No Longer the World's Slowest Blog

Monday, August 28, 2006

My Night With Harlan Ellison, Part II

I wound up directing Harlan and Susan Ellison to the far side of the stage. They were a little more out-of-the-way than they should have been. From here on out, Harlan was alternately snippy and not so snippy (I don't want to accuse him of being apologetic, because he never went that far, but...maybe it was apologetic for him!). At first he seemed upset with his seat (just past the Hugo nomination area), but then he said everything was fine. Then he went to complain to people he knew in the audience about his seats...

I stopped back and checked in with Kathryn, the backstage crew and the presenters. They were discussing how to keep Harlan onstage after presenting the Short Story Hugo. It turned out, he was getting a special committee award. "Um, I just got them seated off to one side...um...maybe I ought to do it."

That meant, I had to be a Hugo escourt without having gone through Hugo escourt training. "I should be OK; I know I have to hold the Hugo and stand on the black X. And if Harlan tries to leave the stage before Connie gives him his award, I can always tackle him."

Kathryn and Randy Smith said that would be fine, so I got the job. I went back to my seat out front.

When Harlan was off chatting with people in the audience, I spoke to his wife Susan briefly. Susan had been a movie reviewer in the early '80s, so I told her how much I'd enjoyed her reviews. She was very gracious.

The Hugo Ceremony went off without any major hitches. Robert Silverberg and the official MC Connie Willis bantered appropriately. We cheered like sportsfans at the Super Bowl for David Hartwell who won his overdue Hugo. We cheered for the very elegant Betty Ballantine who was resplendant in a gold gown and who won a special committee award. Connie kept the ceremony moving and everything was going very well.

Just before the Best Related Book presentation, I had to get Harlan backstage to get ready for his presentation. Once we got to the side of the stage, he stopped.

"Everyone's entering from the other side," I explained.

"I don't want to, I'll just come from here."

I ran around to the other side of the stage and alerted the backstage crew to expect Harlan's entrance from the far side of the stage. They handed me a Hugo, and once the Best Related Book presentation was done, I followed Connie onstage and planted myself firmly on the X.

Connie announced Harlan as the Best Short Story Hugo presenter.

People applauded.

Nothing happened. He was no longer offstage, he was nowhere to be found.

Connie asked for him again, and we heard a very loud "NO!" from the far side of the arena. Connie successfully ad-libbed him onstage.

I'm standing onstage, holding a Hugo, knowing I don't look a thing like Vanna White (though we both are the same age). I'm standing well behind both Harlan and Connie, and I really don't remember their banter too well. I kept thinking 'Shit, I've got to get Harlan to stay onstage...and maybe I will need to tackle him.'

Since I was standing behind Harlan and Connie, I could hear what they were saying, but I couldn't see what, if anything, was going on between them.

Eventually, Harlan gave a nice speech about the importance of short stories. He read the nominees, and said, "Come on up here, Dave!" Dave Levine leapt up onstage, did not lose his top hat, and hugged Harlan.

Laurie Mann, Harlan Ellison and Dave Levine, Photo by Keith Stokes

Laurie Mann, Harlan Ellison and Dave Levine, Photo by Keith Stokes

Photo by Keith Stokes

As Dave was talking, Harlan started to exit the stage, but I caught up with him and said, "Please wait, Connie wants to talk to you."

For the very first time that night, Harlan did what I asked. *WHEW!*

Connie returned and gave Harlan the other special committee award. He made a short speech in which he said he expected L.A.Con IV would be his last convention. We exited the stage without further incident. Harlan returned to Susan, I returned to my seat, then Harlan and Susan left the arena.

After the Hugo Ceremony, various people came up to me and asked "Did Harlan grope you?"

I shrugged it off. "I'm a fat woman; I don't think Harlan gropes fat women." But I had no idea why people were asking me that.

What I didn't know until the next day was that Harlan groped Connie when they were standing together by the podium. Not only that, it was captured by the cameras, so everyone in the arena saw it. Connie, class act that she was, didn't miss a beat, continued with the ceremony like an adult. Connie kept the focus of the ceremony on honoring the winners, and not drawing more attention to Harlan's behavior.

After L.A.Con, Harlan first "apologized" for the grope, and then later denied that he had groped Connie in the first place. Harlan overlooked facts (so like the Bush administration) when they did not conform to his version of reality. Like a few hundred people saw the grope as it happened. And a few dozen cameras captured it. Like this one.

