 inch seedlings or rooted cuttings, chopping ‘em into the clay/sand/mud/ with one stroke of the mattock in their other hand. And then they move on. Because that’s all they’re getting paid to do.

I watched thousands of trees get planted along the Johnson Creek watershed. Made me shake my head as they were planted in dense shade where that species had no chance of survival, in open fields where the blackberries and tamarisk overgrew them long before they got taller than the grass. Deer ate a lot. Beaver ate some. A lot died because it was dry that summer and they were too small to survive without water. A very few have survived. Rough estimate? Maybe one in fifty? Maybe far less than that. What about that logged-over and eroded rainforest or parched savanna a few thousand miles away from the company happily shelling out to buy those ‘carbon credits’. How careful do you think those folk are? Maybe you have people selling ‘forests’ on the carbon market, planting the same 1000 acres over and over again because who really looks? I’d sure like to see a more realistic measure of carbon credit= planted tree. Right now it’s a very easy way to banish the guilt of that carbon footprint. I’m just not sure it’s very realistic.

Change at the Root

2008-04-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

This has been a frustratingly wet and cold spring, where I dash outside for a few minutes only to see the sun vanish and rain or snow or hail start to fall once more. But Sunday, I really did get a very nice ray of spring sunshine. Earlier this year, I met a couple of people who belonged to an urban homesteading group that had recently formed. They took a cheesemaking workshop I taught and I asked if I could join the group. I attended the meeting this Sunday and I was thrilled. I have been raising all or nearly all of my food on my small acreage for more than twenty years and I've grown discouraged by the general obliviousness of the average American. Food comes from the store, you buy what you want, who cares where it comes from? That seems to finally be changing. The artisnal food movement, slow food, awareness of carbon and climate impact....all these seem to be coming together to make a lot of people more aware of their connection...or lack of it....to the earth. We are what we eat, and we have given up control of that over the past century. I see some initial steps toward changing that in the growing interest in wild or sustainably grown crops, CSA, and the like. In this group of people I was, as I said, thrilled to find folk who lived in the city and were searching for a way to grow at least a bit of their own food. They were looking for connections -- a bit of unused ground for a garden, connection to a local person who'd raise a meat animal for them, a way to network and share a surplus of apples, or figs, or plums.

You know, this represents a step away from the oblivious consumer mindset that we have gotten ourselves into. Work work work to buy buy buy. It's a vicious circle and one that is, I believe, undermining our economy dangerously. Look at the credit crash. It could get a lot worse. I am doing a lot of thinking about how to establish some kind of network so that, say, elderly folk in their residential homes who are losing control of their yards as they get frail can connect with a young couple who will trade weeding and pruning labor in return for space to put in a small garden. This is a rich opportunity to see some change at the grass roots level. There's hope for us yet, folks!

Snow Angels Mud Monsters

2008-03-29T21:46:00.000-07:00

Well, this has been a hectic ten days. I was off at Norwescon last weekend, a very fun four days and a con I like a lot for their good science and writing panels. Except this year I have dubbed it PlagueCon since every other person that hugged me and said hello then followed the hug with 'I have this awful flu'. I am going to bring a box of surgical masks next year and sell them. I could probably have paid for my hotel room this year! Of course I came home to two days to catch up on writing and students and then off to spend three days in the weather at a herding clinic. This involves standing around outside in the weather (read snow/sleet/hail/rain) until it's your turn to take your dog in on the stock and then you add mud. I paid to do this. Remember, I paid to do this. I kept reminding myself of that fact as I stood in the mud, freezing hands stuffed under the seven layers of assorted garments I was wearing, ice crystals forming on my eyelashes. Annie, my dog, was totally happy. Except when I hosed her off after she slopped out of the cattle pen looking amazingly brown for a rottie. Do you know what seven or eight big, 1000 lb steers can do to dirt when water is added? Let us just say that a high pressure spray nozzle is a good thing. Annie didn't think so. And then my wood stove quit. By quit I mean all of a sudden no draft, build a fire the smoke seeps out through the cracks and then the fire dies...NOT good. Especially not good when I'm arriving home to do chores at dark, with a core temperature that sure felt like it was about ten degrees below normal. So 'warm house' meant about 55 degrees and smoky enough to make me think about lung cancer. Sigh. It did finally occur to me that the starlings, cavity nesting little darlings (teeth clenched here) that they are, might have built a nest in my chimney while I was at Norwescon. Yeah it was so. Friday night late, the last of the blockage finally fell down the pipe and I got a draft back. The house is 70 even as I type this! Woohoo! I am thawing out. Hmm. I wonder how starlings might taste, braised with ginger, garlic, and rice wine....

Well, snow is a lot more tolerable when the house is warm. And my daffodils don't seem to mind it.

Sir Arthur

2008-03-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

I was jolted out of my 'make coffee now' routine yesterday by the news that Sir Arthur Clarke had died. Yeah, he was quite old and these things are to be expected....but I'm sorry, I didn't want to expect this. He was one of the authors that awakened me to SF when I was 13 and propelled me into hard SF rather than dragons and elves. I named a solar sailing ship for him in one of my published stories....The Clarke. I have no idea if he ever knew that story existed, although he might have read a review of it. I met him when I was just starting out, had just won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. We shared a shuttle to the airport after that Balticon. He was so charming, so very British, and flirted elegantly during the entire journey. I was so charmed. Hey, he was sexy even at close to 80! I have to say, I did catch the wince when I said 'You've been one of my favorite writers since I was a kid'. I guess maybe that wasn't kind right then, reminding him of our age difference. But I meant it sincerely.

He wrote SF, he lived life fully to his standards. He was a charming, warm man, who wore his knighthood easily and well.

Fare thee well, Sir Arthur!

Octavia Butler

2008-03-08T19:50:00.000-08:00

I was at the small and intimate Potlatch writers conference in Seattle last week. It’s a nice gathering of readers and writers without the glitter and costuming of larger SF/fantasy conventions. It honored the Clarion West Writers Workshop’s twenty-fifth anniversary and it honored Octavia Butler who died unexpectedly. I was on the panel that discussed one of her later books, ‘Parable of the Sower’. I wanted to be there, at that panel. I stumbled over Octavia’s work in an issue of Asimov’s in 1984, and ‘Blood Child’ was like sticking my finger into a electrical outlet. I was zapped full of energy. Here was SF that I could make my own, dealing as it did with the themes of power and sexuality and dominance. I had been reading SF voraciously since the late sixties, but this, this was one of those rare stories that went beyond spaceships and the new frontiers of science to step outside and look inward at who we are as a species. Wow! In that galvanizing afternoon, I though ‘I want to write this’. Well, it took a few more years but there you go and here I am. Other writers were looking beyond the immediacy of science and our technological future but that story is one that really struck home for me. It was an invitation. I took it.

I think Octavia Butler is one of the unappreciated talents in literature. Well, she’s appreciated in the field of speculative fiction, but her focus was on larger themes, human universals that should have gotten her a larger attention. Through her stories like ‘Clay’s Arc’, her Pattern series, she looked at power and how we exercise it, through genetic dominance, sexual dominance, economic dominance. Because the focus was on power, she transcended the limitations of race, gender, and class.

In ‘Parable’ I saw a real change. In all her other books, change is forced on humanity by outside influences. Here, she portrays a character who creates change herself. She says ‘let us make things different’ and then goes about doing so. We don’t often deal with how to make things better in our genre. Mostly we deal with what happens when things go wrong. Our characters react to those changes, they rarely initiate them.

But in the end, it was also a disturbing read. Her dystopic future of gated neighborhoods that in the end cannot withstand the tide of those with nothing to lose and everything to gain, is a lot closer to my reality today than I like to see, even out here in our rural interface at the edge of the stalled suburbs. Grim reading with a seed of hope buried in it.

Maybe we need more books that deal with ‘how do we make it work’. Even if they are harder to write.

Snow Lamb Followup

2008-02-02T16:57:00.001-08:00

Well, Mama and baby are doing fine. He's a big healthy ram lamb and this picture was taken about twenty minutes after he hit the ground. He's already up and trying to find breakfast. He and Mama are in the lambing pen now in nice dry straw with water and hay for Mama. He was nursing by the time I brought the bucket of warm water down from the house. Lambing season has officially begun. It may not look like it, but spring is here!

Snowy Lambing

2008-02-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

Well, the snow is coming down hard, big downy flakes. And my cheviot cross ewe is down under the cedar tree working hard at lambing. I've been watching her with the binoculars as she gets up to sniff, then lies down to push again. It shouldn't be much longer. Once she has her baby on the ground, I can pick it up and bring it into the lambing pen...she'll follow it. At least there's not much wind and it's actually above freezing. Lambs are remarkably hardy and this really isn't bad lambing weather, even with the snow.

Economy Fix

2008-01-30T10:11:00.000-08:00

I hear we're going to get a nice check from the government. Who am I to turn down money? But this economic stimulus leaves me uneasy. What are we stimulating here? Increasingly, the US economy seems to be a Worm Ouroborous, eating its own tail. Like how? I mean that our economy is increasingly driven by a state of living beyond our means. We have to buy more stuff in order to keep the economy healthy and growing, but whose wages are keeping up with the increasing prices and the increasing number of 'necessities' we just 'have to have'? I read a statistic recently that the average credit card debt has doubled in the past four years. I'm assuming that this was probably because houses kept going up in price, so it was easy to think 'I'll pay it off when I sell my house'. You know, I don't see any way out of this tail-eating snake of a cycle we've gotten ourselves into. It's hard to change the way we grew up living. Our infrastructure, outside the inner urban areas, requires automobile transportation. Retail centers are here, residential neighborhoods are there, without local stores. Not stores local enough that granny can walk to it to buy the day's milk or tuna or a newspaper. We are expected to wear new clothes, drive a reasonably new car, own a nice house, pay for landscaping if you live in the 'burbs, own exercise equipment, expensive play goods, eat out a lot. A household needs two full time jobs to pay the mortgage, so now add child care costs, cleaning help, more eating out. Who has time to cook? I had to shop at a store in one of the new ...what I call 'recreational...malls'. These are lovely places, full of small shops and restaurants. Very pretty, too. You can buy drinks, snacks, and of course, all kinds of goods. It was jammed at 6 pm on a weeknight. This is the family fun outing, I noticed as I wandered along the sidewalk, looking at shoppers. We've created a social culture of recreational buying, at least for the middle classes. This certainly isn't new, it's pretty darned entrenched. I guess that's what worries me. Like an ocean liner, this sort of lifestyle expectation is not going to stop and turn around any time soon. I hope we don't hit an iceberg. Meanwhile, I'm not going to send my check back when I get it. I'm not sure I'll make the government happy with what I do with it.

Oh yeah...doing my part for local food. The Oregonian's Food Day had a nice write up of winter farmers' markets. A few are still open. This freeze has limited what's going to come in fresh from the field for awhile, but the kales, chard, collards, root veggies, and Brussels sprouts are tough and they made it. Want a treat? Hardly a diet item, but gratin leeks are wonderful when you can buy fresh leeks.

Cut just the root off the bottom of the leek and trim back the tough outer green leaves so you have white and pale green only.
Cut them lengthwise and rinse out any grit from the inner layers.
Lay them side by side, cut side down or on their sides if you have too many, in a shallow pan
Pour about a cup of heavy cream (told you this wasn't diet food) over them.
Salt lightly and add as much fresh ground black pepper as you like.
Bake at 325 until the cream is thick and mostly absorbed the the leaks. From time to time, I baste them with the cream in the pan and kind of push the leeks down into it. It should take from 30 - 45 minutes depending on how much you're doing. Keep an eye on 'em.
If you haven't met leeks before, this is a great way to get acquainted.

Kale and Gender

2008-01-17T20:40:00.000-08:00

I was listening to yet another discussion about the election. Well the radio was on and what else is out there right now? This one was all about Hillary versus Obama. The question of gender and race came up. Misogyny might be more powerful in this country than race, said the guest. I hadn’t been paying attention, was working on a story, but those words hit me like a slap on the back of the head. Whoa. There’s an interesting thought to make the public airwaves. I’m still thinking about this. Race is mostly about externals – skin, hair, facial features, behavior. Gender is a much deeper issue and skin color means very little. It ties in eerily with the current story I’m working on. Does that make me timely?

Meanwhile, let’s talk about winter farmers market good stuff. This is kale season. The stuff is tough in the warm months, but turns VERY nice after a few frosts and gives me great greens all winter. I grow three or four varieties every year. How about a kale pizza? Oh, it’s good. And you can substitute any flavorful green.

Kale Pizza

Wash a bunch of kale. The strappy-leaf ‘Tuscan’ is the best. It’s tender and you don’t have to remove the rib. For any other type, slice out the center rib unless you really need crunchy fiber in your diet. Now cut those leaves into strips. Not hair fine, just not huge pieces.

Saute some garlic and a handful of walnuts in olive oil gently for a few minutes until they’re fragrant but the garlic hasn’t begun to brown. Pine nuts are nice, too, but way spendy. Do them for the ‘company’ version.

