cuppa Chai

The Eyes Have It

2011-12-24T09:23:00.000-05:00

When I was a teenager I used to have scary dreams in which I was losing my sight, in which I could see only dim and blurred shapes and had to be led around by someone else. I always wondered if those were some kind of portent about my eyes--would I go blind someday? Just this week I remembered those dreams.

Earlier this year--when I finally got an insurance that would pay for it--I went to see an ophthalmologist about the doubled vision I have had for the last couple years. People freak out when you tell them that you see double all the time. But, honestly, it creeps up on you slowly. For me it started many years ago, but only happened when my eyes were tired after a long day of lots of reading or computer work. A good night's sleep and the eyes were normal again. About two years ago I realized it had become a permanent condition.

"How did you cope?" and "how did you drive?" people asked when they found out. The answer is "carefully." What happens is that one eye gradually becomes dominant--in my case it was the left eye. The things you see with the other eye you basically ignore. Sometimes you just close your non-dominant eye and keep going one-eyed. Yes, it does affect your depth perception. Given the problem, I chose not to drive if the conditions were adverse--late night, weird weather, etc. The worst was night time city driving in rain when the lights are all multiplied and reflected off wet streets. If I had to drive in those circumstances I probably annoyed the other drivers by my over-cautiousness behind the wheel.

This year I finally decided something had to be done.

My doctor first did tests to rule out nerve damage, and then an MRI to make sure there was no brain tumor. That was a scary moment. The testing facility gave me a copy of my brain scan (a very cool thing to look at), and in it I saw a huge white mass below my right eye--the one that was turning inward the most. Fortunately the people who know about such things let me know that this was not a tumor--just one of the worst impacted sinuses in Northeast Ohio. With those more serious conditions ruled out, the only option left was surgery to correct the muscles around the eye.

I say "eye" singular, because that was the original plan. Just do the right eye--the worst one. See how that goes and if necessary do the left later down the road. For two weeks before hand I could have no painkillers with aspirin, had to limit certain foods like citrus, tomatoes, almonds, berries. The surgery was supposed to be done in the clinic at my doctor's eye care facility. I would be awake, but under a local anesthesia. On the afternoon I was scheduled--having eaten noting after midnight the night before--I was prepped, given a mild relaxer, and given a shot into the eye-socket area that would paralyze the eye. Or so they thought. Trust me to be contrary. After two shots and a some considerable time waiting, my eye was still able to move. and I could still feel. The doctor gave up for the day.

That was fine with me as the while prospect of someone coming at my eye and me being able to see and feel it was totally horrifying by this point. They bandaged the eye, told me to leave it alone for 24 hours. That night I was in agony. The eyelids swelled up like a plum and the whole thing was about the same color. Cold compresses were only some help. three days later I was back to normal but looking like I had been punched. Whether it was an allergic reaction to the local or (my suspicion) some small particulate in an already irritated eye, I will never know. I just know I was miserable.

They rescheduled me for a week later at a local hospital where they would do the procedure under a general anesthesia. As long as I was going under anyway, the doctor said we would do both eyes--make them nice and symmetrical and get it all done at once. Now I was beginning to panic. If it was that painful the first time, and the surgery hadn't even happened, what would both eyes be like?

For entire week before the surgery I annoyed my youngest daughters with my "if anything happens these are my final wishes" proclamations. 2011 has been a year of too many deaths, and I was worried the universe was about to kick me in the ass again.

Day of the surgery my daughter dropped me off at Akron City Hospital. Seven hours later, and this time with some serious painkillers, I was done. Steve came to take me home. They didn't bandage the eyes this time, but I could barely hold them open anyway. That was Tuesday, four days ago. I went home and slept on the couch (a recliner, had to keep head elevated). I have been spending a lot of time since just sleeping. The doc gave me a prescription for an ointment that was both an antibiotic and a numbing agent--a good thing because the eyes itch and are very tender. My throat is raw as well--apparently I have a very small throat and intubating me for surgery was a problem. Who knew.

By the way, the nurses at Akron City are among the nicest people on the whole planet. Seriously. Angels.

The whole thing has made me think about what I value. The idea of losing my sight is about as scary as it gets. Not being able to read. Never seeing a sunset again. Or my cats. Or a rose. Not being able to watch my five beautiful grandchildren as they change and grow. That scares me the most.

It has been three days since the surgery. I am happy to say that I am no longer cross-eyed. The white of my eyes in the inner corners is totally red and very sore. I wake up with my eyes gunked shut, but warm compresses help. Bright light hurts. I found last night that too much TV tires my eyes and they cross a bit when tired. Need to be more careful with these eyes, they are the only ones I have.

Elusive Golden Cat

2011-09-27T14:30:00.001-05:00

Nope. Though I have been known to imitate my cats and I do have blonde hair, I'm not talking about me. And of late I know have been elusive on this blog. But all that is because of too much going on in my life. So since I don't know where to begin talking about this year as it winds down to another ending in a year of far-too-many-things-ending, I will just--for now--give you a glimpse of a different elusive golden cat and promise to write about my elusivity (is that a word?) later.Enjoy the kitteh-ness below for now.

Un-mindful vs Mindful Eating

2011-09-01T04:00:00.000-05:00

Went out to dinner (for sushi and Thai) last night with friends and ate so much I felt bloated. Trying to figure out why I do that. Some part of it is that I can't bear to waste food. I grew up in the era of "clean your plate." I remember lectures from my dad on how there were starving children in other parts of the world and owed it to them to appreciate the food I had. Some of it is about loving to cook and make really good food and the joy of sharing it with others.

This morning somehow I am down 2 lbs from yesterday. I should feel good about that, however, my jeans are still too tight. And I know those 2 lbs will creep back somewhere. Over the past 2 years I have put on too much weight. Some of it is the desk job making me spend more time sitting at the computer. Some if it is sitting in front of the TV where running to the refrigerator on the commercial break gets to be a habit.

Whatever it is I still want to lose 20 lbs. And cleaning my plate at the restaurant is not going to help.

Last night my friend Michelle mentioned she feels that she does "binge eating"--the habit of just eating because it's there, because your taste-buds are bored, not because you need food. Binge eaters eat because they are stressed and want to feel good and, lets face it, food tastes good. I don't think I eat because I feel stressed, but I know I am not overeating because I need food. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I felt hunger pains or felt my stomach rumbling.

My friend Lisa talks about "Mindful Eating." The idea that you choose to eat deliberately--for nourishment, for the sensation of taste, for the beauty of the food and the joy of the moment. I like that. I was thinking I need to pay more attention to whether I am eating out of boredom or out of a real need for food. I like that concept. I need to remember to savor the food, not wolf it down like I am starving.

Earlier this year I started keeping a food diary at Fat Secret. This is something Steve's nutritionist told him to do. Just to be aware of what you eat and drink. I was really faithful with it for a while, then in August I got lazy and and busy and just didn't. I'm going back to it again, but I have to admit I don't know if it helps to be aware of the calories in all the foods I eat. I also find the sheer caloric count in prepared foods disturbing. Why do restaurants serve such large portions? Why do I still feel the need to clean my plate after all these years?

I need to ask myself more often if I am hungry or if my taste-buds are just bored.

Pennsic War

2011-07-22T06:17:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again. Tomorrow, or maybe Friday, I need to put my entire house in a car and head to the 13th century. Yes, I know it sounds crazy, but this is how I spend my summer vacations. I go to Western PA where I will set up a yurt and live for two weeks among 12,000 Medievalists recreating everything from Romanized Britain to the Vikings to Normans to Elizabethans, with Heian Japan and Karakorum of Chingis Khan tossed in for good measure.

Me? I like to run things, give up my entire vacation to be on the staff year 'round. Then I can haz mini-dragon.

Nova: Green Energy in China

2011-07-05T05:27:00.001-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.

Originally aired on PBS Nova April 2011.

Watch this now. Really. Right now.

2011-06-29T20:28:00.000-05:00

Because the color of the chocolate eggs and the color of the cross...

2011-04-24T19:06:00.002-05:00

An Easter thought for you all...

2011-04-20T07:39:00.000-05:00

Future States on PBS

"What will become of America in five, 25, or even 50 years from today? FUTURESTATES is a series of 10 fictional mini-features exploringWhat will become of America in five, 25, or even 50 years from today? FUTURESTATES is a series of 10 fictional mini-features exploring possible future scenarios through the lens of today's global realities. Immerse yourself in the visions of these independent prognosticators as they project a future of their own imagining. possible future scenarios through the lens of today's global realities. Immerse yourself in the visions of these independent prognosticators as they project a future of their own imagining."