While I've read a fair amount of Connie's fiction, I'd never read The Doomsday Book until the plane trip around Worldcon. It is a fabulous book. The chapters covering the decimation of the medieval village are brilliant, meticulously researched, and moved me to tears. Connie is a much better role model for writers than Harlan Ellison.

Sunday, I learned of one screw-up I made during the Hugo ceremony. Like I said, I didn't go to "Hugo escourt training" because I didn't expect to be a Hugo escourt. So when I held the Hugo up onstage, I held it up to best show-off the Hugo - facing forward. I'd complete forgotten that the Hugo winner's name was engraved on a plate in front of the Hugo! Dave Levine told me later that, as a result, everyone kept staring at the Hugo while I was holding it, trying to see if they could read the winner's name before it was announced.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

My Night With Harlan Ellison, Part I

If you were at the Hugo Ceremonies at L.A.Con IV, you might have noticed a woman in a blue dress standing behind Harlan Ellison when he was making a presentation during the awards. That was me. Through a weird set of circumstances, I wound up trying to "wrangle Harlan" for the Hugos. It was a weird evening indeed, for a number of reasons.

The Short Term Background: I would love to run the Hugo Ceremony some day, so I volunteered to be Kathryn Daugherty's assistant for the L.A.Con IV Hugo Ceremony. I spent most of Saturday afternoon talking with nominees and designated acceptors, making sure they understood the lay of the stage, what the podium was like, and how to exit. This turned out to be the fun part of the job.

Arena Photo During Rehearsal by John Scalzi

Arena Photo During Rehearsal by John Scalzi

Photo by John Scalzi

I knew the job during the ceremony was to do anything Kathryn wanted me to do. Most of that was not too taxing - checking the seating arrangements, running little errands, nothing particularly difficult. Why, I even had enough time to get my picture taken with Kathryn and Ruth Sachter (Hugo Administrator John Lorentz's wife and a very old friend of mine):

Kathryn Daugherty, Laurie Mann, Ruth Sachter at the L.A.Con IV Hugo Ceremony

Kathryn Daugherty, Laurie Mann, Ruth Sachter at the L.A.Con IV Hugo Ceremony

Photo probably by Jim Mann

Financial Aside: Yeah, I know I've complained about being "house poor" of late, so how did I get such a great dress? It was on sale for $36.

I'm not overly "star struck" by people I meet at cons. I've known many of the nominees and Hugo ceremony participants for a long time, as I've helped to run cons for 30 years. Heck, Dave Kyle has slept in my house, I've been getting Dave Levine and Kate Yule's Bento since the early days. I've been on panels with Connie Willis. I was on GEnie with C.Doctorow before he was famous. I've followed the wonderful world of John Scalzi in his blog. But, I was more than a little tired by the Saturday of Worldcon, and the Hugo Ceremony tends to make me very hyper.

So Kathryn told me to help get the Hugo nominees out of the pre-reception and into the audience. Most people got moving without much encouragement. But one presenter who wasn't budging was Harlan Ellison, who was busy eating reception snacks. With more than a little trepedation, I told Harlan it was time to go out to the arena.

"Can I take my food with me?"

"Well...no..." (and when was the last time you saw people bring food into the Hugo ceremony?)

"What are you, demented?" (or words to that effect; I was not quite shaking in my sandals, and once a writer whose works you've adored refers to you as "demented," you tend to lose track of the exact sequence of words...)

The Long-Term Background: I'm well aware of Harlan's temper. While I don't think he ever saw my name badge, I'd been the indirect recipient of Harlan's ire several times in the past.

The Even-Longer-Term Background: When I started to read SF in 1973, I was 16 and completely fell in love with the writing of many SF writers but especially the writing of Harlan Ellison. When I started to write SF, I wanted to write with the kind of emotional wallop that he did. I loved Harlan's writing so much that when I met Anne McCaffrey at Boskone 12 in 1975, I told her I wanted to be the next Harlan Ellison.

She rolled her eyes at me, and I didn't exactly understand why at the time.

I met Harlan in 1976 at an Ohio college convention that was so badly managed it earned the nickname of "4th Disaster Con" by Saturday. Harlan was very pleasant, and even signed my copy of Rockabilly, a book I'd been warned that Harlan would rip up when someone handed it to him. Instead, he signed it, looked at the cover and laughed. The back cover had a photo of an extremely young Harlan Ellison in a trenchcoat with a cigarette dangling from his lips.