Toss the wet-from-washing kale into the pan with the garlic and nuts. Salt lightly or not if you’re not using salt. Stir it around until the kale is limp and tender but still dark green. If you’re not using Tuscan kale, you might want to cover the pan for a minute to steam the leaves. Take off the heat.

Lay out a pizza crust, whatever you normally use. I love a sourdough crust for this, but any pizza crust, home made or bought, works. Film it with olive oil.

Spread the kale/garlic/nut mixture over the crust.

Add what you like. Last pizza, I added sliced winter onions and some canned smoked oysters (they’ve very nice with the kale if you like smoked oysters).

Sprinkle on some grated cheese. Parmesan, mozzarella, provolone work well. Try some crumbled blue cheese for extra zest.

Bake in a hot oven until the cheese is melted and crust is done – say 425 degrees.

Great way to eat your greens. And think about the misogyny versus race thing. I wonder.

Dogfight Distractions

2008-01-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

As I realize bump at a time just how much is now missing from my computer and slog through the restoration (emails that won't import back into Outlook Express, programs like Acrobat Reader I have to reinstall, Firefox source code is harder to read than it was in Explorer, autotext that isn't there any more in Word...you know). I did get a bit of relief this morning. It has been rainy and I sort of feel that my computer and I have inhabited a dismal well sunk into another universe for the past few days. Well, I DO make my living through it, okay? Anyway, this morning I peeked out the window by my computer desk which looks out onto my covered back deck. A bird feeder hangs in the apple tree just beyond it (where I can reach it from the pleasant cover of the deck instead of getting soaked every day) along with a hummingbird feeder. I leave it up all winter, thawing it on the few mornings it's cold enough to freeze the sugar solution. A lone Anna's has been hanging around, sucking up prodigious amounts of sugar water (those little critters must burn a whole lot of calories every minute). Anyway, this morning, a new Anna's had moved in and my Anna's was by golly not gonna share that feeder no way. So the two carried on a fierce little dog fight with all the intensity of a couple of WWII pilots and all the grace of a ballet. It was raining, so they did all this beneath the roof of my covered deck, right on the other side of the window. Face to face, inches apart, they dove, sidepassed, darted and threatened. As soon as one approached the feeder, the other attacked. Nobody got a sip and they finally noticed me and darted off.

That was a good start to the day. By golly there was a top to the well and I climbed out. Went down and sorted the four spookiest sheep into the paddock and Annie did marvelous job of dealing with the sneaky Cheviot cross ewe who takes off like a rocket if Annie takes her eyes off her. Picked fat fresh Brussels sprouts on the way up, noticed that my daffodil and crocuses are pushing up and decided I should remember there's a world out there, eh? I gather my fierce little Anna's were hungry enough that they sorted out a way to take turns.

Weekend from Hell

2008-01-07T10:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I got a lovely new education in all things related to computer basics. Sigh. I ...who uses Norton, quick scans daily, full scans weekly, never clicks on links or opens attachments unless I expect to get them...I...I...got a bloody virus, worm, trojan or whatever form of malware. I had seen some suspicious 'bounces' that could have been spoofs but bothered me because they weren't quite like any spoof I'd seen before. Then comcast told me yep, spam was coming from my computer. So I spent one full day running McAffee and Norton, Trend Micro, and Rootkit Revealer. Nothing. So. Spent part of another day backing up everything I could think of. Then did the reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows. Sigh. All kinds of problems, including a missing disk with the driver for the ethernet card on it. So I had to open the bloody computer case and find the manufacturer of the motherboard (no separate ethernet card) for my son in Wisconsin, who then found the drivers online, sent them to his friend who lives nearby (I had no internet of course) who brought them over on a flash drive to install them. I do have a disk now. And then of course I had all those waiting microsoft downloads and then I had to spend a half hour with comcast while the tech figured out how to get my email back again. But hey, I have a new computer, I know a whole lot more about hunting around for things, thanks to my son's patient hand holding on the phone, and I know my computer literally inside and out. Boy was it dusty! So I guess I have a new computer. Let us hope I NEVER have to do that again. I wish I'd had a blood pressure monitor. I bet mine was awesome for much of the weekend.

Eating Locally -- Winter Squash Soup

2008-01-03T12:26:00.000-08:00

Well, the new year has begun and of course, it’s now the beginning of spring. Well, maybe it doesn’t seem like it if you’re buried under a foot of snow, but the days are getting longer and my garden year starts this month as I plant fava beans, peas, and start my spring cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and the like. You know, local food is gaining attention and let me for one raise a cheer for anyone who buys locally at your farmers market. A few are open nearly all year ‘round, and those local small farmers are struggling, have always been struggling, and probably always will struggle. When you’re small and using labor in place of chemicals you are going to have a rough time producing food as cheaply as commercial growers with automated machinery who use sprays to reduce the need for expensive labor. (Weeding anyone?)

I think what stops a lot of folk from eating locally this time of year is that they’re not really sure what to do with the veggies that hang around all winter. Those include the hardy brassicas like cabbage, Brussels sprouts and the like, winter squash, root veggies, and so on. Since I religiously eat out of my garden year round, I’ve had to…surprise surprise…learn now to make a lot of less familiar veggies actually work as everyday dishes. So this year my new year’s resolution is to share a year of eating out of my garden. I’m going to offer at least one dish per month using something from my garden or ‘root cellar’. These are mostly going to be items you can find locally here in the Northwest or if you have room for a small garden or a couple of big containers, you can try growing them yourself. Along with that, I’ll tell you want I’m planting when. These are very ‘homestyle’ recipes, not something elegant to suit the pages of ‘Gourmet Magazine’ believe me!

Squash Soup Masala

I eat a lot of winter squash soup. I happen to love it, it satisfies my need for ‘orange’ in the winter, being full of vitamin A and assorted other nutritional goodies. Lots of fiber, too, and it’s very satisfying for the number of calories you consume. You can, of course, vary the flavorings a lot, but curry and winter squash seem made for each other. I use a Madras curry powder from an Asian grocery, so it has a bit more cinnamon in it than your supermarket yellow curry powder, but that works, too. Try a red or yellow Thai curry paste for a very different flavor. (If you do that, try squeezing a cut lime onto each bowl of soup). I add the tender greens for texture and to improve the nutritional quality – and because this time of year I am up to my tuckus in greens of all sorts, especially when we haven’t had a hard freeze.

Try varying ingredients to suit YOUR taste, adding more or less onion, garlic, curry, hot pepper. Experiment!

About 1 ½ - 2 pounds of cubed peeled yellow-flesh winter squash or pumpkin – any kind will do, from acorn to the huge banana squashes. More is fine. The soup is simply thicker if you add more.

One small onion, diced.

garlic to taste (1 clove or more) diced

minced fresh ginger – I use about ½ inch of root. Okay, powdered stuff will work, too. Try about ½ tsp.

chicken or veggie broth – about 2 quarts.

salt to taste (add at the end of cooking since that depends on the saltiness of the broth)

beet tops or other winter greens like kale or collard, sliced into fine ribbons and cut short so they don’t drip down your chin when you spoon them up.)

2 Tbsp Chinese rice wine or dry sherry.

½ c cream or you can use soy milk.

Saute the onions in a very small amount of olive or other oil until soft and translucent, a few minutes.

Add the curry powder, ginger, and the garlic and sauté until fragrant. Don’t let the garlic brown or the spices burn.

Add the squash cubes and sauté very briefly to caramelize a bit of their sugars.

Add broth, bring to a boil, turn way down and allow the soup to barely simmer.

When squash is soft and cooked through, use a potato masher to mash the squash into the soup. If desired (I’m lazy, so I only do this for company) cool and puree in batches in a food processor or blender, or put it through a food mill or strainer. (I don’t mind bits of onion and some chunks of not-quite-mashed-fine squash). Then return it to the pot and bring it back to a simmer.

Add the finely cut green ribbons and cook only until the greens are tender --- this varies depending on what you use and how fresh they are.

Add the rice wine or sherry with the greens.

When the greens are tender and still green, not olive-drab, add the cream or soy milk. The cream makes it more velvety, but the soy milk thickens a bit and works, too, if you don’t want lactose. Bring the soup just back to a simmer and serve hot.

Because I love one pot meals, I usually make ‘main dish’ variations on this recipe. I will poach a few chunks of mild fish in the soup at the end, or poach eggs in it. I often add quinoa grain to the soup with the squash. The high protein grain cooks and disintegrates in the soup, adding protein and thickening it. You can add up to a cup of the grain with that two quarts of stock. As I said…experiment! For a different taste, add a half a chopped apple when you add the squash cubes. Apple, squash, and curry are a nice blend.

If desired, garnish it with croutons, a dollop of sour cream or crème fraiche if you’re feeling haut, toasted nuts, or use your imagination.

Eve Wishes

2007-12-24T20:58:00.001-08:00

I think it's actually not politically correct to say 'Merry Christmas' anymore. Well, I'm not actually Christian, but this is the festival season, whether you call it Chanukah, Solstice, Christmas, or even Hajj or Eid for that matter. Let's face it, it's a dark time of year and whatever your belief's it's a good time to celebrate. Annie and Obadiah were resignedly willing to bow to the 'decorate everything' nature of the season and did so with canine grace. Well, did I mention resignation? (They got a treat after they got done wearing those silly bow ties and doing that sit-stay). That's my 'Christmas orange' behind them with ripe oranges and blossoms that are nearly making me dizzy with their fragrance. I love it that my big potted citrus trees (lime, meyer lemon, valencia orange) all bloom this time of year.

The Anna's hummingbird was really annoyed with me when I filled the feeder this afternoon. She (he?) perched on a twig close enough to threaten my left eye with that VERY sharp bill and chirred displeasure. I gently reminded my little friend that Mexico is a long way away and not much is blooming and if I don't refill the feeder, what then? Ms or Mr Anna's wasn't buying that line of malarky and buzzed me as I retreated to the house. It's either the Anna's or the nuthatch who give me grief when I'm out there. The chickadees simply keep eating, never mind that I'm dumping seed into the feeder at the same time. They're pragmatists.

Well, I'm going pour myself a bit of Irish and work on the current story. Enjoy the evening, the days are getting longer, and Merry Christmas.

Drying Out

2007-12-09T17:12:00.000-08:00

Well, the flooding has gone down and we now have a well behaved creek in place of this 30 acre lake. I think everybody has left the shelters on the coast, although some folk are going to have a tough time putting their lives back together. I guess I hurt most for the many dairies in the Vernonia area. You sit in your upstairs and you listen to the mooing in the barn. Until it stops. When that barn is the highest ground around, there's nothing else you can do. The rivers came up so fast, moving animals out by truck wasn't an option, nor was getting out, period.

Our road was pretty badly gullied. It's gravel, we maintain it ourselves. But the changing nature of the residents was pretty obvious when the only people out with shovels and wheelbarrows were my two 80 year old neighbors and myself. Outside the seriously rural areas, you see less and less responsibility for the community outside one's own boundaries. Here, neighbors who don't clean ditches cause much of the road damage. We don't teach community responsibility much any more. Not in the suburban and urban residential areas. It is someone else's job, usually the city, county, landscaper, or what have you.

I've got to say one thing...when you're out hauling gravel until you're 80 you stay pretty fit. I guess I won't trade in my lifestyle any time soon. Neither will I move to any river floodplains any time soon. I do love living on my sleeping volcano. Water runs DOWN. Let's just hope it stays sleeping!

Monsoon Season

2007-12-03T08:34:00.000-08:00

Well, we're getting a taste of what it's like to live in the tropical monsoon/typhoon part of the globe. Let's hear it for climate shift and global warming!!! The state posted its first hurricane warnings yesterday and the coast got hammered with winds over 100 mph...no point in trying to get there from here right now. It's either trees across the road, mud slides, or flooding. I ended up at midnight last night hanging from tree roots in a near vertical slope, clawing rocks out of a canyon stream with my 80 year old sheep buddy David. The stream had blocked up and diverted across the slope to come straight down on his house and shop. We got it back into its bed before he got too much water inside, but that was some wild scramble believe me. We figured with the two of us, one of us would be able to get help if the other fell in. But we survived (David went down the hill on his butt but no damage). Then ...heck it was after 1 AM...we strolled down the bike path to see what the new Johnson Creek flood project (on David's old family homestead) looked like. At 4 PM it was about two feet short of flooding. At 1 AM the entire huge 30 acre area was solid water. No ground showing at all. This is a worst case scenario, since nothing has had a chance to grow, they just ripped the ground and seeded it a month ago and the grass has barely sprouted. Look out Willamette...here comes a LOT of silt and young trees your way. It will be interesting to see what old Johnson Creek decides about where IT wants to run after this is over. I'm heading back over there around noon, when the creek is supposed to crest to take some pictures. It may be up to the bike path by then. Maybe I should take a boat?

Plants Rule the World

2007-10-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

Gary Pollan, in his Botany of Desire, demonstrates how plants, with their ability to mutate and change rapidly, have secretly manipulated human behavior. We are simply so much better at spreading their little seedies than those dumb animals that just eat them and poop them out. Just think about maize corn, which has progressed from a wimply little local grass eaten by a few gatherers to THE agricultural crop that single handedly determines a huge slice of US politics. Now that it's going to fuel our cars, woohoo, the sky's the limit! When you couple Pollan's book with Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, a look at how civilization has spread and developed (follow the spread of food crops!) you realize that most of our human history has been secretly controlled by plants.