My Cross-off Contest Entry

2011-04-08T06:00:00.001-05:00

I have been burning

for hours just me

and a friend

enormous female

au naturel

enjoying a

honeymoon I made

fire steaming water

all the things one does

covered in veils in a

known gay army-surplus hideaway

But I survived

[What this is about]

Crazy Horse Cross-off Contest

2011-04-04T17:58:00.002-05:00

The Crazyhorse Cross-Off Contest

Win a free subscription to Crazyhorse by trying this cross-off writing exercise: Take the below paragraph of writing as your start. From it, cross off or delete words, crafting the remaining words into either a poem or a very short story of no more than 40 words. If you love an extra challenge, retain the original paragraph's word order as the word order of your own poem or story; otherwise, feel free to re-arrange the 40 or fewer words as you wish.

E-mail your entry of no more than 40 words to crazyhorse@cofc.edu

The ten winning entries will receive a free one-year subscription to Crazyhorse.

Deadline to enter is next Thursday, April 7, by 5 p.m.

Here is the paragraph to start with, from Andrew Sean Greer's fantastic essay "Gentlemen, Start Your Engines" (originally published in San Francisco Panorama and reprinted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010) about camping at a NASCAR race for the first time:

"I want to make it clear that I have been camping before, and I'm not just talking about Burning Man. I'm trying to say that I've lived in Montana and backpacked for hours into the wilderness, just me and a friend, where we set up our camp beside a little-known hot spring, and while my friend napped I got in au naturel and was promptly joined by an enormous female moose. There we sat, me and the moose, enjoying the steaming water, looking out blissfully at the sunset together like a honeymooning couple, while I summoned the courage to call in a wee voice: "Help me!" If I had been wearing pants I would have peed them. But I survived my wildlife encounter, and made a fire, and bear-proofed our foodstuffs, and did all the things one does when one is camping. This is not a story of gay San Franciscans setting up a Moroccan hideaway among all the army-surplus tents, complete with mirrored pillows and a Porta-John covered in veils. I am proud to say it is quite the opposite."

Framing Innocence Author to Speak at CWRU March 31

2011-03-31T15:10:00.001-05:00

from Case Western Reserve University | News Center

Framing Innocence Author to Speak at CWRU March 31

Lynn Powell

Oberlin author Lynn Powell turned to nonfiction for her latest work, Framing Innocence. The book tells the story of Oberlin resident Cynthia Stewart, who fought for her innocence after being accused of taking obscene photographs of her daughter Nora, 8, bathing.

Powell will read from her book, published last fall, during a reading and discussion sponsored by the Department of English and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. The free, public event will take place at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 31 in the Guilford House parlor.

Stewart’s story made national headlines in 1999 as the mother, who had taken photographs throughout her daughter’s life, became embroiled in a battle with Lorain County’s legal system. The photographs came to the attention of the police when a Discount Drug Mart employee alerted police to four bathtub images among 11 rolls of film submitted for processing.

Powell chronicles how Oberlin’s residents rallied to support Stewart in her struggle by providing a host of free services to help the family through its struggles. She will elaborate on her methods of research and reporting the story.

Stewart’s plight raises issues of privacy, the psychology and dynamics of the family, first amendment rights, the troubling nature of the “male gaze” and the struggles of an individual vs. the legal bureaucracy, said Mary Grimm, chair of the English department.

For information, email Susan Grimm at sxd290@case.edu.

Books Everyone Should Read

2011-03-14T12:56:00.002-05:00

From Information is Beautiful

I haven't read 19 of these. Better get my reading list in gear.

Teachers Have Hefty Salaries? Who Knew...

2011-03-06T13:56:00.003-05:00

"Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do – babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage."

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan– that equals 6 1/2 hours). Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE…

That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).
What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year. Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here!

There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Make a teacher smile; repost this to show appreciation for all educators.

[Above text was shamelessly reposted from http://www.eajohansson.net/2011/02/are-you-sick-of-highly-paid-teachers/]

Let me do my own calculations: I teach at The University of Akron and get paid $900/load hour (this is the actual time in the classroom--not counting required office hours or class prep or grading at home on weekends). This semester I am teaching 10 load hours (four classes with three different preps), so my salary for the entire semester (I do not get paid for vacation or sick days) is $9000.00 for five months. I teach 10 classroom hours a week for the 15 weeks that constitutes a semester or $600 a week. On the face of it, that doesn't sound too bad. But that is not a guaranteed salary for each semester, in no way does it take into account the number of hours I really put into teaching, and I get no other benefits at all.

Please, Governor Kasich, do pay me like a babysitter!

Last year I made $19,800.00 total for my teaching for three semesters. That's another issue, as an adjunct (despite having four degrees including a terminal degree) I am not guaranteed a job or a full teaching load in any given semester. I had to work an additional 20+ / per week job doing administrative work to bring my annual income up to $32,000.00.

This semester I have 98 students. If we called this babysitting (although my students are mostly adults and hardly need a babysitter) it would be different numbers. So let's pay me babysitter wages. I used the calculator at www.sittercity.com and put in my location, age, and experience and it tells me that I should make $9.50 per hour. So 98 students x $9.50 per hour x 10 per week = $8777.00 or $131,550.00 per semester, or (not counting summers when I am never guaranteed work and sometimes have to live off my credit cards) $263,100.00 per year. (I WISH!) Hell, I'll take the $3.00 per hour mentioned above and happily live on $88,200.00 which is nearly 5 times what I make now teaching.

But wait, there's more.... That calculation is without the all the time spent grading. In some ways I wish I could just babysit. I could entertain my students with knowledgable lectures and we'd all have a fun time, because I love what I do. But that pesky university has standards and wants to measure achievement.

My job is to teach and teaching also involves assessment of student learning, most often by creating and grading assignments and giving and grading exams. Let's just look at those essays and exams. (I'm not even counting the time it takes to prep these assignments here.) I do two essays a semester (about 15 pages of writing total) and two exams a semester (about 10 pages of writing) in my classes. The average academic copyeditor (and at it's simplest that is what this is--moving through a student's work looking for errors and writing comments on pages) charges somewhere between $35 and $100 / hour and does about 4 pages per hour. So 25 pages divided by 4 = 6.25 pages per hour. Multiply that by $35.00/hour (I'll take the lowest pay rate here) = $218.75. Multiply by 98 students = an additional $21,437.50 I should be paid out of the classroom. (Note that just the "copyediting" salary is more than I make annually for teaching.) So paying me to babysit and copyedit would give me an annual salary (in a fair and just world) of $284,537.50.

But "fair and just" is not what this world is.

Teachers teach out of love of teaching. Of all the wonderful teachers with whom I work I know of no overpaid teachers. This whole issue is about breaking unions in this country. Shame on you, Governor Walker and Govenor Kasich.

Newest Grandchild: K. Oskar Russ-Johanson

2011-03-02T09:45:00.001-05:00

Karl Oskar Felix

We’re calling him ‘Oskar’…

Born: 3/2/2011 @ 09:45

Weight: 9 lbs. 2 oz. // 4148 grams

Length: 21 inches // 53 centimeters

Oskar likes thumb-sucking and seems very able to find that thumb all on his own.

Blue eyes, just like Mama, and Daddy and Big sister Eme.

Big sister Emelie adores little brother Oskar.

See more pictures on Daddy's blog at: http://www.eajohansson.net/et-cetera/kalle/

China's "Soft Prohibition"

2011-02-28T12:43:00.000-05:00

Officially, Mr. Chen, one of the China's most high-profile human rights defenders, is a free man. Unofficially, he has become a prisoner in his own home.
Produced by Jeff DelViscio for the NY Times.

Sheryl WuDunn: Our Century's Greatest Injustice

2011-02-24T14:50:00.003-05:00

The University of Akron's Confucius Institute will once again sponsor a China Week on campus from October 10th to 14th, 2011. I've been asked to be a co-chair with Dr. Young Lin or the China Week Committee. My hope is that we can get some speakers with a real knowledge of China and an understanding of the current global situation, so of course my first choice is either Sheryl WuDunn or Nicholas Kristof, coauthors of Half The Sky.

Here's why I love WuDunn:

Here's what I love about Kristof: http://www.reporterfilm.com/
And this too:

What do you think? Who would you rather come see at UA?

Virginia Foxx, the new Dolores Umbridge

2011-01-07T22:23:00.000-05:00

There is no doubt about it. Virginia Foxx (R- North Carolina), the new chair of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Education, may be the next best thing for education since Dolores Umbridge took over at Hogwarts.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Rachel Maddow on her show yesterday pointed out the incongruities of putting this woman in charge of education. (You might also remember Foxx as the one who called the Matthew Shepard murder and hate crimes against gays "a hoax"). John Amick beautifully summarized the Maddow piece in the Washington Independent, reposted below.