A few years later, I attended a reading Harlan gave in Pittsburgh. For the first time, I was a little disappointed in his writing. His stories were still good, but not great. Harlan irritated me further by harassing a female college student who was his minder from the stage. She was so embarrassed by him that she left the hall.

I reviewed Harlan's readings for a tiny (about 60-copy count) fanzine, giving an honest assessment. The editor called me a few months later to say that Harlan had called him and chewed him out over the phone over my review.

Oh-oh....

Now, Harlan never did call me to chew me out. I'm not sure how I would have reacted, but I never had to find out then.

I saw Harlan at Noreascon II in Boston in 1980. He gave a very entertaining, Harlanesque talk and was generally quite pleasant all weekend. That was the weekend he bought the famous Barclay Shaw carved desk. I think it was also the weekend he met his future wife, Susan. I shared an elevator with him and I guess he'd completely forgotten that I'd once mightily offended him. Either that or he didn't see my name badge. Either that or maybe he viewed bothering pregnant women as "off limits."

I didn't see Harlan much in the '80s or '90s. He was on the West Coast and I was on the East. But, in the mid '90s, my husband Jim edited Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Fiction of Cordwainer Smith. The Paul Linebarger estate was a strong supporter of the project, and wanted all of Smith's short works to be included. Including a piece Harlan had bought over twenty years previously for the still-unpublished The Last Dangerous Visions. We heard Harlan was very angry about people who were publishing anything intended for The Last Dangerous Visions. Legally, however, NESFA Press had the consent of the estate, which was all that mattered.

At some point in the '90s, Harlan was a guest at Readercon, and apparently it turned into a long rant against NESFA Press for daring the publish this story.

Oh-oh...

So, back to the present.

All the other Hugo nominees and presenters were heading for the auditorium, and Harlan seemed pissed at me for trying to get him to follow directions. I don't deal really well with angry people, particularly ones who I had to try to be nice to. I stepped back for a minute and took a deep breath.

I tried to be diplomatic. "We need to get all the presenters and nominees to the floor."

"You're being awfully twitchy," Harlan said. "I'm taking this with me."

Unwilling to fight with him, I just nodded and said, "Follow me."

So Harlan and Susan were near the end of a big line of people. I managed to jump around some of them, trying to find good seats for Harlan and Susan. As a presenter, Harlan needed to be either in a front row seat or on an aisle. And most of these seats were already gone.

Part II

Thursday, August 17, 2006

On Being an Unemployed Movie Geek, Day 1

There are many disadvantages to being unemployed. Some monetary constraints and general boredom to name two.

But there are some advantages. I did an awful lot of our house-hunting/house-buying/moving legwork. I finshed writing my novel. In early July, I got to be an unpaid production assistant for the day during a local documentary shoot, A Tale of Two Cities. I've been working with David Brody on the William Tenn documentary. And, today, I tried out for Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

The show asked all potential contestents to take two different trivia tests - the regular test, and the movie-trivia test for a week of movie-related shows that Netflix is sponsoring this fall. Over 230 people take the tests at a time (there were easily over 1,000 test-takers in line in Pittsburgh today). About 40 people pass the tests at each session.

I passed BOTH TESTS!

So I got to talk to an assistant producer for about a minute about what I love about movies.

This doesn't mean I'll get on the show. Maybe too many middle-aged white women passed both tests this year. Who knows. But after flunking the Jeopardy test twice, I'm psyched to have passed both Millionaire tests!

Since I got out of the test around lunch time, I wandered over to Bar Louie where I ran into some folks from the contestent line having lunch. I asked if I could join them, they said sure, so we had a very pleasant hour chatting on the patio.

So, tomorrow I'm doing something else I've always wanted to do - I'm going to the casting call for a movie. They are wisely shooting Michael Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, in Pittsburgh this fall. I'm trying out to be an extra. There is a tiny part I would be perfect for if only I was a little younger - they're looking for a fat female to play a bookstore employee. Unfortunately, she needs to be about 30, and I'm now way old for that part.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Computer Woes, Confluence, Lots of Company

That's why I haven't been blogging lately.

If you've E-mailed me recently and you haven't heard back - please E-mail me again. I had a computer failure followed by some weird security/mail server problems which means I've lost some E-mails and some responses I did actually send were apparently eaten by a hypervigilant security program.