I think maybe they've decided that we have proliferated too fast, folks. This is not good news. I noticed in this weeks' Science News that the E coli and salmonella outbreaks in produce recently aren't just from bad hygiene among all those field hands who don't have any chem-toilets in the fields. Oh no. Apparently both E coli and salmonella are now capable of colonizing fresh produce (notice that it's fresh produce? Not the stuff like stringbeans that we normally cook?). That means they don't wash off. Forget all those spendy and environmentally safe veggie washes. Boiled lettuce salad anyone?

Hey, looking back at history, if the plant world wants to reduce our numbers is there any hope for us????

Happy Halloween and don't turn your back on those pumpkins!

Sheep Shuffling

2007-10-28T18:16:00.000-07:00

I don't usually brag about my dogs on my blog. We work, we enjoy working. But I'm just really pleased with Annie, my three year old Rottie. She started working sheep last March, when DJ, my 5 year old sheep hand, was diagnosed with bone cancer. She stepped right up...'Hey, I'm ready, I'll fill in.' A working sheep dog is a really something impressive. It's a running conversation based on hereditary preditor/prey knowlege on the part of both dog and sheep. Every minute includes maybe a hundred conversations between sheep, dog, and often you, the handler. 'I'll go there to get away from you, no you won't, oh, I'll go there now, no you won't, I don't want to go there, yes you will...' It's a flowing dance of eye contact and body language and when you step into this dance you get caught up, swept away, you become total awareness...of sheep, dog, obstacle, gate, pressure from that scary looking shed, draw to those ewes in the back pasture...You can't think clearly, you simply see and react and anticipate. Hopefully correctly! (Not always!)

I was loading three wethers born this spring. St. Croix hair sheep, they are more like wild deer than the tame woolies you might be used to. They can leap straight up about four feet (duck!) and if you push them, they either run into fences (broken necks are not fixable) or go over the fence (not helpful if the trailer is in the other direction).

I had my misgivings about Annie, aka 'Rocket Dog' and these super light, super upset (Mom is in the back forty) lambs. But she had been working the light lambs, so I took a deep breath and we set to work. That included gathering the sheep out of the big back pasture, and bringing them into the paddock. (They didn't want to go...this was not normal! Something was up!). Then she had to put them in the barn (see previous). There, I sorted out my three wethers and she got to put the rest back into the back pasture. When I let the wethers out of the barn, I was eye to eye with hooves as they leaped straight into the air. Let's see, why again did I decide I wanted St. Croix???? Now, all I had to do was herd the upset wethers away from their moms, up the fenced alley and into the trailer. Without sending them over the fences or into the fence to break their necks. It was way too warm to butcher sheep today, sigh.

Annie was a gem. She bellied down, doing a pretty impressive Border Collie imitation for a Rott. Flanked slow and easy, positioning herself to push them toward the gate leading to the alley. Never once did she charge in or dash around...which would have sent them bouncing like rocket propelled super balls. She kept her eyes on them, using her stare to push them through the gate. Then she eased along behind them, so gently that they even nibbled at the grass as she urged them toward the trailer gate.

No running, no panic, no crashed fences. And this is a Rott, not a Border Collie. Although I think Annie might have been a Border Collie in her last life... With a huge sigh of relief, I closed the trailer gate and it was done.

So the lambs have been safely moved, we're all set for winter, with the hay stacked, plenty of wood for the fire. The ewes can happily grow next year's lambs and Annie can make sure they all go where they're supposed to go.

She had a ball. And she is now crashed like road kill on the living room floor. Dreaming of new, flighty wethers, I'm sure.

Rainbows, Wildfires, and the Reincarnation Rollercoaster

2007-10-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

I put in hay today, got it in just before the showers started, so it's all nice and dry, stacked up and tarped against any rain or drifting snow that might make it into my barn. That hay represents past and future. It's a past of sun, irrigation water, sweat, and yes, diesel, alas, because alfalfa grows in eastern Oregon. It is stored summer. It represents a future of lambs, more breeding ewes, dinner for some folk. It is stored food. As I finished with the unloading, the sun set, the showers moved on and a rainbow graced a nearly clear sky just after the sun had set. Ephemeral color caught in a few brief moments between day and night.

I had emailed a student of mine living in one of the burned areas in San Diego. Worrying. Today, I got a reply. She was evacuated and as she unpacks in her thankfully! unburned home, she is finding revelation in what they threw in the car and what they left behind. Global warming? Or just a bad, dry year? My son emailed me a NY Times article about the dry future: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html?em&ex=1193284800&en=adc25155e153a757&ei=5087%0A

I find a lot of comfort in the small cycles of life: alfalfa growing, storing up sunlight and water and summer heat in green leaves, the growth of lambs in the pregnant ewes, nourished by that stored summer, the nourishment of human lives by those as yet unborn lambs. I look at the climate shift and the international waffling that is going to allow it to continue and I see another, larger cycle. Maybe we, humans, Homo sapiens, are only going to evolve through a very long process of civilization growth and the crash that comes when you don't work together to suit your environment and technology. Maybe this is just the first rise and fall of a very great roller coaster, eh? And where will it end?

Cycles.

It's a theme I've been looking at in my SF lately. Where will we go, as a species, and what is our ultimate evolutionary goal? I wonder.

Atisnal Cheese in the Back of Beyond and Venison Steaks

2007-10-20T18:35:00.001-07:00

I just got off the phone with some good friends of mine. They have cows and have been busting their butts to be able to produce and sell their very high quality milk legally. It is not easy if you're not a huge commercial dairy, and the task has taken them from Washington to Colorado, to Oregon, and now back up to Kettle Falls, Washington (about an hour from Spokane). They're only weeks away from getting their commercial license to sell raw milk. And their milk is wonderful. David bends over backward to make sure that each and every cow, each and every milking's worth of milk is pristine. And it is. His raw milk outlasted the commercial, pasturized stuff in the fridge every time I got it.

Aja, his wife, works for a small natural food store and they're going to expand their cheese section, offering artisnal cheeses. Now this is not a metropolitan area with a lot of middle class buyers looking and paying for upscale products. This is VERY rural. People there, Aja tells me, are willing to pay more for organic, high quality, local, and artisnal stuff. Not everybody, by a long shot, but enough to keep the store going. And hopefully to keep the dairy going.

That fills me with hope. :-) I have loved the artisnal and local foods movement, but I was afraid it was a figment of the moneyed middle class. Let's face it, small scale produced food is simply not cheap. You have to grow very large scale with a minimum of labor hours in order to produce food at the cost you're used to seeing it in the grocery store. I couldn't sell my veggies at grocery store prices and survive. But oh, do you pay a price for cheapness. You pay it in quality of the product -- you've got to use a lot of chemicals in order to eliminate all those expensive hands weeding and removing pests -- you pay for it terms of animal welfare. It is not really possible to raise animals humanely on the scale required to produce cheap meat and eggs.

It's a tough choice to pay more for something you could pay less for. I'm really pleased to hear that people who do not live in the suburbs of Seattle or Portland are willing to do that. I was thinking about this as I cut and wrapped the venison steaks from those mule deer hindquarters David lugged back from eastern Oregon. I caught some flack from someone who wasn't at all happy that I was eating deer. Not a vegetarian. That person just figured it was better to eat that nice, plastic wrapped chuck steak than Bambi. I don't buy commercial beef. That buck didn't suffer much. David is a good shot and a consumate meat hunter. The steer who went from calf operation to feed lot to slaughter house had a tougher time. The lambs I raise don't know what is in store for them and it's over before they figure it out. It's unpleasant, messy, hard work, and of course you have to do the killing, but I'm happier this way. I know they had a good life, both the lambs and the deer. Well, when it's all said and done, a whole lot of tiny critters will get to eat me, so what goes around comes around, eh?

Hunting Season

2007-10-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

Well, fall has arrived. Officially. I planted my garlic today and that ends the garden season until I plant peas and fava beans and start my early broccoli and cauliflower next January. Right now, it's the revered Hunting Season. I was passed by two young guys in a big pickup towing a muddy jeep on a trailer. Two deer in bags were seatbelted into the front seats, heads and racks protruding, wearing sunglasses. The back of the Jeep was piled with kids' bikes and trikes. I guess the moms were pulling the trailer with the kids.

My sheep herding and wood cutting buddy, David, 76, I think, this year, (maybe older, I've never been quite certain) was finally persuaded by his son to head out Nyssa (east Oregon, almost Idaho) for a few days. I assured David that Annie and I would look after his sheep and keep all Dangerous People from breaking into his house (it is NOT a house that looks as if treasure lies within). After much coercing from son Bobby and I, he finally went. Two days later I had to assure him over the phone that Everything Was Fine.

That was three weeks ago. :-) A very nice big buck who had been happily fattening himself on farmer's corn and some good bass fishing sort of muted the homing instinct. And he worked on putting a new roof on his son's place. Annie was happy. She got to go hold his sheep off the feeder every day while I put out the feed. And David's sheep are a bunch of sneaky old Suffolk ewes so Annie had her work cut out for her. I think they all enjoyed the dance, since everybody thought they won. (Annie held the sneaky ewes off until I called her to quit and the sheep got the feed in the end).

David finally got home today and of course I got paid well. He arrived with two very nice hindquarters of that big buck, aged two weeks in a walk in cooler, (just starting to grow that green hair that means 'prime' in a restaurant) a big bag full of doves, a slab of the halibut son Bobby brought back from Alaska, and, of course, a lot of fresh bass, caught yesterday evening. (That was dinner and a lot of eating for the rest of the week. I do not freeze fish if I can avoid it!) The Bad Guys did not break into the house, I had all his mail, and the resident coyotes who had been disrespectful in his absense will have to behave themselves. To add to the day, we noticed that the oyster mushrooms were budding on some of his alders (this is a GREAT mushroom year) so strolled into the woods to check and found a downed alder fat with oyster mushrooms and a flush of shaggy parasols. So I added a bulging sack of fresh mushrooms to the plunder. Alas, my favorite mushrooming woods got sold to a developer and bulldozed. Progress marches on.

We still have to cut and wrap the venison quarters (the dogs can't wait!) but my freezer is looking nicely full of protein, and I have this big pan of sauteed mushrooms and all that bass, baked with lime-pepper.

So the wood is all in, I've got the last planting in the ground, and the fall meat harvest has been accomplished with style. Only the coyotes will be disappointed. They'll have to stop taking their dumps in David's front yard now. Life is tough.

Rain Dance

2007-10-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

I drove up to Olympia to help put on a herding trial with the herding club I belong to. It was a fun weekend, we worked out butts off, entrants and their dogs worked, had fun, were elated and disappointed, depending on the run. But the herding world is mostly very friendly and supportive, so it was more fun than tears, even if things didn’t go well. (Hey, mix spooky sheep, an excited dog, nervous handler and things often go…well…in unexpected directions. Literally.) We stayed in a motel because if I’m going to work in the freezing wind and rain all day putting something like this on, I am NOT sleeping in my unheated van, thank you! Annie had never done this and was all eyes as we went upstairs to the second floor, down a hall full of parents with kids stopping over on the way home from Gramma’s. Obadiah did all this with his breeder earning his championship so he ignored the kids, bounced into the motel room, and instantly hopped onto a bed. ‘This one’s mine!’ Annie was still mooning over the kids with those nice, nose-height faces just asking to be licked...pleading even!

The skies didn’t open up until Sunday afternoon, so final awards were presented in a barn full of wet dogs and wet handlers. Which smelled worse? Well, we all smelled like wet sheep by then, so who’s counting?

On the way home in the downpour, my beloved and elderly Eurovan sloshed across the Glen Jackson bridge over the Columbia, drenched by sixteen-wheeler walls of spray and kindly waited until I was close to the first exit before the driver’s side wiper quite working. Ulp. Do you know what you can see at night in the pouring rain with no wiper and headlights coming at you? Yep. Precisely nothing.

I got off fast and pulled over. The nut holding the arm to the spindle was loose. And I did not have a socket set with me. All I needed was a 13 mm socket. One small technological glitch and all kinds of things fall apart. It was late Sunday night. What’s open? So I drove home, leaning WAY over (ouch, my back is sore) to see through the wiped passenger side glass on the well lighted 122nd Ave with a bright white bike lane newly painted (thank you Portland!). I DO have a 13 mm socket in my glove box now.

Ah, we do live in a technological house of cards, don’t we? No electricity and what stops working? No socket wrench and that simple spindle and nut are not going to work (no, the pliers couldn’t grip it – it was set into a recess just larger than the nut). We DO live precarious lives don’t we? Keeps life interesting, eh?

Yesterday Sidetrip

2007-10-03T16:21:00.000-07:00

I had a Craigslist adventure yesterday. I bought a baby Childrens python, needed a larger tank for a permanent home and found one listed for a good price. Turns out it was over in an apartment complex right behind Reed College. Talk about a trip back in time! They built that complex back when I was going to Reed and the owner torched it for the insurance. I was living a few blocks away and remember the HUGE firestorm vividly. The complex hasn’t changed much…it was rebuilt and is bigger now, the area is more built up. But the inhabitants are the same, mostly students or young couples just post college or having quit college, working mostly service sector jobs. I had the unnerving feeling that I was stepping back through a very thin barrier into the past.