Maddow highlights Foxx’s desire to dismantle student loan reform

By John Amick | 01.07.11 | 4:50 pm from the Washington Independent

The North Carolina Independent News reported this week on the new chair of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness, North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx and her priorities for the new U.S. Congress. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow took notice and included it in a segment called, “America not getting better at being smarter,” posted below.

Some background: Foxx has received $5,000 in campaign contributions in the last few election cycles from student loan corporation Sallie Mae, an organization that used to provide federally-guaranteed loans to students until Congress passed reform of the practice in 2010, effectively cutting out the middle-man in the process. (Sallie Mae now offers private student loans.) Foxx expressed desire to hold hearings over the loan-reform bill when she assumes the chair of the subcommittee, she told The Chronicle of Higher Education this week:

Ms. Foxx has criticized legislation that ended the bank-based program for supplying federal student loans in favor of 100-percent direct lending, in which students obtain their loans from the Department of Education. She said on Tuesday that the bill “eliminated choice, competition, and innovations from student lending,” and promised hearings aimed at making “improvements to a very flawed law.”

In the clip, Maddow laid out the implications of student loan reform and why it was a “total no-brainer” in easing the deficit and allowing for more loans to students.

Welcome to the dumbing of America. You go Rachel! And you keep telling it too, John!

Time to Write?

2011-01-04T13:07:00.000-05:00

You know that saying about how you have to make time to have time? Whoever said was full of s***. Whoever said that never had jobs like mine. I do 20 hours a week program administrative stuff that often turns into more hours and even weekend hours. Four classes a semester that have three different preps. Not that I am bitching (well, okay I am whining a bit), because I do love my work. I really do. I have a great Program Director for the NEOMFA, and I like the classes I teach: non-western literature, Chinese history, and this last semester a new one "Humanities in the Western Tradition" (think history of the western world from ancient Mesopotamia to Renaissance Europe).

But between herding the MFA cats (and I am not just talking students here), and lecture prep, and grading. I have not written anything worthwhile since July. Random snippets of poems, nothing solid. Sometimes when I haven't been writing in a while it feels like the words just go round and round in my head until it wants to explode. It helps to have friends an family to talk to about the ideas you have, but sooner or later you have to put them down on paper. Writing is how I process things. It's cathartic. The only other thing that works that way for me is reading.

Happily I just spent my last week of Winter Break reading a huge stack of books. You want to know what you should check my list on Good Reads. The only writing I will be doing soon is my syllabi for the Spring semester. Oh, for Spring Break and the next stack of books.

Lunar Eclipse 2010

2010-12-21T18:22:00.000-05:00

In case you missed it, there was a remarkable occurrence in wee hours this morning. A total lunar eclipse. "The first total lunar eclipse to occur on the day of the Northern Winter Solstice (Southern Summer Solstice) since 1638." What does it mean for the Moon to be overshadowed by the Earth just as the Sun also faces its shortest day? I don't know. But more than just astronomers got excited about it; the astrologers, solstice worshipers, apocalypse predictors, and all sorts of folk looking for omens seemed to get worked up as well.

Me? I slept through it all last night. Most of America did, I suspect.

I know, and you probably do too, all the explanations about the dust in the atmosphere giving the moon that rust red tinge just as the full (umbra) shadow of the Earth is cast on its surface. All the ancient stories of animals swallowing the moon, of the gods turning away from mankind, all that is just window dressing in folktales to amuse children in these enlightened times.

The thing about large astronomical events in this age of technology is that we are jaded. We have seen distant galaxies up close in our telescopes and on our televisions. We can look at pictures that tell us so much more than we can get with our naked eyes. It is so easy to catch not only the instant replay at a reasonable hour but also the condensed and interpreted synopsis of the event that most of us don't bother reading the full story in any case.

I have seen a total lunar eclipse before, more than once over the years. But I still remember the first one. It was several decades ago when I was home from college for summer break, or was it winter then too? I don't know, too long ago to really remember. My parents were living in rural Wisconsin so it had to be after 1970 (because that is the year when I left for college the first time). I remember my cousin watching with me. My parents, aunts and uncles, in the house playing cards--paying no attention beyond an occasional: "that's nice, dear."

I clearly remember standing in that yard, watching the shadow crawl so slowly across the surface of a nearly full moon. As if the moon were a woman drawing a blood-red veil over pale skin and turning her back on us. We stood in the yard for a long time. And at the point of total darkness, when the moon was just a dim spot of blood in a black sky, I remember feeling chilled. Caught in a silence that felt like it might go on forever. I remember my mother telling us to come inside, it was too late to be out in the dark. I remember being unable to look away until I saw that first hint of returning light at the penumbral edge. Until I knew the moon was coming back from whatever dark place she went.

So why didn't I go watch last night?

Maybe I am jaded by the scientific explanations now, too. Or maybe, just maybe, as I get older--well into my fifties and facing yet another birthday in a week--maybe those demons chasing down the moon are coming just a little to close for comfort these days. Too close for me to want to look at them closely anymore. Demons of days lost, the loss of years, and with them the loss of chances, of people, of friends, of family, of those who once would have watched with me. The shortening of days and the turning of winter seasons are all too poignant to watch as my losses mount up. We do not face the dark with ease as we grow old.

Seasons Come, Seasons Go

2010-12-06T09:16:00.001-05:00

Just three weeks ago this was the view walking across campus from the East Campus Parking Deck toward Olin Hall.

Today, after the first real snow of winter, this was the view.

Isn't it amazing how fast the seasons change, how quickly the years fly by. Is this a function of my getting older?

Things you thing about when you can't sleep

2010-12-05T04:48:00.003-05:00

It's 4 am on a Sunday morning when I could be asleep, but since I am not... Funny how the brain works. I wake up a lot in the early morning hours, 3am, 4am; then I just lay there in bed thinking. I used to get up and write (poetry, stories, blog posts), but I haven't been writing much at all since early last summer. Not that I don't have anything to write about. In fact the opposite is more true. I have far too much to write about... so much in my head I just don't really know where to begin and (this may sound odd) on top of that I don't know anymore who I am writing for.

One of my fiction writer friends says she writes because she has to. If she didn't the words, the ideas, would just keep rolling around in her brain and drive her crazy. I can understand that. Sometimes I wish my brain had a switch--on, off, clear cache... reboot.

Somehow, though, for me writing has to have an audience. And therein lies the rub. If I write about most of the stuff in my head anywhere I send it, post it, or share it, it is bound to offend someone. The thing about stories is that they want to be told. They don't want to sit in notebooks or lie about in drawers. So I feel compelled to publish, to share. My biggest problem is I am not good at audience. Although half my audience is generally chuckling and enjoying the story immensely, the other half is invariably bored, or worse: pissed off.

One of the first poems I ever published was about my grandmothers, my mother, and my daughters. I was looking at how women carry on through generations. My mother's only comment was about the stanzas she was in, and what she said to me was: "That's a lie, it didn't happen that way."

What I had been telling was her story as I had heard it, from her, from my dad, from others. Filtered through my writer's sensibilities and my (imperfect? biased?) observations of her as her daughter. What she saw in herself was so different that she was angry at my less than flattering portrait. But the woman she saw herself as could be seen only through her filters. Two different stories. Both accurate if disparate views. My story was about an ordinary woman with with extraordinary desires leading an ordinary life. The problem is no one wants to be seen as ordinary. Not really. Certainly not my mother, who spent most of my childhood telling us how happy we were and how lucky we were to be us--this ideal suburban family. What I still see looking back is a husband who got drunk, ran around looking to other women for affection he didn't get at home, because he never made enough money to support five kids or to satisfy a woman who had her dreams of movie-stardom thwarted by the realities of motherhood and the embarrassment of dependence on her own mother for handouts and hand-me-downs. When I tell the story my way I upset my family. When I tell the story the wasy they want it to be seen, it's not as good a story.

In some ways there are beautiful stories in there, in my head. The problem is my characters don't ever look heroic when seen by those who inspired them. Especially when inspired by people I care about most.

Right now I have the urge to write about my daughters. But I know if I do I will anger at least one of them, confuse one of them, and amused the third. Do I dare that the chance that they will or will not see my fiction for fiction?

2010-11-22T18:04:00.002-05:00

The news this fall is that I got a new car, an Elantra Touring. Couple of reasons: one, I liked the ratings for the vehicle on safety and repairs, and two, I have seen Hyundai plants in Korea and I like their ethic toward their workers. So here's my new baby.