I think the E-mail is back to normal.

Confluence went generally well. *WHEW!*

It was lots of fun to have company - from Connecticut, England, Florida and New Zealand. I'll try to post some photos soon.

I have some off-line stuff to do today and need to finish that before I can start to share some photos from the summer.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Drama vs. Melodrama

This is kind of a vague essay on drama vs. melodrama. I don't know how detailed I want to be about an unpublished novel...I might write a more specific essay to share with people who have read the whole novel, to see if this makes any sense.

As I've said, my first, unpublished novel, IRL, is a mixed bag of a novel. It's comic at times and quite serious at other times. But, the version I wrote in 2005 had two very shocking elements:

* a character suddenly becomes deathly ill, causing another character to have a major crisis of conscience

* a character dies in a terrorist incident

When I started re-examing the novel in early 2006, I realized both of those elements were simply too melodramatic. The novel was already death-obsessed, and these elements were over-the-top. I came to the conclusion about both elements at about the same time; both caused the novel to lose its focus.

The "deathly ill" part took place in Chapter 11. Chapter 11 is a very pivotal chapter, about 1/3rd of the way through the novel. I realized by not making the character in question "deathly ill," the chapter generally felt more realistic. I rewrote the chapter in pretty much one day, and it went from being too tortured in places to being mostly subdued. But that was OK; the "more tortured" chapter in that part of the novel needed to be a later chapter.

When I looked at the novel again this July, I realized Chapter 11 was now too quiet. In particular, a character's attitude changed quickly with little consideration. So, I revised Chapter 11 a little bit; it wasn't a rewrite, so much as a reshaping.

As the novel winds down, a character becomes debilitated and this impacts the story dramatically. For the longest time, I killed off another major character at the end in a terrorist incident. I came to the conclusion in January that this was just too much.

In late January, I wrote a long bit involving the terrorist incident. Instead of dying, the character survived, though badly injured. In some ways, writing this sequence was helpful; it got me started writing again after a nearly six-month hiatus. But, after about two weeks, I realized I was going off in completely the wrong direction, so I deleted the terrorist incident all together.

So I had to write an all new ending. Much as I avoided writing this particular ending for nearly five years (I started this novel as a character sketch in the winter of 2001 for a writing class, and had a rough outline almost immediately), I finally wrote a different approach to the ending. I hate to say "thus and so almost wrote itself." I was shocked by how quickly I was able to write the last chapter. Maybe it was because I'd thought so much about the characters and their situation over a very long time. While it still needs a small edit near the very end, the last chapter is basically a first draft. I don't write description well, but the description in the last chapter seems to work.

If too much bad seems to be happening to your characters all at once, perhaps you're substituting melodrama for drama. I suspect this is an easy mistake for some writers to make. I may still be spilling over into melodrama over the last quarter of my novel, but it doesn't feel as obvious to me now as it did last winter.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Going to the Regatta Saturday? Be In a Movie!

Ever wanted to be in a movie?

You have your chance this Saturday, July 1. The finale piece to Carl Kurlander's documentary A Tale of Two Cities will be shot at the Point at 5:00pm. We're looking for many, many Pittsburghers to take part in singing the classic song "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," against the backdrop of the downtown Pittsburgh skyline. The singing will be led by none other than Mr. McFeely (David Newell) of Misterogers' Neighborhood. Many local celebrities will also take part in this performance (but if I told you who was coming, it wouldn't be a surprise).

If you'd like to take part, go to the area of Point State Park between the performance stage and the fountain after 4:30pm. The singing will start by 5pm.

If it rains Saturday afternoon, the filming will take place Monday afternoon, same location, at 5pm.

For more information on this event, visit our Website.

Monday, June 19, 2006

A Bad Blogger Trend - Syndication Without Credit

As I've been saying for years, I like to be linked to. Whenever anyone's written to me and asked me if they can link to something I've put online, I don't hesitate to say, "Of course. This is the Web - you can link to anything you'd like."

Recently, though, I've been finding some of my blog entries copied without any attribution for the sole purpose of third parties getting a few pennies from Google or other advertisers. This is just another form of plagarism, and I think it's very unfair. So I'll be annoyingly beginning all future blog entries with a separate copyright notice and a link back to my site.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Who Is Your IMDB Namesake? (Meme Alert!!)