You know something? Things have changed some. I was in this place, at this age, but futures I brushed up against here, the expectations, were different. I guess back then you could do a lot more with a college degree or even some college. It wasn’t a horizon of ‘want fries with that?’ or minimum wage competition with Bangladeshi call center operators. What is your future now if you’re 20 with maybe a BA or a couple of years of community college? Where are we going as a country? These kids aren’t going to be able to buy those development houses they’re putting up all around me. They’re not going to be able to pay for the 2007 version of the American Dream working at MickyD’s, not even if they manage a store and the expectation of what is ‘necessary’ for a good life – the car, big cell phone plan, expensive cable – keeps getting more expensive. I had a Craigslist adventure yesterday. I bought a baby Childrens python, needed a larger tank for a permanent home and found one listed for a good price. Turns out it was over in an apartment complex right behind Reed College. Talk about a trip back in time! They built that complex back when I was going to Reed and the owner torched it for the insurance. I was living a few blocks away and remember the HUGE firestorm vividly. The complex hasn’t changed much…it was rebuilt and is bigger now, the area is more built up. But the inhabitants are the same, mostly students or young couples just post college or having quit college, working mostly service sector jobs. The gal who was selling the tank had just been laid off, was between jobs.

You know something, things have changed some. I was in this place, at this age, but you could do a lot more with a college degree or even some college. It wasn’t a horizon of ‘want fries with that?’ or minimum wage competition with Bangladeshi call center operators. What is your future now if you’re 20 with maybe a BA or a couple of years of community college? Where are we going as a country? These kids aren’t going to be able to buy those development houses they’re putting up all around me. They’re not going to be able to pay for the 2007 version of the American Dream working at MickyD’s, not even if they manage a store and the expectation of what is ‘necessary’ for a good life – the car, big cell phone plan, expensive cable – keeps getting more expensive. The gal who was selling the tank was between waitressing jobs, laid off.

So I paid cash for the tank and took it home and I hope this gal sharing that one bedroom has a future than includes more for her than waiting tables or cashiering at Winco, or maybe sees her future as something other than those over priced development houses with the hummer out front. That would give me hope. We need a new American Dream and we need it really fast. For our sakes and for the planet's sake.

Globalization in Action

2007-08-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I am still here, lured outdoors by the hard summertime work that I love whenever I'm not actually writing. Speaking of lures, on the writing front, I have been lured into Alt History by editor Lou Anders. And oh what fun I had there, never mind that I did a novel's worth of research for an 8000 word novelette. I might do the novel yet. The Chinese reach the South American continent decades before the Spanish do, and the Chinese bring trade... and gunpowder. The North and South American continents are not the same in this 19th century, believe me. 'Sideways in Time' is a collection of Alt History mysteries (say that three times fast) and will be out next summer from Solaris. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted. It's going to be a very good anthology, with a lot of strong writers.

Meanwhile, I have been watching globalization in action. Metro is building a huge flood control project locally – I’ve mentioned it before. They’re restoring the original bends to Johnson Creek on the old Schweitzer farm, lowering the land so water can fill in, creating wetlands and fish spawning gravel bars. Of course David has been overseeing this. He was born there in 1928 and still lives on Schweitzer property and has never lived anywhere else. Everybody from the head engineer (who redrew the plans to save the cedar tree beneath which David’s father had a heart attack and died) to the guys on the track hoes know him now. And David, who has an eighth grade education and all the worldview you can imagine from a rural upbringing, is getting globalized. It all started with his sheep.

Quite a few African immigrants work on the project – from Kenya to Ghana, from engineers to flaggers. And a couple of them had been eyeing the very fat lambs out grazing in the pasture. And asked him about them. Sure, he sells them. And yeah, if they want to butcher them, they can do it right there. It’s all set up with a strong limb where you put the block and tackle to haul the carcass up for skinning and splitting, clean plywood for the basic cleaning, and David is more than happy if they want to cart off all the organs and intestines. Less for him to bury.

So they started showing up, talking about the family village farm that they all went home to even if they mostly lived in the city and went to school. They compared notes with him on butchering techniques at home, pasturing, feed. They bought lambs and were very efficient at their sheep butchering and David is always impressed with efficiency. And they, of course, treated him with huge courtesy, village elder courtesy.

I watched race fall right out of this picture. That common ground of Farming Right, an appreciation for hard work, and responsibility faded it to nothing. It has been fun. And when he needs some help, he gets helped. Nobody asks if he needs it, it just happens. They show up after a full day on the project to do whatever he's doing, grade him a driveway that won't wash out, bring him a bunch of straw bales that broke and couldn't be used to line the creek. He's going to fence a garden spot so one of the guys from Kenya can grow vegetables he can't buy here. (I can't wait!) I will be very sorry when the project is over, but most of these folk live in the apartments nearby and walk on the bike path, so they may still be around for some time to come. I hope so. :-)

Back From the Grave

2007-07-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the long absence here...well then again you all didn't need to read any rants about SUVs and Visa-funded carbon offsets did you? I sort of crawled into a hole this spring. I had to put down my five year old multiple titled, nationally ranked, herding/tracking/obedience buddy, DJ, and the six weeks spent watching bone cancer eat him and wondering if I would know when it 'was time' really trashed me. And he told me when it was time, and Annie and Obadiah buried him with me, and I guess I'm back in the world again. At least I have this August 1 deadline for an alternative history mystery and I'm in the middle of it. And my two year old girl Annie figured I needed a sheep dog and has gone from run-around-the-sheep to where-would-you-like-to-put-them-today in a matter of two months and has earned two herding titles. Dogs really do work hard at making you feel better.

And I'm not the only one crawling out of the grave. Ursula Le Guin took a wicked slice at Slate Magazine's pompous assertion that "Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it." ohmygosh! Well, I could not begin to answer that statement even half as well as Ms. Le Guin. Please click over to boingboing and read it for yourself. Make sure you're sitting on a secure chair please. I use an excercise ball as a desk chair and I ended up on my butt on the floor! And I maybe ruptured something laughing... Dangerous lady, Ms. Le Guin, oh yes! Enjoy: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/04/ursula_leguin_rips_i.html

Heads Up, Authors!!!

2007-05-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

Heads up, fellow authors! The Author's Guild posted a warning that publisher Simon and Schuster now consider a book to be 'in print' as long as ANY copies of the book are available at all. So if they offer your book in Print on Demand format or as an ebook they will retain rights to your work essentially forever, even if no copies are sold. You might as well have sold them 'all rights'. Under pressure by Authors Guild, they have publically stated that they will negotiate these rights on a 'book by book basis'. If you are an author who plans to sell to any imprint of Simon and Schuster, beware!

Here is the latest bulletin from Author's Guild and Simon and Schuster's press release in their entirety:
___________________________

From Author's Guild:

Simon & Schuster is irked that we went public with our information about their unannounced new contract language. They’ve sent a release (you can read it below) accusing us of “perpetrat[ing] serious misinformation.”That's a heavy charge, so we went back and double-checked. We stand by every word of our statement.Simon & Schuster’s release pretends that the argument concerns “print on demand.”

That isn’t the issue. We like print on demand: we encourage publishers to sell books in every permissible way. You wouldn’t know it from reading its release, but Simon & Schuster already has the rights – as they have for years in their standard contract – to take advantage of print on demand and e-book technologies.The issue is what happens when a book goes out of print, when the publisher is no longer selling it in meaningful numbers. Traditionally, rights then revert at the request of the author, who often is able to give the book a new life elsewhere.

Simon & Schuster is trying to change the rules of the industry so that they never have to admit that a book is out of print.We meant what we said in our press release and our alert to members:

1. Simon & Schuster’s new contract would indeed allow it to retain exclusive rights to a book even if it were no longer in print. Simon & Schuster’s contract says, “The Work shall not be deemed out of print as long as it is available in any U.S. trade edition, including electronic editions.” Having a book available for sale in some database – without the obligation to sell a single copy – is not keeping a book “in print” as common sense and the industry have defined that term.

2. Simon & Schuster would, under its new contract, be empowered to exclusively control your rights even if your books aren't available for sale through traditional bookstores. E-book availability (read any good e-books lately?) would be enough to fulfill Simon & Schuster’s contractual commitments under its interpretation of “in print.” Roy Blount is plainly right, this contract would allow Simon & Schuster to squirrel away rights.

3. Simon & Schuster’s press release avowals about its promotional efforts as it pursues “incremental income” for backlist titles are not legally binding. Simon & Schuster goes on at some length about efforts to market backlist titles including “regularly review[ing] inventory opportunities with all our accounts” and engaging in the “distribution of online assets (cover, bios, synopses, chapters) and data feeds about basic information” on backlist titles to retailers. Whatever the merit of these efforts, Simon & Schuster carefully avoids committing to them on behalf of authors with books relegated to the backlist.

4. Simon & Schuster’s efforts to alter the true core deal of a trade book contract – that a publisher controls the right to sell an author’s book only so long as the publisher effectively exploits that right – demanded exposure. Agents reported to us that Simon & Schuster had slipped the change into its contracts without alerting agents to the alteration, which was quite subtle and easily missed. Agents also reported that when they discovered the change and questioned the publisher about it, Simon & Schuster played hardball, saying the clause was non-negotiable and wouldn’t be discussed. In its release, Simon & Schuster seems miffed that we didn’t discuss their new contractual language with them before exposing it to sunlight. Engaging in discussions with a conglomerate playing hardball while authors may have been unwittingly signing rights away would, in our view, have been irresponsible. We welcome and will take Simon & Schuster up on its offer to discuss this matter. We hope to report soon that it has rejoined the ranks of publishers who behave as responsible stewards of their authors’ copyrights.

In the meantime, if you have an offer from Simon & Schuster, remember that the publisher has now said it will negotiate this clause on a book-by-book basis. If you’re fortunate, Simon & Schuster will offer you a reasonable out-of-print clause. (Feel free to discuss this with us or talk to your agent about the adequacy of the clause.) If not, it’s in your interest to explore your options – other publishers have reaffirmed that they’re not following Simon & Schuster’s example.

If you have a manuscript that may be auctioned, it’s in your strong interest to ask your agent to exclude Simon & Schuster imprints unless they agree before the auction to use industry standard terms.

Here’s Simon & Schuster’s release in its entirety, which we forward to you at the publisher’s request.Feel free to forward and post this alert. The Authors Guild (http://app.bronto.com/public/?q=message_link&fn=Key&id=asbjvrnjoptrwjhupkkvtlqzsflabhf&link=bpdpnjlsrtkbfhnlnjqhwrxclopbbmo) is the oldest and largest organization of published book authors in the U.S. -----------------

TO OUR COLLEAGUES IN THE AUTHOR AND AGENT COMMUNITYThe Authors Guild has recently perpetrated serious misinformation regarding Simon & Schuster, our author contracts and our commitment to making our authors’ books available for sale. Unfortunately, these distortions were released by the Authors Guild without their having undertaken any effort to have a dialogue with Simon & Schuster on this topic. In recent years, Simon & Schuster has accepted, at the request of some agencies, contract language that specifies a minimum level of activity for print on demand titles. Our experience with the current high quality and accessibility of print on demand titles indicates to us that such minimums are no longer necessary.

Our position on reversions for active titles remains unchanged. As always, we are willing to have an open and forthright dialogue on this or any other topic.When considering this issue, we ask you to please keep in mind these important points: • Through print on demand technology, publishers now have the ability, for the first time in history, to actually fulfill the promise which is at the core of their contracts with authors – to keep the author’s book available for sale over the term of the license. • We view this progress as a great opportunity to maximize the sales potential for slow moving titles, and some of the best news for authors and publishers in a long time. The potential benefit for all concerned in incremental income for the publishing partnership far outweighs any imaginary negatives purported by the Authors Guild. • We and others are investing heavily in digitization so that authors and publishers can reap the maximum benefit of publication over the long term. New technologies including print on demand will extend the life of a book far beyond what has been possible in the past.• Contrary to the Authors Guild assertion, using technologies like print on demand is not about “squirreling away” rights, nor does it mean that “no copies are available to be ordered by traditional bookstores.” Print on demand is simply a means of manufacturing a book, making it widely available to retailers and consumers.• Publishers must and will continue to invest in sales and marketing organizations that work on behalf of its books regardless of how they are manufactured.

Among the activities that publishers regularly undertake for backlist titles:
-- Keeping them available for sale everywhere books are sold, through brick and mortar and online stores.-- Our Sales team regularly reviews inventory opportunities with all our accounts.-- Distribution of online assets (covers, bios, synopses, chapters) and data feeds about basic information to both online and traditional retailers.-- Books are cataloged and regularly featured and solicited in category promotions.-- Re-promotion of books to tie in with seasonal and current events.-- Re-promotion of an author’s backlist titles together with new frontlist releases.• Print on demand, digital archives, and virtual warehouses support greater flexibility and effectiveness in making books available.