It has a lot of room in the back. Not like my Caravan, but good enough, and the gas mileage is exceptional. (Side note: I have been driving Chrysler minivans for 15 years. And I love them. But the gas prices were killing me and my 2005 was in "little things go wrong" phase of its existence. Better to give it to my son who is capable of fixing the little things.)

The only question I have left is how to pronounce it. Americans say "hun-day" but in Korea they said "heh-youn-dai." Is this another word like "gyro" (guy-row/hero/yee-rose)?

Is Your Cat Plotting to Kill You?

2010-11-02T13:31:00.001-05:00

They do often dig very deep in the litter box. Could there possibly be bodies buried in there? Check out the Warning Signs at How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you.

Websites and Facebook and Wikis, Oh my!

2010-08-25T15:36:00.001-05:00

The NEOMFA is in the process of getting a new website. For the last 3 years. No. Really. Partly it's that the people involved don't seem work or even all talk to each other until someone nudges them. Our first web designer at KSU fell off the planet with the project. The current web design team is fine. Comes up with lovely graphic (all very steampunk and industrial) which bodes well for the new NEOMFA "Rustbelt" look. But they don't doe HTML so we need a web tech to put the pages together. Enter UA webteam. But the pages are currently at YSU. And their webteam and helpdesk can't seem to agree on how to get me access to the pages. So we have more temporary pages. Sigh.

The today I came across this xkcd comic with sums up my feelings as I tried to navigate the webpages of four universities and find the info, forms and deadlines, needed by our upcoming candidates for graduation.

At the same time there are the ongoing Twitter and Facebook pages to update. If I post to Facebook it drops into Twitter, but not the reverse (or you end up with a nasty loop of continuous back and forth reposing of the same message!). File that under "things we learned the hard way."

One way cool thing to stay tuned for is the (in process) NEOMFA wiki page that is currently being created by our oh-so-savvy NEOMFA GA, Shurice.

Turku Performing at the Fort at Pennsic 39

2010-08-21T20:39:00.001-05:00

Did You Know 4.0

2010-08-17T13:01:00.001-05:00

I Can Haz Dragon

2010-07-12T03:45:00.000-05:00

So it’s 3-something in the morning and I can’t sleep and after wandering aimlessly around the internet my Google feed reader points me to SFFN and The Dragon Diaries: Part the Third. Now I am ROTFLMAO and know that, with visions of dragon happy-meals dancing through my head, I likely won’t sleep anymore tonight. (Have you ever tasted a mime? Not funny. Did you know that if you eat a unicorn you could get sparkly rainbow indigestion and glitter farts? How do you shuck a knight anyway?)

The Dragon Diaries is a whim of author Kelly McCullough who, in delightful twitter-sized tidbits gives us a peek into the mind of an adolescent dragon (a la cheezburger).

You will discover the life of a dragon is sometimes fun: Met a knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering. Ated him. Ated pretty lady he kept whining about too. Hard and cold on the outside, but soft and warm on the inside. Yummy! Thinking of lounging on my hoard today. Dragons are supposed to do that sometimes, aren’t they? And Nap + Sparklys = Win!

And sometimes difficult: Saw the pointy-face horse again today. Still looks delicious. Want! Maybe cat is wrong about obsession being unhealthy… Just realized that pointy-face horse is kind of Sparkly… Sparkly! Sparkly! Sparkly! Sadness. Sticking fake horn on normal horse doesn’t make it sparkly. Doesn’t improve flavor either. Ated horse anyway.

Then there is the ubiquitous dragon wisdom: Am entertaining job offer from Fafnir, Fafnir, Tiamat & Lung, dragons at law. They tell me it’s mostly just about ateding opposing counsel. Mmmm, lawyers.

And the ever so much more accurate cat wisdom: Cat talked me out of ateding polling station, says ateding should be reserved for actual polti… polict… polst… elected people.

I now have visions of the dragon being let lose in Washington, DC. I have a little list I want to share with the dragon. And I am reevaluating the advice my cats give me. Think I'll go find some sparklys for my pillow now and see if I sleep better, maybe dream of dragons. Thanks, Kelly.

Kelly sez: For an explanation of how this got started, the original Dragon Diaries SFN post is here. The second DD post is here. To find out where it goes, you can watch the experiment continue on twitterand facebook for however long it continues.

When does Fiction cross the line?

2010-06-24T14:45:00.006-05:00

It's a TV series about a doctor, or a bunch of cops and lawyers. You know it's fiction. Yet I can't tell you how many times someone has said, "Oh, I saw that on [insert show of choice here]" and proceeded to tell me some "fact" they now know about medicine or the law.

This conflation of fact and fiction is nothing new. The stories he made up of King Arthur were "chronicled" as history by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century. A popular (fictional!) mystery series today features the (real!) 19th century author Jane Austen as a solver of murder mysteries. I could go on and on.

So when the real and larger-than-life-damn-near-American-institution poet Walt Whitman becomes a fictional character in the breakout novel by Canadian author and poet George Fetherling, no big deal right? Or is it?

From Charles Demers' interview of Fetherling in the Vancouver Straight.com online news we hear that Featherling is not a Whitman fan:

“I don’t like Walt Whitman,” Fetherling explains over lunch on Denman Street, just a few blocks from his beloved Sylvia Hotel. “His ideas have killed more people than malaria.…He was practically one of the fathers of Americanism qua-ism." Later on in our conversation, Fetherling posits that Whitman “would be a Fox [News] commentator if he were alive today”. There aren’t too many gay 19th-century poets you can say that about.

Here's the rub. In Fetherling's novel the Whitman character's gay lover is part of the plot to assassinate Lincoln. So line it up. American poet. Civil War record as a nurse, civil servant. Heroic sounding, no? And he wrote this Leaves of Grass thing, defining America, right? Iconic, right? So does Fetherling's portrayal of Whitman tarnish, as one respondent says, a great man's reputation?

Fetherling has published a book about Walt Whitman that the reviewer describes as “a plot-driven potboiler about the Lincoln assassination…”
At the heart of Fetherling’s novel Walt Whitman’s Secret, we learn that Whitman’s friend and lover Peter Doyle was a co-conspirator with [John Wilkes] Booth, the man who murdered Abraham Lincoln, that Whitman knew of the plot beforehand, and that he did nothing to alert the police, merely advising his friend to cut ties with the plotters.
It’s a very terrible, very ugly allegation, because it places Whitman close to being an accomplice, and because it brings into question the moral foundation of Whitman’s being.
Has Fetherling proof? I asked him this at the Vancouver launch of his book, and he said no. He went on to claim that as he is writing fiction, he is not required to prove anything; moreover, the law of defamation no longer applies, given that Whitman died in 1892.
I am not talking law, but ethics.
> Richard Harvey / North Vancouver
Is it fair to Whitman? This is a work of fiction. Not to be taken too seriously, right? But also by Demer's account, a potentially great novel, so one that might be taken very seriously:
But the bulk of the novel is a quiet, deliberate, beautifully wrought meditation on two things: on the one hand, the life devoted to literature and its attendant hustles; on the other, the uneasy relationships between the United States, the Confederacy, and Canada.

As a work of postmodern fiction this is makes an excellent plot device. But there are a number of interesting questions that a work like this raises. What does a writer of fiction owe to the historical truth? Is there any historical truth at work here, anyway? Should we even ask a question like that of a work of fiction? Can this fiction tarnish the truth of Whitman's life? Post mortem does it even matter? How gullible are Americans anyway?

Sadly, it is that last question that worries me the most.

Still, I am looking forward to reading Featherling's book. To be honest I am not that fond of Whitman either, but that is not why. I want to use both Whitman's work and Fetherling's novel side by side in a class I sometimes teach: Classic and Contemporary Literature. Because if this isn't an example of the classic influencing the contemporary I don't know what is.

Another spring is rapidly coming to an end . . .

2010-06-11T12:13:00.004-05:00

. . . and I have been slower than usual about blogging. Again.

No surprise really. I have had a less-than-wonderful 2010 so far. Broken left knee. The discovery that I am allergic to my long-term asthma medications (and the accompanying icky red rash on my face from them). Car broken into and backpack with laptop and accessories stolen (value totalling $2500+ of which insurance only covered $900. Top that with the lovely tax day discovery that I owed the IRS $3000+. So, yeah. Not a stellar spring.

On the other hand, the need to strengthen the knee led me to doing more bicycling--got out the old bike to refurbish and found that it was less expensive to buy a new one. So one brand-new retro bike later (which incidently reminds me of my childhood) and I'm on the road. I still say I need pink plastic handle tassels and a wicker basket. Maybe even a little bell.