I love the Internet Movie Database. It's a wonderful collection of data (mostly accurate even). Before there was a Wikipedia, there was IMDB, a database that was created by movie fans, for movie fans.

I'm not sure how many names of actors and crew are in the database. Probably over 100,000. So I was curious - do I have a namesake in IMDB?

Well, first I should observe that I am very close to a relatively-well-known IMDB namesake - Leslie Mann. We named our daughter "Leslie" when she was born in 1980 as we liked the name, my name is Scottish and we liked the idea of giving our child a name that reflected part of her varied cultural background. In 1996, when our Leslie was 16, we first heard of Leslie Mann, the actress.

Leslie Susan Mann, Geek	Leslie Mann, Actress

Leslie Mann, the actress, is about eight years older than our Leslie, and has mostly played comic roles. In the mid-'90s our Leslie's favorite actor was Jim Carrey. Leslie Mann's first major role was in The Cable Guy, with Jim Carrey as the lead. Leslie Mann the actress was also in 40 Year Old Virgin last year.

I then looked my name up in IMDB and found a match! There is/was an actress named Laurie Mann (at least one of them) who was on a TV show in the '50s and did a cartoon voice on Scooby Doo in the '70s. IMDB doesn't have a photo of her, and I couldn't find one online either.

My husband Jim Mann has at least three namesakes in IMDB (more if you include the many hits to James Mann). Though Jim has edited several books, he is not the "Jim Mann" who appeared on BookNotes in 1990.

So, do you have any IMDB namesakes?

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Fan Letter to Arlen Specter

Live in Pennsylvania? Send Arlen a letter! I did:

Dear Senator Specter:

Thank-you so much for again demonstrating that some Republicans are capable of independent thought.

I really appreciate your vote against the "gay marriage amendment."

I also appreciate that you are representing the people and the Constitution against the current administration over issues around domestic spying.

At least I can be proud of one of my Senators!

SIncerely,

Laurie D. T. Mann

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Thanks to the Pittsburgh on Broadway Series for Listening!!!

Last December, I bitched mightily about not being able to buy Wicked tickets the day they went onsale. Most of the tickets had been picked up by scalpers and resold at 2X to 4X their face value. I was pissed. I did get to see Wicked by buying an available ticket at the last minute. It was a great show, and I'm glad I could go. I do feel sorry for the folks who wound up paying so much more for those tickets.

Well, someone at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust seems to have been listening. They sent around an E-mail to anyone whose E-mail address they had and offered to let us buy Spamalot tickets before they went onsale to the general public. As a result, I just paid face value for three tickets. Thanks!

6/8/06 Update- I'd sent a note to Chris Rawson at the Post-Gazette about this, and the letter was published today (second one down).

Ann Coulter - Sick Joke

I don't listen to Ann Coulter. The few times I've read words she's reported to have said indicate she doesn't have an original thought.

So she's just written a book called "Godless - The Church of Liberalism." And she shows up on the Today Show, at 7:15 in the morning, dressed like a hooker. She was wearing the sort of sleeveless, little black dress you sometimes see the working girls wear.

What point was she trying to make? If she was trying to make a serious point, shouldn't she pay a little more attention to what she wears? I should add that, like when I see Rick Santorum, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Ralph Reed and William Bennett on TV, I press the "mute" button as soon as Ann Coulter appears. It's still something like a free country and I'd rather not listen to the dittoheads.

The notion that liberalism is some sort of dogmatic religion is a joke. I know many liberals who believe in God. However, liberals tend to leave religious dogma as politics to the Republicans. Most of us liberals prefer to do our thinking for ourselves. The fact that the Republicans can say "gay marriage" and "immigration reform" and expect their "base" to respond like Pavlov's dogs indicates how incapable of independent thought so many Republicans are. Like Ann Coulter.

6/7/06 - turned out Ann was even more out-of-touch with reality than usual, and used her book to bash - women widowed by the 9/11 terrorist attack. I'm glad my mute button was working yesterday morning.

Friday, May 26, 2006

When You Finally Get Your Dream House...sigh

I've adored this house from the minute I saw it nearly three months ago.

I'd been looking for a new house for a while - we have a large book collection and simply needed a bigger house. While I spent about two months looking at houses, Jim spent about two days looking at houses since this home fit the bill (well, once I made changes that reflected the way we'd use the house).