Simon & Schuster has already had instances where a high level of sales activity of print on demand titles has led us to go back to press for larger quantities.Most importantly, we hope you know that we view authors and agents as our partners in the publishing process. We have always been open to discussion and negotiated in good faith at every point in the life of a book.Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.May 21, 2007

Nice review

2007-05-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

I got a really nice and enthusiastic review of 'Horizons' on Bookloon.com, a review website I hadn't run into before. One of my writing students forwarded me the link. :-) I was so pleased.

http://www.bookloons.com/cgi-bin/Review.ASP?bookid=7228

Circularity

2007-05-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

I went down to Johnson Creek yesterday to visit David, my 78 year old sheepherding and firewood cutting buddy and to watch the city pave a road into the ‘old home place’ across the used-to-be-dirt road. They’re going to take out the old WPA installed rip rap and restore the many bends that used to wind through what became a prosperous little self sufficient dairy farm for David’s immigrant parents. We walked the fields where David was born in 1928 and he pointed out which of the felled trees his mother had brought down from Canada as seedlings when they bought the land. After, David laid out album pages showing his older siblings playing in the old creek and then playing in the new riprap lined creek with its dam and little pond by the house.

When the city is done with the project it will be restored to a state much like it was when David’s father bought it. When the WPA straightened the creek and lined it with stone to create more farmland. The restoration of the bends and sloughs is to control flooding and recreate fish habitat. What goes around seems to go around, doesn’t it? I listened to a long radio feature about the ‘100 mile diet’ the other day. Ernest people were talking about the challenge of living on what had been grown within a 100 mile radius of their homes in order to minimize the carbon pricetag of their food’s transportation. What is the distance food travels to reach most plates? It’s many hundreds of miles as I recall, even thousands. That’s where we started, wasn’t it? You ate what you and your neighbors grew, bought those few precious staples like coffee, tea, maybe sugar if you didn’t have honey, but most people had access to bees. You ate seasonally, the dinner table got boring in winter.

It seemed so wonderful to be able to have a mango or a ripe tomato in February. It still is wonderful, but the wonder has kind of worn off to become expectation. And we never did really pay attention to the price tag, did we? Not of the extra farmland or the winter tomato. It’s a very different way of thinking, to consider what is available outside the door rather than what you want to have for dinner tonight or what's convenient. But it’s really not that difficult. I’ve been living like that for about twenty-five years, as a lifestyle choice that allowed me to live on what I made as a writer. I guess it was a good thing for the planet, too, although I’m hardly uber-virtuous where a carbon-neutral lifestyle is concerned. But I do my best. There’s a lot to be said for circularity, whether it’s a more natural way of slowing down the storm water or a way to reduce the gallons of diesel fuel needed to transport that ripe tomato to your table in February. Looking back doesn’t mean giving up everything you have today, but it can mean broadening your choices. A little change is not a bad thing.

2007-05-06T12:04:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been awhile. I got hit by a new novel concept and that always sucks me into another universe. Blame it all on Liftport, the space elevator people? You haven't heard of them? Ah, you need to visit their website They presented four part overview of what they are doing at the Norwescon SF convention and blew me away. Of course I spent a lot of time looking at the reality of the space elevator since that was my rationale for how we could have the four space platforms we do in 'Horizons'. But these folk are planning the 'how' of getting that ribbon up there, are working with the people creating the carbon nanotubes that will do it, and can see an elevator taking cargo the last 150,000 miles up to the moon now as opposed to the twenty four years they estimate that the elevator up from Earth will take. The reality of their plans really shook me. The reality of access to space, even near Earth orbit, has been diminishing pretty steadily. It's nice to really feel some hope that it not only could happen, but that I could at least see the start of the project, if not its completion in my lifetime. :-) Great group of people who have their heads on straight. They are dreaming, but very much within the limits of reality. Tha is SO cool.

I have to say that although we have pressing problems that desperately need to be resolved on our planet at this time, from overpopulation, to global warming, pollution, ocean health, and a multitude of other issues of survival, I think it is paramount that we do not use that as a rationale to take our eyes off the stars. We need to fix the problems we have created, but I believe that we have to keep dreaming large, looking outward, trying to answer questions that are far too large to answer here and how -- I think that is what defines us, what makes us who we are. If we stop doing that, stop dreaming, what are we going to be, no matter how well we keep house?

So go to the Liftport website and buy your lift ticket. You get to send 1 oz into orbit. I got mine!

Horizons Review

2007-04-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

My recent SF novel, Horizons, got a really nice review on 'Rambles' an online magazine. The reviewer, Connor O'Connor, did a fabulous job of really understanding all the points I was trying to make. I was thrilled. :-) It think it will be up for awhile, so if you want a very nice, clear idea of what the book is about (no he does not spoil the end), do take a look. http://www.rambles.net:80/rosenblum_hor06.html The ezine itself, Rambles.net is very interesting. I've added it to my bookmarks. http://www.rambles.net/index.html

Locus Interview

2007-04-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

I got my Locus Magazine in the mail right before I left and it has my interview in it. Charles Brown did a very nice job of patching out rambling conversation into what comes across as a seamless narrative and certainly doesn't. Glad the picture on the cover is sexy, though. :-) The iside face short didn't survive the printing process. I know it was the third day of the conference but I didn't think I looked THAT bad! I guess the interview will be available on the Locus Website http://www.locusmag.com/ if you don't subscribe to the magazine. (Although if you're seriously writing SF/fantasy you really should subscribe to it. It's a road map to the speculative fiction community).

Back to the Norwescon panels! Off to 'Astrobiology'.

Norwescon Schedule

2007-04-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I'll be at Norwescon at Seatac, WA, this weekend. The programming people have put me on some great panels...I don't know if I'll have time to eat, but I'll have fun.

Thursday 5 PM: Contagious Planets : (Is DNA all over the place and just what does that mean anyway?)
Thurs. 6 PM: Future of Genetic Engineering: (What is possible? What is not? And what are we going to look like anyway?)
Thurs. 7 - 9 PM: Flash Fiction Workshop
Friday 10 AM: Astrobiology: (What is it really? )
Fri: 4 PM: Space Hotel Design: Engineering and Aesthetics. (Oh boy, my speciality!)
Fri: 5 PM: Sanitizing Space Travel: (or...you don't really want to know what you're drinking, do you?)
Saturday: 11 AM: Autograph Session
Sat: 2 PM: Crossing Gender Lines (Do you really have to hang out in the men's room or dress in drag to do it?)
Sat: 4:30 PM: Reading: (I'm going to read from 'Interface' the next SF in progress. Want to visit Europa? Dress warmly. And I'll bring chocolate so be there!)
Sat: 6 PM: Can't Someone Just Teach Me All This Writing Stuff? (This one usually brings out some strong opinions. I'm ready to weigh in!)
Sat: 9 PM: Creating Emotion Driven SF/F: (I would hope so!)
Sunday: 10 AM: Tradeoffs Between Freedom, Security, and Privacy: ('Search Engine' is already coming true. Now you, too, can wear an RFID chip! And will soon...)
Sun: 2 PM: Living Upside: Orbital Platforms: (ohboy, another specialty! And no, it's not just another biosphere!)
Sunday 3 PM....Mary collapses with exhaustion, but it will be a GOOD exhaustion! Hopefully I'll see you there.

Cattle Prints

2007-03-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been playing hooky, doing what I love to do, which is to work stock with my dogs. I spent last weekend at a cattle clinic with my puppy, Annie. (Well, she's 2 but she's still a puppy, although growing up real fast now!). She was a real lady, but those big steers were by golly going to do what she said! I like her attitude. Dogs are my antidote to the realities of publishing with its foundation on sales numbers. Where 'good' or 'bad' doesn't count as much as 'popular', performance dog work puts me in an arena where how well the dog and I communicate, how well we have trained, generates the end result. If we do a bad job, we get a train wreck. If we do a good job, we do a good job. No politics, sales figures, or popular fads count. It's a very nice, very straightforward universe...if a bit muddy at times. (You should have seen Miss Annie after a few 'down's!)

Reality and Fiction

2007-03-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, Marilyn Holt, Amy Thompson, and myself put on a panel on the effects of global disaster for the Potlatch SF convention. We wanted to take it beyond the usual Hollywoodesque 'what are all the awful things that can happen' list of possible disasters. Hollywood can use all those special effects and do that so much more colorfully. We worked instead on the 'what's it gonna mean for you' realities of day to day climage change, no tidal waves engulfing New York, no killer super storms to scour the entire US clean in one fell swoop. Marilyn Holt did a great job of providing visual illustrations of global climate change and we talked about the economics of multiple Katrinas worldwide, trade and food and money and the role of agribusiness worldwide in the threat of serious food shortages.

Afterward, the Programming Chair told us that most people were really happy with the panel (we did a really good job, in my totally biased opinion!). But she did receive one complaint that reality had no place at a literary conference. I brushed that off at the time. You can't please everybody. But it has continued to bother me. We have way too many opportunities to ignore reality every day. How much of our news reporting is driven by ratings? If you report boring old 'the world's gonna end' facts about agriculture, shipping, balance of trade, and so forth, how long are you going to keep popular attention? Time's better spent on celebrity misbehavior and catastrophic events right? Rather than on the increasing urbanization of low lying coastal areas. You know, as a whole, we seem to be much more reactive than proactive. Maybe that's a species trait we need to overcome? Personally, I think that's the main strength of SF and it's why I love the genre. Sure you can escape to fantasy planets and ride dinosaurs or battle space pirates, but it also allows some of us step forward into future and show our readers a glimpse of things that could very well come to pass if we don't stop 'em in time.

When it comes to our global future, I really do not want to be proved right. And I think that requires a lot more thinking about that future than might be either comfortable or convenient.

New Lambs and GMO Crop Circles

2007-03-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

I have discovered how to determine the start of my lambing season with pinpoint accuracy. All I need to do is to plan on attending a SF con in the spring and the ewes will start lambing that weekend. They did it to me last year as I packed for Norwescon. So why was I suprised to hurry down to the barn to feed, Saturday morning, (with a 10 AM writers workshop to run) only to find a missing ewe.... Silly me to think that last year was an isolated phenomenon. Our little boy in the picture is still a bit confused by this big strange place, but he and mom were fine, so I hurried off to my conference. I even got there on time. (He's a St. Croix in case you're wondering. That's a hair sheep breed).

Potlatch was great. It's a small, local gathering of writers and readers, mostly for visiting and raising money for Clarion West with an auction of Cool Stuff. One panel at a time, and the panels tend to be deeper than your average convention panel. I joined Marilyn Holt and Amy Thompson (writers both) to talk about the interconnected web between global warming, global commerce, and agriculture. It was a good panel. We tried to take it beyond the Hollywood 'sky is falling' themes.

But lest we forget our effect on our alien neighbors, (You know, the ones that didn't land at Area 51), Gary Kearney was good enough to remind me that when we mess around with that wheat DNA it's not just Europe who rejects our GMO crops! You should go see what the aliens have to say about it:

http://www.weeklyworldinquisitor.com:80/aliens/index.php?pagemode=display&ref=31&PHPSESSID=11ddf73a2029ba9b0dc12d1b329cd740

Thanks, Gary! I'll surely have to bring this up at my next panel on genetically modified foods!

Blood Child Revisited

2007-02-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

I recently recommended that one of my students read 'Blood Child' by Octavia Butler. It came out in the June 84 issue of 'Asimovs' and it was one of the stories that directly culminated in my becoming a SF writer. I can still remember that moment when I was gripped by that wrenching 'I want to write this' epiphany.

It did occur to me that I should probably reread this. It had been a long time. Now I tend to approach old favorites from my 'pre-writer' years with trepidation. I was a much less critical reader then and I've ruined more than one pleasant memory for myself. But you know what? 'Blood Child' had, if anything, an even stronger effect on me this time. Her grasp of power/gender/sex issues is really profound. Sigh. One of my real regrets is that I never actually met her in person.

Family Fun

2007-02-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

Well, needless to say, the writing has been going well and global warming has me out in the garden much earlier than usual this year. Okay, it's not climate that's got my first planting of greens and peas up in early February, it's weather. Just as it's weather burying Oswego NY under ten or twelve feet of snow. But I just got email from my son, Nate, at Madison that he passed his Quals, so he has passed milestone one toward that PhD (Computer Science). And being my son, he celebrated in a typical fashion of course. He went polar dipping in the lake. I think it was above zero that day. Maybe.

Ah, genetics. :-)

Story on Tap!

2007-02-14T08:50:00.000-08:00

I am so thrilled. Months and months ago, the editor of Aberrant Dreams contacted me about participating in their 'Writers Challenge'. They posted several illustrations on the website and a list of participating pro authors. The entrants were to write a synopsis of a story to suit one of the illustrations-- just the outline -- and could even request a character name. They were also to pick the pro that they wanted to write the actual story. A winning synopsis was chosen for each illustration and the named pro will write the story. Apparently I am one of the pros named. I am really looking forward to this! It's something fun and new, and Ernie Saylor, the editor of Aberrant Dreams tells me that I will be surprised at the synopsis my winning entrant came up with. Do I hear a chuckle in his 'voice'? This will be fun!