Of course although I am having a ball with it and cycling like a mad woman between my home and Angel Falls for coffee, and to the library for books, I have already taken my first spill and ripped up my right knee. Good news is Steve made me buy and wear a helmet. Bad news is I tore my best black jeans and it hurts. Good news is I am limping evenly now that both knees are boo-booed. Bad news is the left knee is still swelling a lot at night, good news is that the road rash is is tender enough that it distracts me from other annoyances. And it all is healing, albeit slowly. Getting older sucks.

On the family news, my grandchildren are all walking now. Juliette here is 11 months. I haven't met her yet and won't until the end of summer--can hardly wait.

Chloe (1 year) and Liam (four years) are as adorable as ever. Happily they will be nearer after July when they move to WI from AZ. I hope to see more of them once in the midwest.

And Emelie is her usual precocious 2 year-old self--Disney princess that she is.

So in many ways the glass is both half empty and half full.

Guess we will see what summer brings.

Bikes, of all things

2010-05-31T07:57:00.001-05:00

Had a crazy impulse day yesterday and just thought I'd share. So here's the sequence....

My knee, the one I broke back in March has been getting better, mostly. The bone is healed, but the tendon is still wonky and pretty painful. I need to work it to make it stronger, but in a low impact way, so lots of walking is out. Steve suggested his stationary bike, but that is boring so we dug old bikes out of the garage to see if we could clean them up and get them working.

Both needed new tires, chains, brakes, seats. And a lot of wire-brushing and paint. We had hours (maybe days) of work ahead of us. But off we went to price parts. Ironically, we found the price of the parts was more than the cost of new bikes. So in a crazy flurry of impulse shopping late last night, we bought two new bikes instead.

His is a snazzy red and black mountain bike. Go fig. But mine, oh mine, is a lovely retro lady of a bike in pale metallic green. It is almost a dead ringer for a darker green bike I had as a kid. I fell in love immediately.

Now picture this: it is 9:30 pm on Sunday night, yet two grown adults are cruising on bicycles in the quiet back streets of Highland Square and laughing like kids on a joy ride.

We only did about a mile or so last night, but it was enough to feel the beginnings of "the burn." Sometimes getting old sucks. Things we did as kids that were once so easy are now so much more work. And also more scary. We bought helmets, too, last night--since landings aren't as simple as scrapped knees after 50. Still, I am liking this bike thing--helmet, knee brace, and all.

This morning we'll be taking the new toys to Angel Falls, the coffee shop a mile away, for muffins and cappuccino. Wind in our faces. Bumping along over the brick streets of the neighborhood. I could get used to this.

The Key to Fixing Global Warming? China.

2010-04-21T08:29:00.003-05:00

The Key to Fixing Global Warming? Steven Chu thinks it may be China.

In November, Chu and Obama flew to China for talks with the Chinese government. During a welcome ceremony, they sat in a banquet room in the Great Hall of the People around a Buckingham Fountain-sized table decorated with a life-size faux-peacock centerpiece atop a gold tablecloth and listened to a choir sing “That’s What Friends Are For.” During the visit, US and Chinese leaders also signed a flurry of agreements on clean energy. One in particular pleased Chu: the creation of the US-China Clean Energy Research Center. The agreement calls for both countries to ante up $75 million and to bring together their top clean energy scientists. . . . read more at Wired.com

Posted using ShareThis

Hike for the Homeless

2010-03-13T13:29:00.004-05:00

Thank you to everyone who participated, volunteered, donated and supported St. Joseph the Worker's 12th Annual Hike for the Homeless!

There were 1,300 participants and the event raised $65,500!

All money raised at this event is helping homeless individuals become self-sufficient through meaningful employment.

St. Joseph the Worker is a non-profit organization in Phoenix Arizona. Thanks to Blue for sharing this video and information: http://www.sjwjobs.org/hike2010.html.

Neil Gaiman on CBS Sunday Morning

2010-03-07T11:29:00.001-05:00

I admit it. I am a Neil Gaiman groupie.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Crackberry indeed!

2010-02-19T21:22:00.004-05:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman without a cell phone is in want of a Blackberry.

I am in the throes of serious Crackberry withdrawal here. This morning my phone went belly up with a "552 reload software" issue. First I spent the better part of the morning trying to reload the OS. The trick is to get the phone to recognize it is connected to the computer without it going into a booting loop over and over again. Found some helpful hints on Crackberry.com. But I have Vista. And Blackberry Desktop v 5.0. So the articles I found were out of date.

By 4 pm I gave up and went to the local AT&T store. Spent 45 minutes waiting for an AT&T rep to tell me he had never seen this before and had no idea what was wrong with my phone but I could: (1) try to fix it myself (Been there! Done that!), or (2) if I want to wait until next Thursday they can ship me out a replacement (NOT), or (3) tomorrow I drive to Cleveland to the service center where I can at least get handed a replacement. Sans my apps. Sans all my saved data. Sans contacts. But, hey, a new Blackberry. And it isn't even Christmas.

In the meantime I feel so out of it without my phone. No doubt about it. I am addicted. Crackberry indeed.

So if you were wondering--no, I am not ignoring your call. Yet.

A Quote for February, and for Lovers

2010-02-08T16:17:00.005-05:00

"The terrible thing about love is that it takes away your safety net, your balancing pole. Even the tightrope you walk upon will disappear beneath you, yet love expects you to keep walking anyway, arms outstretched, one foot after the other, on nothing more than air."

— Christopher Barzak, from The Love We Share Without Knowing

How Social Gaming is Improving Education

2010-02-07T13:22:00.005-05:00

In an article by Greg Ferenstein on Mashable.com, we are told that:

Audits of the U.S. educational system have revealed that the highest hurdle to adopting skills-based teaching practices is the lack of an easily implementable curriculum.

Enter social video games as a solution — immersive environments that simulate real-world problems. Today, technologically eager schools are replacing textbook learning with social video games, and improving learning outcomes in the process. Here’s how they’re doing it: How Social Gaming is Improving Education

Especially interesting to me, personally, is the use of the virtual world Second Life as part of the curriculum where hands on training and role play can teach a critical skill set, as in this example Ferenstein mentions:

Loyalist College in Canada recently boasted “massive” test score improvements for its border officer training via simulation in the virtual world of Second Life. “No single technological addition has ever impacted grades at the college in such a positive way,” says Ken Hudson, their Managing Director of Virtual World Design. Indeed, the results speak for themselves. According to the report:

“The amazing results of the training and simulation program have led to significantly improved grades on students’ critical skills tests, taking scores from a 56% success in 2007, to 95% at the end of 2008 after the simulation was instituted.”

In another example, 6th graders learn geography from Google Earth, collaborate through an internal social networking platform, and present ideas through a podcast. Administrators hope that wrestling with the question of “How can a system function within a larger system?” will bolster critical thinking skills. Many experts contend that so-called “Scaffolded Problem-based learning” is known to improve academic skills and enhance motivation. With all these new toys, it’s no surprise that one student admits his least favorite part of the day is “dismissal.”

Having used social networking (Facebook, Twitter, Blogger), 3d technology (Second Life, Google Earth), as well as online texts (Project Gutenberg, NetLibrary, JSTOR and other online databases) and media (YouTube, TeacherTube, Ohiolink Digital Media, Hulu) in my classrooms, my personal take is that anything that enhances the learning experience, keeps the student's attention, and gives students tools they will need in the real world, is a plus! There is no reason to suppose that just because it is fun, technology can't also be eductional. As Ferenstein says:

Social gaming has a come a long way from the days when a dozen students would squint at a 10-inch screen of Oregon Trail. The 2000s seemed to be the decade of case studies: Bold educators willing to experiment with developing technologies. But now, the involvement of major funders, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, points to an industry that is on the cusp of freeing education from its 2D textbook prison.

Mashable link posted using ShareThis.

Neil Gaiman's fantasies: newyorker.com

2010-01-26T14:11:00.000-05:00

Neil Gaiman's fantasies: newyorker.com

Home Renovations or why I have no life anymore

2010-01-23T21:01:00.013-05:00

I have been in a very creative mood of late. Did a copper ceiling tile backsplash (ok, faux-copper, really plastic) in the kitchen 2 weekends ago. This weekend the upstairs bathroom was on the list.

Just finished the third base coat of Venetian plaster on the lower half of the bathroom walls. It was a good way to deal with damaged plaster and old brick-scored plaster without having to rip it all out. I have decided I am am liking the blue. I was going to go for a terracotta color at first, but Steve liked the blue green. Now I need to apply the topcoat/sealer, which will deepen the color and bring out green highlights (or so the pictures on the instructions tell me).