I brought Jim out to look at this house, and he agreed. So we put a downpayment on it after sleeping on it for two nights.

The move has been extremely stressful. We'd lived in our Mt. Lebanon house for nearly 13 years, which was longer than any of us had ever lived anywhere. I didn't get us completely packed and completely moved out as I'd hoped to. Even now (over two weeks after the move) I'm still doing some clean-up to the old house. Our real estate agent recommended ripping out some rugs, and I'm doing that now.

However...

The new house is just great for us. So far, so good.

The Mt. Lebanon house is officially for sale. If you're looking for an inexpensive home in Mount Lebanon that lets you walk to the high school, middle school, pool, library, some churches, 44U, 36A buslines and 42S trolley, this is the house for you. While you may find that the house needs cosmetics, the roof is brand new, the driveway is reasonably new and it's listed for $129,000. In short, if you want a Mt. Lebanon home at a reasonable price, ths may be the place for you.

Friday, May 12, 2006

Moving to the Country

Our move to a new house went well. The weather was just perfect; maybe a little warm on the second day, but not too bad.

I was tired and didn't get as much packing/cleaning done as I'd hoped. But the moving crew (Allegheny Valley Transfer - Allied Van Lines) took everything in stride. There was one problem on their side - they didn't bring a big enough truck. So they brought in another truck during the afternoon.

Two Trucks...

Jim cleaned up the former library.

The Library

We left one last load of trash on the curb.

Good-bye to All That

The movers found the new place the next morning.

Move-in

Unpacking and set-up continues. I got the kitchen set-up yesterday while Jim focused on his office. Today, I have to return to the old house to pick up some things I'd left behind and do some cleaning.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Getting Ready for the Big Move

We've been in our current, too-small (ahh..."very cozy" house in marketing-speak) for nearly 13 years. So it's gone from being too small to being way-too-small over the years.

So now we're moving into a house out in the country with over 2X the space.

I've spent almost three full days over the last week at the new house, waiting for deliveries and moving in some of the small stuff. We've gotten some new furniture and a new washing machine without too much grief (except for Jim's new desk from Office Max...**grrrr**). I haven't really been able to write lately; I've been admittedly obsessive about the new house. I've always wanted a new house. About my only regret about the house is that it is a little further in the country than I would have liked. But it is so nice and so quiet...I'm looking forward to all that quiet!

Friday, April 21, 2006

Can We Trust Government "Science?"

The FDA reports that marijuana has no benefit for medical use.

Given that the FDA is under the thumb of Republicans, who have no respect for science, I don't believe what the FDA says. I've known too many sick people who report improvements in appetite and nausea when they use pot. Even very conservative people (like my own mother) think medical marijuana is OK.

Since our government ignores facts when they interfere with its agenda, I do not believe this FDA announcement. The same FDA won't permit "Plan B" to be sold without a prescription because the government claims Plan B is abortion. The same FDA won't promote use of the anti-cervical cancer vaccine for fear that it might encourage young women to be promiscuous. The same government doesn't believe that human activity influences global warming, and didn't believe (until really recently) that energy conservation was a good idea.

Don't get me wrong - personally, I don't use marijuana. I found out over 30 years ago that pot triggers asthma and gives me a sore throat. But I do think pot should be legal for home use. It shouldn't be anyone's business. Pot shold be regulated and taxed the way that alcohol is.

I look forward to having a reality-based government someday. We clearly don't have one now.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

We Are Here...

Somewhere around 1960, my parents bought me a pine dresser. It lasted through my childhood. At one point, I painted it blue. Eventually, when Jim, Leslie and I moved Massachusetts, I retrieved the dresser from my parents and gave it to Leslie.

Since it was a pine dresser, it really wasn't meant to last for 45 years. It's been falling apart for a few years. So, since we're moving, Jim and I are getting new dressers, and I'm giving my current dresser (which I think had been Jim's grandmother's) to Leslie.

Before I put the pine dresser out for the garbage collectors, I noticed we'd both signed the same drawer:

autographs

Friday, April 07, 2006

The Birthdate Meme and the States Visited Meme

Not clear where this came from, but:

Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal.

My birthdate is February 2, aka Groundhog Day.

Interesting Events

1709 - Alexander Selkirk is rescued from shipwreck on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
1933 - Adolf Hitler dissolves the German Parliament.
1990 - Apartheid: In South Africa President F.W. de Klerk allows the African National Congress to legally function again and promises to set Nelson Mandela free.