Do check out the ezine -- I put the link in above. They've updated the website and the page is a LOT of fun. :-)

Water Rites Ships

2007-02-09T08:52:00.000-08:00

I am thrilled. My copies of Water Rites arrived in the mail yesterday and I'm just so pleased with this book. I first started the story that became The Drylands as three novelettes that were published in Asimov's magazine. These stories involved three of the four main characters in what became the novel, and began the large story arc that concluded at the end of The Drylands. But the novel itself only covered the final 2/3 of that story arc. While I worked in allusions to the missing portion as backstory, I felt that the story wasn't quite complete without that earlier segment.

Well, now it's complete. :-) That early part of the story expands and deepens the complete story considerably. And of course, the entire story is better. I am a much stronger writer now, and I had a much deeper comprehension of where we're going right now, in terms of our climate future.

It has been a long time coming, but I am thrilled to see all the parts collected together in one book. Thank you, Patrick Swenson, for a marvelous opportunity. The whole here is certainly greater than the sum of its parts. You can buy it from Fairwood Press http://www.fairwoodpress.com/ Just click on the 'catalogue' link and then 'novels'.

Coming Up For Air

2007-02-06T11:51:00.000-08:00

Well, as you have probably guessed from my recent silence, I have not been doing any avoidance behavior and NPR hasn't had any news items about global warming that have made me go ballistic recently. (They're doing their pledge drive and they're too busy to annoy me). Mostly I'm here -- blinking vaguely and wondering what month we're in right now -- because someone has had trouble posting here. I'm just making sure I can still post. But while I'm up for air; Hi, all! I'm currently in the final three chapters of the new novel, rising to the climax scene and utterly obsessed. Be glad you don't live with me. Even my dogs are pouting. But I'm really pleased with this book and these final chapters have me by the throat. Uh oh....I'm slipping....sliding back into the story..... bye....all.....later....

Seattle Signing...Next in Cyrillic?

2007-01-25T10:04:00.000-08:00

I had a lovely time in Seattle, signing with Louise Marley at University Books. The best thing was the weather. It was not snowing or doing freezing rain or even regular rain. So it was actually a nice drive. And I came home to some very nice fan mail, including a request to purchase reprint rights to 'Search Engine' my Analog story from last year, for 'Esli', a Russian SF magazine. I'm thrilled. That expands the 'other languages' portion of my bookshelf. I don't have any Russian reprints yet. (Polish, German, and French, so far).

Winter News Writ in Snow

2007-01-17T10:26:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about snow -- when we get it -- is my chance to step into my dogs' world and read the morning news with them. Usually I watch as they criss cross the field and hedgerow, following this invisible trial, pausing to carefully consider this spot on the ground that has no meaning to me. Wishing I could ask them to translate. I track with them, so I have a conversational knowledge of Scent News, but I can't do the complex vocabulary. But this morning, ah, the newspaper was written for all of us. Now I, too, can read that coyote's hunting last night and see exactly where the resident rabbits came out from the shelter of the blackberry tangles to nibble on bark and twigs. The coyote had done her best (I think she's a she, judging by the size of her tracks and the way she and my rottie bitch cuss each other out at night. She doesn't talk to the boys that way) to find her way in to that protected bit of dinner and my dogs and I followed in her footsteps. The thorns had done their job, though, and she left disappointed. Then we found the small circular patch of scuffed snow and a bit of churned up earth. The tuft of reddish fur told more, along with the lack of coyote tracks. Redtail and fox squirrel, life for one at the expense of the other? I don't think it was an owl, the scuffed space was redtail-sized and the gnawed flakes of a fir cone on the nearby fence post filled in the rest of the story. The redtail has been hanging out here this winter and the squirrel traffic in my bird feeder has diminished accordingly.

Later on today, we'll go back in the woods and read some more news. The deer hang out there, so we'll go find their beds from last night and see what they're eating. I bet they came up to the stock tank to drink this morning -- it has a heater in it, so the water is above freezing. Usually I get to read this news second hand, watching my dogs follow that invisible writing, filling in with what hints I get from where the trails take them. Today, I get to read, too.

Good Real Tired

2007-01-13T19:08:00.000-08:00

I'm tired. Really tired. Reality and creativity collided last night and I'm still kind of bruised. Been stuck on the current novel with the knowledge that I need something more here but it's hiding back in my hindbrain somewhere. And I had a herding lesson today, worth driving way north for. But it's VERY cold so that means...me with no central heating...that I have to get up early enough to get a good bed of coals in the woodstove so that I can bank a couple of big hawthorn snags in there to keep the temp reasonable until I get home. So I go to bed and get waked up at 3 Am by ...the answer. Think Pygmalion, polar bears with northern-lights hair, and old norse gods. Needless to say, I was annoying my dogs, scribbling notes, and half-dreaming dialogue until the pre-crack of dawn Time of Doing Warm Things arrived. So I got up and did the fire and went out to spend the day talking canine to dogs about sheep ( in the FREEZING wind I am still cold). And the tired is SO worth it, such a blend of physical and creative-brain, and winter.

But I'm going to bed.

Hard cold

2007-01-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

Gonna be our first hard cold tonight. Hard cold? That's the cold where you have to really think about things -- if you have livestock and that kind of stuff. Put the tank heater into the old bathtub that waters the sheep and bless electricity for not having to haul buckets and buckets of water in the AM (done that, too, when a stock tank heater was too expensive to afford...as my sons will attest. Winter Chores 101). Filled up the mangers because food is heat for animals. Oh, I'm so pleased. David (my 75 year old sheep herder buddy) and I scored on some gorgeous third cutting alfalfa for 'cheap'. Nobody wants 150 lb bales. Two of us can stack 'em. We're flush with feed!

Put the little space heater set on low-low in the old trailer that is my 'root cellar'. That'll keep my squash, onions, and garlic, and other roots from freezing if it gets down to 20 as they predict. Picked all the rest of the kiwi fruit and cabbage today. Brussels sprouts are tough, so are the chinese greens, kale, collard, and chard still out in the garden. The carrots, turnips, and beets will come through okay, although better for soup than for fresh after a hard freeze. Oh well. Plenty of wood. That's the basic, isn't it? Heat and food? All those hours cutting, splitting, hauling, stacking feel so golden now. As I walk into a warm house and thaw out. (Boy they didn't feel 'golden' as I was sweating and swinging, let me tell you!)

I said a prayer for the folks out without a roof tonight...under the bridges or cooking meth up on Powell Butte. Said it to all the gods. Because it is hard to be cold. No matter why.

Deferred Rant...to music no less!

2007-01-06T08:40:00.000-08:00

Well, I was going to rant about the new diet pills for dogs, but you know what? I think I'll let the Helsinki Complaints Chorus do it for me. I first ran into them back before Thanksgiving and have emailed this link to many people. Suddenly I am hearing references to this all over. Several other complaints choruses have been started globally. I think we need on here.

We all need to complain. For a particularly musical version, click on this link and be sure to read the subtitles....although 'It's Not Fair!' sounds much better in Finnish.

http://glumbert.com/media/helsinkichoir

Enjoy!

Clone Burgers Anyone?

2007-01-05T11:53:00.000-08:00

I had to roll my eyes at the FDA's official ruling that 'cloned meat is meat'. Duh. Considering that a clone is nothing more than an identical twin. The idea that cloning an animal might provide an economically feasible meat or milk animal is kind of silly. It is much cheaper to let Bully cover Bossie out in the pasture and eat the calf or drink her milk later on. It's not even likely that the genetic attributes of a prize bull would be worth enough to pay for cloning him when you can simply save a half million straws of his semen in liquid Nitrogen. Some of those syndicated bulls have thousands of offspring on the ground as it is.

However, I do wonder if this 'clones are safe meat' ruling is going to apply to cloned tissue cultures. I could see hamburger that comes not from those worn-out-at-two-years-old dairy cows but rather from a large vat growing a thick slab of beef muscle tissue. No feed issues, no manure to contaminate the watershed, no barn to build, no flies. Just grow it, grind it up, package it, and send it off to the supermarket. Gee, you could eliminate e Coli and mad cow disease with a few quick tests. Micky D of the future? Of the near future? Of the VERY near future?

Happy New Year...Sans Profundity

2006-12-31T19:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's New Year's Eve. I should say something profound and/or pithy about the previous year. I should share my incredibly insightful resolution for this year with you.

Sorry. Last year is last year and it was full of stuff...good and bad. Process it later -- or never -- don't sweat it now. (Years, like manure, compost well)

Resolutions? Those are dark crows that come to roost, squawking, on your shoulder later, after you have failed to keep them. I did a blanket resolution years ago and it has served me well ever since... Make the most of the coming year. And have fun whenever possible.

So happy New Year folks! May it be a great one to make the most of and don't forget the 'fun' part!

Happy New Year!!!

Sheep New Year

2006-12-24T09:25:00.000-08:00

I know it's not New Year yet, but...it is. The solstice is behind us and already the sun is rising just a bit earlier every morning. I know that's pretty hard to notice when you get up in the dark to go to work and come home in the dark and live under electric lighting most of the day. But by my clock, the new year has begun. It's the sheep that tell me. Every morning I watch them slowly resolve from darkness as the sky lightens. First you can see the big white blob of my St. Croix ram, then the gray and black shapes of the ewes. They lie in a loose group in the pasture beside the barn if it's not raining and down under the big cedar tree if it is raining. (They only come into the barn if it's really pouring). The oldest ewe, Red Collar, decides when morning has arrived, always at the same moment of growing light. She gets up, stretches, and begins to amble down to the woods to either browse the blackberry leaves or head over to the big pasture behind the neighbor's house. The ram gets up next, and one by one the others all follow, in no big rush, taking perhaps ten or fifteen minutes to finally disappear through the gate into the woods.

It happens at the same moment every morning; that same moment of light and dark that signals 'day' to the sheep. And now...it's earlier. Not a lot earlier. But a bit earlier. So the new year has begun and I've got my seed catalogues stacked up beside the computer. I'll start my first seedlings under lights a couple of weeks after the official new year; broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and I'll plant the peas and fava beans out into the beds even before that. Another year starts. The sheep are getting up earlier.

Nature's Christmas Gifts (and just a tiny carbon neutral rant)

2006-12-19T08:10:00.000-08:00

Well, our worst of the decade storm is over and most of the several hundred thousand folk who lost power now have it back on again. Nature's little Christmas gifts? Amazing how much of civilization goes away when the power goes out, huh? No, I don't mean looting and mayhem, but all those things we take for granted....light when the sun sets at about 4 PM, heat that doesn't take any particular work or foresight, entertainment. Jobs. Hot showers! I got a good chunk of next year's heating delivered to the door of (and on top of) my woodshed. I've decided this is just the gods' way of a: letting me avoid felling trees and b: testing my learning curve to see if I can avoid dropping a hung up tree on my head this year. (I plan to pass that test. I passed the reflex and cardio test last year and I don't need the stimulation again, thank you.)

Of course I got email from my Working Assets Long Distance offering Carbon Offsets as the perfect (PC) Christmas present. Grrrr.... I'd do another page long rant about that, but I would say the same things I did last time. For the mere cost of $55.... Then you can drive your SUV all year, feel smug, and vote against those global warming bills that might inhibit your lifestyle (which is now carbon neutral). Okay. Deep breath. Put the Grinch back in the box. Let's enjoy the various festivals of lights that just about all cultures and religions do this time of year. (How not when the daylight starts fading just about the time the sun gets well up?). (But you WILL use those nice LED lights, right? The ones that use about a tenth of the electricity of those pretty twinkle lights?). I'm not going to fuss at menorahs.

Just to counterbalance the grinchiness...our local birdfeeder raiding squirrel provided a bit of lightness for us all. Now I wouldn't mind sharing with the squirrels if they shared with the birds. Which they don't. So we have a running game of let the dogs out who chase the squirrel to the fence and all have a good time. Well, the squirrel probably doesn't, but neither does he have such a bad time that he doesn't come back. But one squirrel had the smarts to realize that if he just sat tight in the feeder on the deck, the dogs ran to the fence, expecting him to oblige. Sorry, dogs, he's beating you in the IQ competition. I finally had enough of him and swatted him off the feeder with a broom. (Sorry, I am NOT PC about fox squirrels). The squirrel went flying through the air and met DJ, my four year old Rottie in mid leap. Squirrel wrapped himself around DJ's muzzle like a little red-fur muff, head tucked under tail, hanging on for dear life. DJ levitated straight up about six feet in the air, his eyes wild. Annie, my puppy, was of course, right on his heels, her goal his furry nose-warmer. The squirrel, obviously realizing that what goes up is going to come down again, departed DJ's muzzle at the height of his leap, violating at least a couple of laws of physics as he accelerated horozontally onto the big locust tree at the fence (the one that did not fall down this year). I, of course, was in serious danger of falling over the deck railing or herniating myself laughing. DJ was embarassed and Annie was simply ticked off. You could read the 'why didn't you just hold still, idiot!' in her body language as she glowered at DJ and staked out the tree. Did the squirrel suffer? Not enough to keep him out of the feeder, but he no longer sits and watches the dogs run to the fence. He beats it. So balance is restored.