Next it's paint the woodwork, finish stripping the floor, finish up this pine floor (refinish? paint a faux rug? tile?). After that I need to decide what to do about the stupid pipes that run across the floor behind the toilet that are left from the days when this was a multi-apartment house (take 'em out? sink "em into the floor? or paint 'em bright copper, add mechanical bits, and call it steampunk?). Steve sandblasted the heat vent cover at work this week and, lo, it was white brass underneath! I think I am just going to clear coat the hell out of it because I love the weird copper streaks that showed from where the brass is thin. I guess back in 1918 brass-plated copper was the deal.

Of course, the vanity for the sink in here has got to go--I have this old dresser that I want to polyurethane within an inch of its life, then add a glass bowl and faucets to convert it into a sink. But that is a project for another weekend--after painting and floors. And after painting the downstairs powder room. And adding bookshelves to the third floor library. And tearing up the nasty kitchen floor.

Also after grading papers (yes, already, even this early in the semester), and getting my book revamped to send to another press for further rejection, and... and... and... You get the drift.

The Graveyard Book: be afraid of live people...really!

2010-01-06T12:08:00.007-05:00

Stumbled on this today as I was preparing my syllabi for Spring semester. And since I am using The Graveyard Book in my Fiction Appreciation class I thought I would post the clip of Neil Gaiman's interview with Stephen Colbert here for my students and all of you to enjoy.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Neil Gaiman

http://www.colbertnation.com/

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Economy

And if you haven't read Neil's books . . . what the hell is wrong with you?

Me in front of another one of those highly decorated flood irrigation valve thingies

2009-12-26T14:21:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by www.cellspin.net

Flood irrigation valve monument (& Jer, Blue, & grandkids)

2009-12-26T14:05:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by www.cellspin.net

Walking to downtown Tempe saw this gorgeous bush! Wish i knew what it is!

2009-12-26T13:54:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by www.cellspin.net

Liam at the park

2009-12-26T13:30:00.001-05:00

We are at the park around the corner from the house this morning. The temp here in Tempe is in the high 50s. Seems odd for December. Liam is having fun on the climbing bars--he is all boy! Chloe is in her stroller observing the world. After the park, we will head to the local pasty shop for a late lunch. I love being able to walk to everything.

Stay tuned... more later!

Liam at the park

2009-12-26T13:27:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by www.cellspin.net

Drinking White Wine in the Sun

2009-12-24T12:26:00.000-05:00

Seems appropriate to post this as I land in Arizona to spend Xmas with my son and daughter (she's more than a daughter-in-law) and grandchildren. Will pick up som wine on the way and lift a glass to all of you out there. Kiss someone you love today! Cheers!

Talking to Australia

2009-12-18T09:09:00.006-05:00

This morning I was on Skype with my daughter in Perth. 9 am my time is 8 pm hers. So she was playing with Juliette, my new granddaughter, just before bedtime. The baby was rolling about on the bed and squealing, while gramma and mom had serious girl talk about nappies (diapers), playing in the spa (hot tub), and what baby did all arvo.

While online I used Jing to do some screen capture photos and to video my baby girl's baby girl at play.

This is the thing I love about the brave new world we live in: I am in touch with everyone all the time! My daughter in OH posts her daughter's adventures on her blog. My daughter in DC texts me and chats with me regularly in gtalk. With Skype I get to webcam with my son, grandson and granddaughter in AZ as well as my daughter and her family in Australia. We all make phone calls, of course, but now I can see them all as well as hear my children's voices. And then there is the blogging and facebooking and tweeting we do back and forth, updating each other on a daily (sometimes hourly!) basis.

Just 20 years ago my parents had to wait until a holiday to see their grandchildren, my children, because we lived several states apart. Going overseas meant being out of touch until you got home because phone calls were too expensive except in emergency. Even long distance calling was kept to a minimum because of phone bills and rates. The internet has changed the nature of communication and that is a marvelous thing. Why just this morning I got friended in Facebook by my cousin in TX with whom I only recently reconnected.

Today, thanks to the technology of Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Skype, and the many Google marvels like gtalk, gtalk video, and wave. I can be in touch with multiple friends and colleagues. My tweets spill into my gtalk and FB statuses. My blog posts show up on my FB wall. There are people who say we share to much information. Me, I like the idea of a transparent society. I love this techno-geek shit!

Oh, and BTW...

2009-12-17T13:50:00.003-05:00

One more thing about the Poets.org Free Verse Project, on the main page there are the those photos chosen by AAP to represent the best of the best of the mashups. Here is my personal favorite:Gonna go make more coffee now and get back to work.

April is National Poetry Month

2009-12-17T10:49:00.007-05:00

Yes, I know it isn't April yet. But this morning I got an email that the posters are coming soon. The Academy of American Poets (at Poets.org) puts out a great poster celebrating poetry every year well before April. Here's how you get one for yourself:

Free National Poetry Month posters are available by request—while supplies last—to teachers, librarians, and booksellers. Submit your request now to receive the poster in time for April 2010. Sign up >

But don't wait until April to celebrate poetry! The other thing you can do right now is participate in the Free Verse Project. This is a very cool way to mashup poetry and photography. First check out some of the cool photos in the Poets.org Flickr group like the one below which was chosen to be last years AAP Poetry month poster!

Watch the whole slideshow here! Then go out and create your own poetry and graphic mashup! Post it on your Flickr page and submit it to the group. Who knows, maybe you will be chosen for the next April is Poetry Month poster!

Poetry Society of America and the bus system of LA

2009-11-23T17:59:00.004-05:00

Keep your eyes open on the Los Angeles bus system where poems are appearing!
In tis one, Samuel Taylor Coleridge offers his definition of a passionate love:

Desire

Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame ;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.

Read more about this joint effort of the Metro LA bus system and the Poetry Society of America at: https://psa.fcny.org/psa/poetry/blog/la_is_for_romantics/

Twitter Stats

2009-11-17T08:54:00.005-05:00

The internet constantly amazes me. I have been Twittering for a while now. It links to my Facebook page and updates my status. I find people I haven't seen in ages and get back in touch. I follow my favorite writers and talk to them. And I see who follows me and reads what I write with Google Analytics. Now a very nice fellow, Damon Cortesi, has put up pages where you can track the stats (gratis even, though if you can throw money his way that would be nice too!) on your twitterings. These are my stats.

And here is my Tweet cloud--everyone I talk to and everything I talk about:

akron @amandapalmer amen angel available bancroft @barackobama birthdayblackberry blog blogger book budget cable car @cbarzak cbs china chinese class classic @colinmeloy comecomputers contemporary coraline costume crackberry cup @danchaon date day december desktop did didnt digitaldiscovered disney @dkjpusa dollhouse driving edu eggs facebook fans fb featured feeling fend finding flu fm fungoing good google @hadesarrow halloween haroun hes issue join @joshwhedon kelly king knock know kokosleave let lets life lit little @lkhamilton long look loop lots love m74kpv make meetings mercedes mixed monkeymorning need needed neil @neilhimself new news nose @nytimes office oh ohio oplin org pakistaniaatpics procrastinating psychic ramadan read reading really reimbursed rest @robertleebrewer rt sad say schedule@shannon_anicas shout sigh signing sista smart springboard start status story students sunday tales thats thinkthinking thought today touch transformed_ tweetstats twitter twittering uakron uber unfollowing university viigovirtualit want way week weekend weekends went @whedonfannews woman women work www yeah yes yr

Cool, No? I love technology.

Thought for the day

2009-11-13T06:33:00.002-05:00

Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.

--Michael Gartner

sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Are we Internet Addicted? And is it a Bad Thing?

2009-11-10T15:52:00.003-05:00

When Internet use becomes a problem - The Boston Globe (Posted using ShareThis)

This article, which ran last week Monday in the Boston Globe Offers 11 signs of Internet Addiction:

Does browsing your favorite sites make you feel better?

Are you spending more and more time on the Internet?

Do you have less self control than you used to?

Are you neglecting family and friends so you can get more time on the web?

Do you zero in on the net and lose interest in other activities?

Do you feel that you have to lie about how many times you've watched YouTube videos [or done any other internet activity]?

Is the Internet interfering with your job and school responsibilities?

Do you think about the Internet when you are not on it? Are you itching for a fix?

Do you feel guilty or ashamed about the time you spend on the internet?

Is there a change in your sleep patterns? Sleeping in or staying up late?

Have you gone through a weight change, had backaches, headaches, or developed carpal tunnel?

According to the Seattle based ReSTART Center for Internet Addiction if you can say yes to 3 of the above, you have an Internet abuse problem. If you say yes to five or more you have a dangerous addiction.