Interesting Birthdays

1882 - James Joyce, Irish author (d. 1941)
1949 - Brent Spiner, American actor

Interesting Deaths

1461 - Owen Tudor, Welsh founder of the Tudor dynasty of England

In addition to Dead People Server, I've been tracking a list of people born in 1957.

States Visited Meme

A new hack from Google, apparently.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

The Current Immigration Problems...

Most of my family has been in the United States for a very long time. My ancestors were mostly English and Scottish. They started leaving the Old World for the new as early as 1642. I have no idea if they had the proper papers or not. I only know that they came and ran farms, small businesses, churches, and families all over New England.

I think the hysteria over illegal immigration is troublesome, because it focuses on the wrong problems. Yes, of course governments should be on the lookout for potential terrorists. But should they be focused on so much on economic refugees? I don't think so. Should we declare illegal immigrants and the folks that help them felons? Why? What ever happened to "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free?" What ever happened to "Love thy neighbor as thyself?"

People willing to come to this country to work should not be discouraged. And that's all the vast majority of the illeagal immgrants want.

But aren't they taking American jobs? Sometimes. But many people have reported that Americans generally aren't working in the fields. I've read blogs by Mexican-American writers who report never having seen "Anglos" working in the fields. Granted, these are low-paying, backbreaking jobs.

But if Americans aren't taking these jobs...why can't immigrants?

I love going to areas where I don't always hear English. I've been delighted to be one of the only non-Asians at a dim sum restaurant in San Francisco. I don't mind having to work a little harder to speak slowly to a person who isn't a native English speaker. This tends to freak many Americans out.

The bottom line is the immigration debate brings out racism in a very vocal group of Americans.

As much as President Bush has been so wrong so often in his public career, he's been about the most rational public voice on the immigration debate. And thank goodness for the common sense displayed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on this issue.

It would be nice if the more Americans could show as much common sense.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Finally Made it Into the "We Are Not Afraid" Gallery

I love the Brits.

Only in England could a wonderful site like We Are Not Afraid bloom into a Web phenomenon by the middle of July of last year. It was a response to the temptation to give into despair after the subway bombings last July. I loved the site and sent them a "We Are Not Afraid" photo of my own, which is now linked to this page (I'm in the upper right hand corner).

After 9/11, I was dismayed by the "let's let the terrorists terrify us" attitude that the American people adopted after the attacks. I wrote an essay in the fall of 2001, saying why I thought this attitude was such a serious mistake.

*Sigh*

Today, in filling out the paperwork for the mortgage on our new house, one of the forms was a "Patriot Act" form, saying the government the government has the right to review applications for loans for possible money laundering activities...
Yes, of course we completed the form, but still!

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

I Really, Really Finished My Novel Today

Which is ironic to say the least.

Exactly one year ago today, I wrote in this blog:

The "tinkering" I was talking about was on a novel I now call IRL. I got the idea for it about five years ago when I was back in college and was lucky enough to have Chuck Kinder as my writing instructor that semester. It started off as a little scene, and, a little at a time, became a 17,000 word pieces-of-a-few-chapters-plus-outline.

When I was laid off about a year ago, I thought long and hard about working on this some more. After a few weeks, I was writing a little. In April and May, around some contracts, I wrote quite a bit. Once the summer hit, I was working more on Interaction (last year's Worldcon; a common volunteer job for the un/underemployed).

Then, I had a bad combination of illness, false finishes, writers' block, and contract jobs (usually for pay,which was better than nothing). I really didn't write much of it between late July and late January, though I did fall into tinkering with it some. At one point, I said I was done, but I was wrong.

In early February, I reexamined the beginning and the ending. I threw out the first five thousand words, and changed the ending. After writing seven thousand words of a new ending, I threw that one out too.

And then, I lost most of last week in house hunting/financial things/other stuff around buying a new house.

I knew I had to finish this week because I have to start packing!

With this deadline in mind, I've written very steadily lately and completely redid the ending.

I don't know if this book will ever sell or not. It may be, like many first novels, something that I'll look back on as a learning experience. Or maybe it'll sell a few copies. Who knows. I only know I have a letter to an agent that hasn't been bounced back to me (yet).

And I finished my novel! Maybe not in time for "Write Your Novel" month, but what-the-hell...