Blue Ocean Blues

2006-12-07T10:45:00.000-08:00

Love that gorgeous blue look of tropical oceans? It may be coming to an ocean near us. A recent satellite study has recorded a dramatic shift in ocean color from various shades of blue green to blue. Why is that important? Blue means fewer phytoplankton and that is how the ocean breathes. These millions of tiny organisms take in CO2 and release O2. That's rather nice for us. And when they're not around, the ocean becomes more acidic and that tends to dissolve important things like corals. Phytoplankton love cold water and don't do well in warm water. Guess what is happening to the oceans, folk? What will those blue oceans mean other than cool vacation photos? Fewer fish. Many fewer fish. The phytoplankton are at the bottom of the ocean food pyramid.

You can read more about ocean color and phytoplankton at one of NASA's sites: http://science.hq.nasa.gov/oceans/living/color.html

Christian Science Monitor quote

2006-12-06T14:23:00.000-08:00

I'm actually in Wednesday's issue of the Christian Science Monitor, quoted in a very good article on global warming and carbon offsets. The reporter actually contacted me after reading a blog post here, so chalk one up for internet serendipity.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1206/p13s01-sten.html

The article is by Greg Lamb and is well worth reading. :-)

Globally Warmed Tomorrow

2006-12-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

Patrick Swenson, of Fairwood Press, just emailed my the new cover for Water Rites, due out in January or February. The cover is GORGEOUS, isn't it? I love it, and it really expresses the heart of the novel. I hope this is not our tomorrow:

We failed to check global warming. In this dry future water is the most valuable resource. It is power. And in the US, the Army Corps of Engineers has become the guardian and keeper of water. Life is metered by water – by it’s lack and its location. And who controls it.

Major Carter Voltaire, newly in charge of The Pipeline, the enormous water project that keeps much of the western US alive, finds himself standing between thirsty locals and the need to provide water to the many. He has seen devastating water riots and must find a way to prevent that from happening here, while protecting precious water.

There are no good answers.

Let's hope we don't live this future.

And Ketchup is a Vegetable

2006-11-29T09:02:00.000-08:00

More avoidance behavior, I admit it. Although the sticky scene is half unstuck, but it's hard slogging, okay? And besides, NPR set me off again this morning, this time with the report of the forthcoming Supreme Court case...you know the one, right? The one where 5 states are suing the US government for not reducing greenhouse gasses, claiming that our EPA policies mandate such and that they are suffering damage because of the effects? I gather that part of the issue is the question of whether CO2 is a pollutant or not. Shades of Regan and ketchup as a nutritious part of a school lunch...

Oh yes...apparently the auto industry is lining up solidly behind the US position that we can only deal with this issue on a global scale, that we just can't tackle it independently. Does anyone remember the name Kyoto? As in treaty? As in we walked away from that one, which would have mandated international reduction of greenhouse gasses.

You know, everyone can do one thing to reduce their carbon imprint. It may not seem like much, but multiply that tiny reduction in power used or gasoline burned by millions and it matters. I no longer use a power mower to mow my grass, and I only use my clothes dryer when it's raining. I use the energy efficient light bulbs and I keep lights off in rooms where I am not. I keep my house cool -- 60 degrees most of the time. (Colder in the morning!) I take light rail downtown when I have to go, although biking everywhere isn't really a safe option with our high speed rural roads with no shoulder. I'm not trying to be holier than thou here...what I am trying to do is list a few ways you CAN make that small difference without really altering your lifestyle dramatically. Remember...multiply that by millions.

Okay, back to the sticky scene. Maybe I'll leave the radio turned off for awhile.

Carbon Neutral Grumble

2006-11-28T08:43:00.000-08:00

Well, as usual, my good intentions to do this regularly failed me. :-) No surprise I've never managed to keep a diary. Any future biographers will simply have to make everything up...which will be much more fun anyway. I always used to make things up when we had to write that obligatory What I Did on My Summer Vacation essay. Used to make my teachers mad in grade school. I'm not sure why. I never was very good at following directions. That's probably how I ended up a fiction writer.

I'm doing avoidance behavior right now. I have to go back into chapter seven of the 'Europa' novel and write a 'hard scene' as Scott Card would call it. Sigh.

Well, what really set me off (besides guilt at not posting here regularly, which I can usually manage quite well as you all realize by now) was a bit on NPR right now about some real estate agent who has set up a way to permit him and all his neighbors to buy 'carbon credits' and live a 'carbon neutral life' in their McMansions, driving their SUVs. I'm sorry, that really bothers me. The idea that we, with our wealth, can 'buy' our way to the reduction of global warming is scary. What a great excuse to do nothing. And where do those carbon credits come from? NOT building a coal powered power plant in China? How realistic is that? Hey, third world, you can't have cars and electric air conditioners and computers. All those power plants are bad for the environment. You stick to your ways and we'll pay you to do so. Ha. HA.

DON'T buy 'carbon neutral' shares, darn it. Turn off a few lights. Use the new energy efficient light bulbs. Turn down the darn thermostate and put on a sweater (Yes, I am wearing one.) For pete's sake don't buy another gas guzzler and vote to at least use biodiesel in the public transport in your town.

Okay, Avoidance Behavior is over. Off to write the hard scene.

Space Weather

2006-10-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

The 'mushroom rains' have arrived here in Oregon. I had a lovely dish of sauteed coral mushrooms this morning for breakfast, and plan to go hunting for shaggy parasols and shaggy manes this weekend. But the weather above the atmosphere, while less productive of mushrooms, perhaps (although you never know what might be buried in that meteorite that actually makes it down to the ground), is more interesting. If you don't have mushroom rain right now, watch for the Orionid meteor shower this weekend. These are pieces of our old friend Haley's comet, come 'round again to entertain the sleepless. Saturday morning, just before dawn (which is actually a civilized hour, sort of, this time of year) is the best time to view. And old Sol has sneezed again. A great big coronal hole has opened up on the sun's atmosphere and the solar wind has blown through, to join the fall winds here on Earth and maybe bring some auroras our way. So you might get to see northern lights instead of meteors, but oh well.

Hot Future

2006-10-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

Interestingly enough on the global warming front, business seems to be taking the lead in trying hard to change a future forecast that is looking increasingly grim. The October 9 Financial Times, hardly a bastion of cutting edge science and technology news, ran an entire special section on the reaction of the global business community to an increasing likelyhood of flood, drought, and hurricanes. Clearly, carbon trading, for good or ill, is in our future. And some interesting new growth industries are getting started...think decontaminating sewage and polluted groundwater so that we can drink it safely.

On the 'my future is coming to pass now' front, one focus is on using brackish -- part saline -- water for irrigating crops, since farming uses about70 times as much water as household water use. Sigh. For a more comprehensive environmental look at what that means, read Water Rites when it's out.

But clearly, agriculture is going to come under a lot of pressure to cease growing highly 'thirsty' crops in dry parts of the country. Hello Texas and California!

Shine On Harvest Moon

2006-10-06T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Harvest Moon shines tonight...the full moon closest to the fall equinox. And this year, because the moon is a perigee, and is closest to the earth in its orbit. So if it's not raining in YOUR neck of the woods, go look.

Certainly, the sheep are taking full advantage of the late night floodlight. Not sure I could call it harvest, but when I introduced Bruce, the St. Croix ram into the flock a day or so ago, he has certainly been working toward next year's lamb crop. Poor guy. St. Croix are tall and white -- hair sheep, not woolies -- with a huge white lion's mane and a short, dense coat. He looked at my two big woolly black-faced Suffolk ewes and his puzzlement was clear. What ARE they? They smell like sheep but...

Then he got a sniff of the other end and realized they were coming into heat. Black faces? Wool? Who cares? It's fall.

Sex. The great equalizer of all mere cosmetic appearances...

Fall light and unpacking

2006-10-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

It' s officially fall today. About seven PM, I turned the lights on. It was just gray enough outside that the warm yellow glow made the house feel cozy and closed in. After a summer of open windows, of house and outdoors as one, that makes it fall. The inside environment no longer merges with outdoors. The windows are closed. The First Fire will surely take place in the woodstove within the next week or so...well maybe later if we have the warm, golden fall they predict.

I unpacked all the things I brought from my parents' house today. My father died three years ago and my stepmom is moving into an assisted living place. So I hauled the hand woodworking tools home, the table saw, the many cans of nails, screws, nuts, bolts that this Depression child hoarded. Well, I'm his daughter. I have my own cans of pried out nails, old hinges. Hey, it's how I have managed to raise two kids on what I make as a writer. So I added his hoard to mine. We're set for buiding things for a long time, we are.

I also brought over the hammered brass shields that my grandfather was given by the aboriginal tribes in the Sumatran jungles, the small household god from India, the cow incense burner, also from India, that my grandmother owned. The ancient metal teapot and burner from Sumatra, used by the very old 'straights-born' Chinese to brew small cups of very strong tea.

Some of these are probably valuable antiques. Other things are junk. They are, of course, all fraught with memory.

It's fall. The light is warm inside.

Cool Site Interview

2006-10-02T17:13:00.000-07:00

I ran into Beryl and Angela, the originators of WOW: Women on Writing, a very cool and ambitious new website for fans and writers both. The asked for an interview and I was more than happy to oblige. I must say, as someone who has conducted a lot of interviews, as both a nonfiction writer and a fiction writer, as well as someone who has been interviewed quite a few times, they did one of the best interviews I've been part of. Thoughtful, comprehensive, and they followed it up with a great phone chat later on.

Do check out WOW: Women on Writing, and you can read my interview while it's up. They have a flash fiction contest going on right now, by the way. Cash prizes even!
http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/

Check it out!

Wonder Net

2006-09-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

Oh, I've got a book recommendation for you. Me, I'm the world's least tolerant reader...blame my writing. The moment I think 'I know what you're doing here, I see the wires...' I'm outa there. But I read Giraffe by J. M. Ledgard from cover to cover and I highly recommend it. A literary mainstream book based on real events in Czechoslovakia in 1975, Ledgard follows the slow unwinding of events through several point of view characters. Each character has his or her interaction with some part of those events, drawing slowly together at the climax. The narrative is excellent and some themes and turns of phrase...'the communist moment'...bind the various point of view perceptions into a very solid whole. It is a lovely example of several different 'takes' on the same events, and beautifully done. I recommend it.

Mary

Greetings from Ophiuchus

2006-09-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

I always keep an eye out for 'things new' in the universe. Recently, I sold a story to Asimov's Magazine; Breeze from the Stars, that will be out sometime in the next year, I assume. And it features a strange effect on people who are born on the orbital platforms under the sign of 'Ophiuchus' a zodiac sign that was dropped from our zodiac a long time ago. A 'wind from the stars' is actually funneled down into our solar system from that direction, and I did some SFnal things with it. Sorry, you'll have to read the story to find out. :-) BUT...today, as I read the 'space news' what do I see? Voyager I is out there, in the direction of Ophiuchus, near the boundary of the 'heliosheath' the 'skin' around our solar system formed as the solar wind slows down. The magnetic turbulence of that sheath scatters a lot of cosmic radation that we don't want to experience down here. But lo, potholes exist in that sheath. And good old trustworthy Voyager I, our early Engerizer Bunny' is finding interesting anomalies out there. Such as cosmic radiation with no apparent source. And that breeze from the stars? Well, Voyager will be inside that heliosheath for another ten years or so...so stay tuned for further events.

rhythms and seasons

2006-09-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

It's wood season. How do I know? I just do. I woke up this moring and it was time to start getting the wood in. It's hot outside, sunny. The leaves are not turning. Jack Frost is not threatening. It's not Fall. But it's time to get wood in. The knowlege exists somewhere down in my gut and made me go get the sledge, the wedges, the splitting maul and the axe and head down to the pile of maple rounds that I have been ignoring all summer. They're the drying remains of the maple that came down last winter in a storm. On top of my barn. The one that almost got me and made me very aware that cutting up fallen trees when you live alone on rural acreage does indeed entail some real risks.

But it didn't get me and I spent the morning splitting the last of the rounds into nice woodstove fuel and whacking the last of my neighbor's apple prunings into neat kindling. Now it's time to start hauling the split and cut wood I've been amassing, stacking it neatly in my woodshed so that I can help myself to kindling and bed logs with equal ease all winter.

The land has seasons and whether you're a bear or a hummingbird or a substance farmer, you follow those seasons and their rhythms. Earlier is was all about weeding and planting. Now it's about stacking dry wood. As the days start to lengthen a bit next spring, it'll be all about clearing the debris from the winter, getting beds and trees ready for the next growing season. You don't need a calendar for that. You wake up one morning. And it's time. Just like my hummingbirds all vanish one day in the early summer, when the wildflowers bloom up above the treeline on the mountains. One day, they're just gone. Later on, they come back and hang around the feeder again.

It's breeding season. My sheep know this, although I AM going by the calendar and keeping the ram out until later, so I don't have to birth lambs in cold February rain.