Looking at the list I can say yes to about half of those questions. But here's the thing: substitute the phrase "watching movies" or "eating out at restaurants" or even "reading books" and I can say the same things apply. I would bet you a signed copy of a Neil Gaiman novel that no one is worried about my book habit, and yet I have been known to forego sleep, bring a book I can't put down to a family reunion, neglect reading that textbook for reading the latest poetry/sci-fi/mystery volume, and down a full bag of potato chips while curled up on the couch in a backache-inducing/eye-strain-headache-making reading marathon. And we won't even go into my $40 a month Borders/Amazon habit. I even [gasp] read while driving--okay, relax, it is audio books played on the car stereo. Sometimes I combine all these addictions: I read books and news (thank you Viigo!) and Twitter and Facebook on my Crackberry/Blackberry as well as on the computer.

So answer me this: am I a danger to myself or others due to my reading addiction? Do you think they should take away my library cards (yes, plural, I have seven!). Every teacher I know wants their students to read more. And I am no exception. If my students want to do their reading and writing on the internet, fine. At least they are reading something. As a teacher I feel it is my duty to encourage reading and writing wherever. Internet included.

I suppose if I stopped eating because I was on the internet reading or talking to people from all over the world I might need to be locked away from the computer for my own good. But honestly, how is so it bad to connect to people? My twittering and facebooking has put me more in touch with my far-flung family, brought me back into touch with friends old and new, and keeps me up with what is going on in the world. And, hello! NONE OF THAT IS BAD.

Am I addicted to the internet? Hell, yes. And proud of it. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I do not gamble, I do not do illegal drugs. There is a BIG difference between those harmful addictions and my intellectual and social and technological addictions.

So listen up: You can have my Blackberry or my mouse when you can pry it from my cold dead fingers. Enough said.

Cellspin for Blackberry

2009-11-04T07:00:00.002-05:00

Got a new app from the Crackberry store. Testing here to see if I can post from my Blackberry to my multiple social network accounts: FB, Twitter, Blogger, LiveJournal.

THE COLLAGIST

2009-10-15T09:01:00.001-05:00

THE COLLAGIST has a marvelous poem by Mary Biddinger in the current issue: "Portrait of Myself as a Piece of Red Candy in Your Mouth". Go. Go now and read it.

Free Read: Chapter 1 of Neil Gaiman’s ‘Odd and the Frost Giants’

2009-10-09T20:51:00.001-05:00

Free Read: Chapter 1 of Neil Gaiman’s ‘Odd and the Frost Giants’

Posted using ShareThis

Fan Girl talks about Neil's reading in Cleveland

2009-10-05T14:36:00.004-05:00

This is from the blog of my friend Meagan who like me is a rabid NG fan. She writes, she draws, she loves cats. Here is what she had to say about last Sunday:

On Sunday, Matt and I went to see Neil Gaiman reading at Cleveland Public Library. Amazingly, this event was free. I mean, I would have paid to see Neil read, but free is fantastic. Our libraries rock. read more...

Fan Girl Posted using ShareThis

Neil Gaiman in Cleveland!

2009-09-30T16:40:00.003-05:00

As if my life wasn't crazy enough (visiting writers Mark Doty and Paul Lisicky coming to NEOMFA, midterm papers, China Week at UA, end of Eik's & Runa's reign in theMidrealm ... ) guess who is coming to Cleveland this weekend? Oh yeah. Now I gotta go stand in line to get in and hope there is room to get a seat down front. And does my Blackberry have enough juice to record him? Crap! Can I bring my books to be signed? Or do I have to buy new ones. Hell! I'll buy new ones if I have to ... how many Neil Gaiman books are too many? The answer is there is no answer to that one.

Neil Gaiman, the British winner of the 2009 Newbery Medial for The Graveyard kicks off Cleveland Public Library’s 2009-2010 Writers & Readers series. At the Cleveland Public Library’s Lake Shore Facility (behind the Memorial-Nottingham Branch) at 17109 Lake Shore Boulevard in Cleveland. Call 216.623.2800 for more information. All Writers & Readers events are FREE and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come first-serve basis. Books will be available for sale by A Cultural Exchange at all Writers and Readers events. Start: Oct 4 2009 - 2:00pm

China Week will be Oct. 5-9 : The University of Akron News

2009-09-30T13:41:00.002-05:00

China Week will be Oct. 5-9 : The University of Akron News

The University of Akron and its Confucius Institute, and faculty, staff and student body will present a series of free public events focused on China’s culture, politics, economy, history and language during China Week, Oct. 5-9, at the UA campus.

For a complete events schedule, visit China Week. For more information, call 330-972-8411 or e-mail haverkamp@uakron.edu.

Shared via AddThis

What Are You Drinking Today?

2009-09-29T08:55:00.003-05:00

The New York Times did a study on drinking water in the US... In the top 10 worst was: #9 Ohio

Ninety-two contaminants, primarily from industrial sources, and a smaller portion resulting from sprawl and urban pollutants, were detected in the Ohio tap water. The population exposed to substances in excess of safe limits: 9.6 million residents. The health effects of these contaminants include cancer and a weakened immune system.

Here's the full list of "States With the Most Toxic Tap Water"

10. New Mexico Between 1998 and 2003, nearly 3,000 violations of tap water regulations were reported in New Mexico. About 1.3 million people drank water that contained amounts of arsenic that exceeded health limits set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Arsenic, the consumption of which can cause cancer and blood toxicity, is a metal that enters water either by erosion of natural deposits or from runoff from glass and electronics factories.

9. Ohio [see above]

8. Pennsylvania Testing detected 96 contaminants in the Keystone State's tap water, 44 of which exceeded health limits. The biggest culprits: industrial pollutants. Analysis showed that 9.3 million residents were exposed to total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) -- and 8.8 million were exposed to amounts over health-based limits. TTHMs are water-treatment and distribution byproducts; their potential health effects include cancer.

7. Nevada In Nevada, 85.9 percent of water systems violated the health-based drinking water standards. Possible health effects of the 100 contaminants found in state tap water include cardiovascular or blood toxicity, cancer, developmental toxicity and skin sensitivity.

6. New York One hundred and four contaminants were detected in New York State tap water, including nitrate, barium, copper, chloroform and lead. More than 800,000 New Yorkers were exposed to amounts of chloroform, which can cause cancer and endocrine toxicity, that exceeded health-based standards. Water that contained contaminants that exceeded health-based limits was served in 418 communities.

5. Texas More than 17 million Texans were exposed to contaminants that exceeded healthy limits. Nearly 12 million citizens in over 1,000 communities turned on their taps to water that included, among other compounds, excessive and potentially dangerous amounts of bromodichloromethane, a byproduct of disinfectants that can cause cancer, cardiovascular or blood toxicity, gastrointestinal or liver toxicity, kidney toxicity and neurotoxicity.

4. Florida Among the 17 million people exposed to a combination of over 107 contaminants, 9.2 million were exposed to the mineral barium, which seeps into water from drilling and mining runoff as well as erosion of natural deposits. Of these, 25,000 were exposed to amounts of barium that exceeded health limits. Over 11 million Floridians also may have consumed radium-226, a radioactive element found around uranium deposits that can potentially cause cancer, in their water. And 11,113 people were exposed to excessive amounts of it.

3. North Carolina In this state, 6.1 million citizens were exposed to 59 contaminants that exceeded the EPA's limits. Nitrate, which can have a negative impact on kidneys, blood, the heart and the reproductive systems, was the most common contaminant. The suspected carcinogen enters water through fertilizer runoff, leaching septic tanks and erosion of natural deposits. Bromodichloromethane showed up in amounts that exceeded health limits in 373 communities, exposing 5 million people to potentially dangerous amounts of the toxic compound.

2. Wisconsin One thousand eighty-nine local water systems serve nearly four million people in America's cheese capital. Of those systems, only 51 produced uncontaminated water. The most prolific of the 118 contaminants detected were copper, lead and barium -- from drilling, mining, industrial waste, corrosion of household plumbing systems and the erosion of natural deposits. Copper may harm cardiovascular health. Lead can cause cancer and harm development, among other potential risks. Barium can have a toxic effect on the brain, the lungs and the reproductive organs.

1. California The Golden State's local water systems showed 145 contaminants, nearly half of which exceeded health limits set forth by the EPA. A majority of the people who use this water were exposed to this water that was primarily contaminated by industrial waste, like nitrate, and to a lesser extent acetone and lithium -- substances for which the EPA has not established a legal limit.

For the full report, including affected communities and state breakdowns visit http://www.ewg.org/tapwater/national/.