We have had to give up seasons, mostly, other than the holiday markers. We mostly have to live by alarm clocks, calendars, desk jobs, and the seasons pass more or less unnoticed except for the inconveniences like the hot car after work and the nasty roads after the ice storm. It's too bad. We all have that internal calendar, we just don't use it much. I like it that one day and I just wake up know...it's time to clean the garden beds, it's time to plant, it's time to split wood, it's time to can tomatoes, it's time to start checking the barn for lambs...

Scary Things

2006-08-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

Well, my first SF novel, The Drylands, is going to be out in print again, from Fairwood Press, in January 2007. This is rather cool, since I did extensive reseach on global warming back in the early nineties when I wrote it. I mean EXTENSIVE research. And it just wasn't a hot issue back then.

So I'm going through the book, tweaking it a bit, and updating things. And I am scaring the daylights out of myself, folks. Back then, the top climate scientists were using computer models to predict the changes in ecosystems and oceans as the planet warmed. While I was hoping for a plausible leap from their proposals to my rather extreme (I thought) future, I found that my extreme future fell within their predictions. Oooh, not good.

So, I knew that. Why am I scaring myself? Because, folks, the things that those models predicted as happening say 40 or 50 years out are happening now. Twelve years later. This is giving me the willies. It's bad enough to think through a grim future but even worse to look up and realize it's actually coming down the track at you. Heads up, folks. Where we're going is ugly.

So back to editing. It's scary. I think that my kids might see this world come to pass.

Blindsided by that speeding urband fantasy

2006-07-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

Well here I am a good two months after my last post. So much for good intentions to be regular and chatty herein. I never could keep up a diary either, oh well. I do have publishing news at least... Can I placate you with that? Back Track a new mystery story featuring tracking dogs is the lead in the August Ellery Queen. They posted a sizeable excerpt on the EQ website: That was a cool discovery. And I have sort of an excuse for being conspicuously absent here. I got blindsided by this urban fantasy that ran a stopsign. Yes, I have the next SF novel plotted, but then I got this idea for how magic works in the world around us. And it was so much fun that I made the mistake of starting page one....and seven chapters later, here I am. It's set in Seattle. I've always wanted to talk to the Fremont Troll. And it's beginning to make me look at things like trains, airplanes, cars, and street cars and...well...wonder. I think that's a good thing. I hope so anyway.

But I do have more SF coming out in Asimov's and in at least one anthology, and as soon as I get done with this urban fantasy (which won't take long at this rate), I'll get on with the next SF novel. Really.

Stay cool. Or try to do so without drowning anyway. At least I got the sheep sheared before the real hot weather hit. They have requested that I put in a swimming pool but I have declined. They retaliated by nibbling through the light hookup wires on the trailer, when it was parked in the pasture. I told them that they were having an identity crisis. Goats do that, not sheep. Their response to that is not repeatable. Even if you speak Sheep.

And oh yes...if you send me a SASE, I'll send you a bookmark for Horizons, out in November. Send it to PO Box 2154, Gresham, OR 97030.

WisCon Report

2006-05-29T17:37:00.000-07:00

Just got back from WisCon in Madison, Wisconsin, land of cheese curds (Tillamook's are better and mine are better yet.) My first time there and it was a GREAT con. Didn't hurt that it was the 30th anniversary and they invited every guest of honor they'd ever had as a guest. So I got to see people I don't usually see. Even Ursula was there. MUCH fun and a great time was had by all. Gender is the central theme at WisCon, home of the Tiptree Award. Geoff Ryman won it for Air...I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list. Geoff is a sweet person and I think he was a bit overwhelmed by the award.

It's a lovely con, very reader/writer oriented, relaxed, lots of time to visit and Madison offers great restaurants and interesting shops and lakes to sit by within walking distance. I'm going back. Doesn't hurt that my son, Nate, is there as a grad student. :-) He has a great bunch of friends so I spent two evenings hanging with them and eating great grilled stuff. Is this the Generation of Cooks?

Nice to return to a part of the country where it is NOT 80 degrees at 5 Am.... uh, I remember this type of humid, hot weather... Yeah, rain and all, I like the Pacific sea breezes. Now I'm off to the yard to mow down and pull up the four days of hyper-vigorous weeds and grass that took advantage of rain, warmth, and my absence!

Pretty Pages

2006-05-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've spent that past 24 hours (well, a generous portion of it) checking the page proofs of Horizons for typos. Wow! I am SO impressed. I never pay any attention to book design...that is the look of the actual printed page. I am too busy looking through that page into the world to notice. But these pages really blew me away. They're PRETTY -- quite lovely in fact. The flyleaf has a panel of additional art...a stylized glimpse of the orbital's hub garden. And a small bar of that image dresses up the first page of each chapter. Even the header on each page is eyecatching. The typeface is large, crisp and very easy to read. I was SO impressed. I don't think I've ever noticed the details of a printed page in any of my other publications, either hardcover, paper, or magazine. Tor has done a marvelous job overall with this book. I am thrilled. And can't wait to see the finished product.

Well, I'm now working through one of my first-draft chapter summaries of my next novel. It begins on Europa (I've had such fun creating that world) and spends more time in the solar system as a whole. But we get to travel back to Earth, too, and see what the future holds for our two divergent species of humanity.

Lambs for Annie

2006-05-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

I started 18 month old Annie herding sheep last week. Little high drive girl went out into the round pen and did an amazing job of really trying hard to figure out what Mom was up to here. While DJ was more Mr. Wild Man at first, she did a solid 'lay down' and was quick to move out when I said 'get out'. When I told her 'that'll do come' she was quick to let go and turn away from the sheep. We didn't work long...it was hot. But the sheep never got nervous. (I had three 'heavies' in there that are sort of like working with sofas on castors. Sofas that try to stay together and knock your feet out from under you). They decided right off that she was gonna mind me and not go right for their hamstrings. (They weren't so sure about DJ the first few times). I was really pleased with her. But I shouldn't be surprised. Her goal in life is to show DJ up in everything. :-) Marvelous as he is, she probably will, too. Well, I have a nice crop of lambs growing up for herding games later. Dunno if Annie will be ready for lambs this summer...I doubt it, good as she is. But DJ will have fun 'dog-training' em. :-) He's already had practice with BB's on a plank. I bet he can't wait, heheh.

Upping the Ante

2006-04-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

Well, the tally of new lambs just increased by two more: a black ram lamb and a speckled ewe. One more ewe to go, unless 12 year old Overbite really did get bred this year.

Happy spring!

New BBs for DJ

2006-04-25T21:29:00.000-07:00

I was doing my Tuesday Forum for Long Ridge, doing an 'idea workshop' and keeping one eye on my pasture. Sure enough, we added two more lambs to the flock during my 90 minute 'Oregon hour' forum. :-) Finally. This ewe has had her legs crossed since Sunday, when I was sure she'd drop 'em any second! It was an overdue labor, too. The amniotic fluids were stained with meconium (the material in the fetal intestinal system...think packing material) and that means it should have happened sooner. But the lambs are strong and healthy and happy with Mom. Two little wooly boys with speckled ears and faces. I' m getting such an interesting mix of hair and wool phenotype, colors and patterns. Wow, I sure have rolled some genetic dice by introducing this hair sheep ram into my suffolk and suffolk/shetland flock!

Genetics in action!

Very cute action!

Ovine BBs

2006-04-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Ah, all six new lambs are out in the pasture with the adults. Talk about terminal distractions! I find myself time and again, out on the back porch watching them bounce, nibble grass, chase each other. They're still so new that they're a bit tottery...but soon enough they'll be racing all over the woods and the field, driving their mothers nuts as they vanish to the far corners, ignoring mom's bleated summons. Poor DJ got a taste of what is in store for him. I worked him on some January lambs that had never been worked by a sheepdog before. Talk about BBs on a plank! They were all over the place and the poor dog really had to work to keep the bunch together. No sooner did he have most of 'em corralled, when a naughty one or two would streak off to the gate. His brow was positively wrinkled with effort as he figured out how to get them back to the main bunch...which was now over on the far side of the field...and then get the whole batch back to me where they 'belong'. He did a great job and was stepping on his tongue by the time we finally ended the session. He did a great job of emulating a Border Collie and they were much better behaved when we quit. He's still snoring on the floor this morning, recovering. He even resisted the temptation to give hocks a good nip when the escapees made him dash clear across the huge field to collect 'em. Chasing sheep...properly...is very hard work. :-)

Springing Lambs

2006-04-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

It's spring. The sheep are lambing in spades! The first pair hit the ground as I was packing to leave for Norwescon. Panic! By dint of moving that cord and a half of wood out of my lambing pen, (so who's prepared here???) I got Mom and her baby ram and ewe safely ensconced before I (wearily) hit the road to the con. Came home to a missing ewe. Yikes! Drop the suitcase in the house, head for the woods in the dusk in wellies to find her. And her twin ram lambs. Thanks for the welcome home, Ma. Yeah, I really would have liked to get to bed early, but they really are nice looking little boys you got there. Wet armful, but you know what? I like a wet armful of just-born critters. :-) That, I think is the real beating heart of spring, the raw, lusty, echo of sex that shows up in flowers, baby birds, lambs... Spring isn't delicate and pastel. Stravinski got that right.
I just lugged in the third pair. BIG jet black ewe lamb with a white top knot that I had to chase down and tackle. (Hey, girl, I'm trying to keep you out of a coyote's belly!) A smaller, gray and speckled ram. It was just dusk, that bird-song transition between day and night, and the lambs had dried off in the spring sun, but I could feel their hearts beating as I carried them into the barn, safe from coyotes. Mom followed, talking gutteral mama-talk, the 'senior' lambs all came to the gate to greet the newcomers and you know what?
It was a nice evening. I think I'll go listen to Rites of Spring now.

Norwescon Fun

2006-04-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

Hello from Norwescon, taking a breather before I'm off to meet up with the Bears at the Daw party. Been a great con. My panels have been a lot of fun so far. The highlight was the Human Evolution panel. I came at it from the biosciences, Forrest Bishop came it from the nanotechnology side, we met in the middle and took off! It was a great panel and I need to continue our conversation later!

David Hartwell, my editor at Tor was here, and actually had a copy of the bound galleys so that was a nice addition to the cover.

Still have a busy day tomorrow with writers workshop and 'sanitizing space travel' panel. We did a nice job with space hotels today. ;-)

Mary

The Cover is in the Building!

2006-04-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is, folks, the cover to Horizons, the new SF novel out in November from Tor Books! I'll get it up onto my website asap...I notice that Amazon.com already has it listed for preorder. So I gues the game is afoot. I'm very pleased with the cover. The artist didn't do badly at all with the orbital platform...well, a few glitches maybe, but overall, she did a nice job. A rotating tin can isn't nearly as sexy as a torus, but much more practical in terms of efficiency of space.

I'm looking forward to some great panels at NorwesCon this weekend, all related to my (now considerable!) knowledge of all things space-habitat oriented. :-)

Thursday, I'm doing a panel on Astrobiology (a HUGE new field) at 6 PM,

Friday, I get to talk about human evolution (Just read the book! :-)) at 4 PM and I'll be talking about teaching writing at 5 PM.

I'll be reading from Horizons (A nice exciting scene) on Saturday at 1:30, right after a booksigning at noon, and will be talking about Space Hotel Design (did you realize FOUR companies are already working on this? For real?) at Saturday at 5 PM. All this research is paying off! LOL

Sunday, I'll be talking about 'sanitizing space travel'. And you thought Nor Virus is bad on earth, ha!

Thank you Norwescon Programming for some great panels. I'm really looking forward to this!

Yesterday's Interesting Shadows

2006-04-04T21:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I had my past life regression today. It was also my first experience with hypnosis. I got interested in that in my teens, and discovered that I could hypnotize people pretty easily. Never was on the receiving end. Hannah, who is doing these as training, settled me in a comfy chair and I certainly relaxed deeply as she spoke softly, directing my attention to eyes, arm, getting more relaxed. She took me down steps into a 'hall of records' took me to a door, had me open it to a past life, and asked me questions about what I was seeing, then prompted me to move on to the next significant scene. I had no conscious thought about 'what should my character do next'. I just sort of 'looked' and waited to see things --which did take shape -- but how much this was the part of me that creates 'lives' every day and how much might have been a real memory of a past life I could not tell you. But it was very cool. :-) I ended up with a servant girl in northern England somewhere, took her to some city or other in the early industrial revolution to earn money spinning, steerage to New York and a lover named Samuel, his death, and her suicide in a river, probably the East River. This is an improbable story I could easily make up with all the details, but I have to say that when I reported Samuel's death, I really wept and the feeling of grief was really intense. So...I don't know. Reality is an infinitely large and intricate puzzle. :-) I'm glad I went. Whether it was my muse speaking or a real past life, it was vivid. But that's what it is to be a writer, yes? Living other lives? Yours or someone else's.

Yesterday's Shadows?

2006-04-01T16:40:00.000-08:00

I'm looking forward to a new and interesting bit of exploration this week. A friend of mine put me in touch with a woman researching past life regression who was looking for volunteers. I happily offered my services. I'm really looking forward to our session on Tuesday. I've never been hypnotized before, so that alone will be interesting. According to her, the people she has worked with have recalled very precise detials. I'm highly curious to see what I end up with. I will keep you all posted here. I'm walking into this with an open mind, so we shall see.