Thanks go to Gillianne for passing this on to us!

FutureGrid!

2009-09-23T16:31:00.006-05:00

From eCampus News: Indiana University chosen to lead in the development of software that will connect high-powered supercomputers nationwide

IT researchers at IU were chosen to head a four-year, $15 million project to design software that will allow supercomputers to connect and use massive processing that isn't available to researchers today. The National Science Foundation will fund two-thirds of the project, known as FutureGrid. The remaining $5 million will be provided by outside project partners.

Indiana officials said the construction of a supercomputer grid also will be a boon for researchers and students on campuses that share the I-Light network, which has provided high-speed internet connections for businesses, government agencies, and Indiana schools such as Ball State University and Purdue University since 1999.

Researchers and investigators from the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California San Diego, the University of Chicago/Argonne National Labs, the University of Florida, the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and the University of Virginia also will help develop the network.

FutureGrid is expected to be operational by next spring.

Sounds good, doesn't it? This will aid in research on climate change, will allow for tremendous amounts of data processing. Why, then, do I have the urge to worry that it could become a "Forbin Project"?

Exceptional Cuteness

2009-08-27T15:06:00.003-05:00

Over at Stinky Angels, Jae posted this picture of Eme at Auntie Maria's wedding. Yes. Just too damn cute for words, isn't she? And despite having to wear a fancy gown she was a well-behaved flower girl. (She was also kinda tickled about the sparkly shoes!)

Welcome to the world, Juliette!

2009-08-16T10:39:00.000-05:00

Juliette Evans, born July 26th, 2009.

Reminiscences

2009-07-10T18:44:00.005-05:00

Today Steve was cruising Facebook and found that an old friend had posted a pic of him from "way back in the day." From back when his hair was long. Nice pic. See?

Made me start thinking of all the changes we go through over the years. Change our hair--longer, shorter, different color. Add a few pounds. Change our look (he never wears that leather jacket any more). Get older. But hopefully never grow up.

More Court at Talonvale

2009-07-04T18:33:00.000-05:00

His Majesty Eik mugs for the camera.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Court at Talonvale

2009-07-04T18:20:00.000-05:00

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

A Pause Between Battles

2009-07-04T15:05:00.001-05:00

Silverthorn pauses for some G2 between battles. The weather wasn't particularly hot, just very humid. The damp, however, made the chainmail camail off his helmet leave rust stains down the from of his lamellar armor.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Ready to push on the Bridge

2009-07-04T14:15:00.000-05:00

The "bridge" is constructed of hay bales; the rules say that the side in control when the time is up wins.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Bridge Battle at the Siege of Talonvale

2009-07-04T14:00:00.001-05:00

This SCA event was held in Michigan on the Fourth of July.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Spicing up the Cod

2009-07-03T18:47:00.006-05:00

Sharing a great recipe here that my friend Dan sent in an email today. Now, as my tomatoes come in and the cilantro in the garden gets bigger, and if my neighbor Jeff heads out on his boat on the 4th and brings home a mess of fish. . . . Anyway, here is Dan's recipe:

We have a farmers' market here in town on Wednesdays. Small, but good stuff. And things you don't get at the grocery store - like oak leaf lettuce, which we all really like. So I went this past Wednesday and got some produce along with hitting the fish monger. There are these two women who have a stand there with the freshest damn fish I've every had. Last week I got dover sole, which I love. . . . Was hoping for sea bass, but they're not really in season, so I got cod. Yeah. Not exciting. But wait. Took an onion, green pepper, red pepper, garlic, jalapeno pepper, and two tomatoes (sounds like a start on salsa) all chopped up and tossed in a hot pan with olive oil. Added salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin, and fresh cilantro. (To be accurate, the tomatoes were held out a bit and the cilantro went in dead last.) Let it all cook down and brown up a bit. Put in a dash of vegetable stock and the juice from half a lime and half a lemon. Cleared a spot in the middle of the pan. Slipped the cod filets in and put a lid on the whole mess. Did I mention the brown rice was almost ready? Fish and rice with my salsa-stuff on top. Salad of oak leaf lettuce and fresh avocado. Cooking is such fun.

Anyone hungry yet?

Akronites love old houses

2009-06-22T12:48:00.014-05:00

There is something fascinating about the old houses in Akron, Ohio. Especially where I live in Highland Square, a neighborhood just west of downtown Akron full of turn of the 19th century homes originally built for the leaders of the rubber industry. There are brick streets, devil's strips planted full of flowers, and three-story homes with postage stamp size yards. These houses--almost all historic, some in need desperate need of repair--are mix of character and collapse, of architectural beauty and money-pit blues.

I live in a house built in 1918. It has the most amazing fumed-oak paneling and pillars in the living room, but has pine floors that are splintering even as we speak. The office--what used to be the dining room--has a gorgeous coffered ceiling, and built-in beveled glass door cabinets. The kitchen, however, has a ceiling that is coming down by degrees, and someone back in the '50s painted all the once lovely oak cabinets a dingy white. Each year we make another decision regarding what is affordable to fix up against what really needs desperately to be repaired. New furnace or a real bathroom floor? Windows that don't leak cold air or tearing out the

god-awful brown 1960s shag carpeting in the bedrooms? Repoint the brickwork of a crumbly chimney or redo the roof and insulate? The trade off is in time, and money, and whether or not we have enough energy to do it ourselves. No. Never mind that last one; there is never enough energy. Being the caretaker of a piece of Akron architectural history is not for the timid.

So I can identify with David Giffels experiences and the situation he describes in his book All The Way Home, his personal story of turning a wreck of a house into a beautiful home. Today I got an email telling me that David's book is now coming out in paperback.

Hey everyone --

The new paperback edition of All the Way Home comes out tomorrow. . . if you know anyone who might be interested, please spread the word. The paperback has lots of photos -- something people have been asking for since the hardback came out -- and the publisher is very excited about it.

To coincide with the release, I have succumbed to the Digital Industrial Complex thusly: www.davidgiffels.com

If you wish to post this link, I'll be ever grateful. There are links on the home page to order from Amazon and other booksellers.

Thanks,

David

If you have ever lived in Akron, if you really love old houses, if you want to read a warm, funny, personal narrative written by a really nice guy, then you need to get David's book.

Read more about it at www.davidgiffels.com and on the Harper Collins website.

See a New York Times slideshow of pictures of David's house and read the review of the book, too.

You can also pick up copies of David's book at Angel Falls Coffee on Market Street in Highland Square, Akron. Autographed even!

Does Language Shape Our Thinking?

2009-06-18T09:58:00.006-05:00

Reblogged from the LA Times Blog "Jacket Copy"

Does language shape our thinking?

An essay on how language influences thought from the pop-science anthology "What's Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science" has been posted on The Edge. Author Lera Boroditsky, an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience and symbolic systems at Stanford, writes:

Most questions of whether and how language shapes thought start with the simple observation that languages differ from one another. And a lot! Let's take a (very) hypothetical example. Suppose you want to say, "Bush read Chomsky's latest book." Let's focus on just the verb, "read." To say this sentence in English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we have to pronounce it like "red" and not like "reed." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) alter the verb to mark tense. In Russian you would have to alter the verb to indicate tense and gender. So if it was Laura Bush who did the reading, you'd use a different form of the verb than if it was George. In Russian you'd also have to include in the verb information about completion. If George read only part of the book, you'd use a different form of the verb than if he'd diligently plowed through the whole thing. In Turkish you'd have to include in the verb how you acquired this information: if you had witnessed this unlikely event with your own two eyes, you'd use one verb form, but if you had simply read or heard about it, or inferred it from something Bush said, you'd use a different verb form.

She brings up experiments and other examples involving use of language and direction, time, color and gender, all of which seem to demonstrate that yes, language shapes how we think.

But my favorite is this example above. Only a linguist -- or perhaps a social scientist -- would put Chomsky in a hypothetical.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: poplinre via Flickr

June 18, 2009 in language, Science | Permalink

"Another Year" from the "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" Video Series

2009-06-17T12:14:00.003-05:00

So. Amanda Palmer. Singer. Girl Extrordinaire. Hell of a voice. Wicked sense of humor. Yeah, Amanda, I can see you with Neil.

Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are Dating! (And Other Tidbits From Housing Works)

2009-06-17T11:20:00.007-05:00

Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are Dating! (And Other Tidbits From Housing Works) Posted using ShareThis

You go, Neil. And Amanda. (Now I have to go find out who she is, seeing as she has stolen the heart of one of my favorite authors.) And hoorah for them for making money for the Housing Works folks, too.

BTW, Amanda? I totally agree on the naked thing. Naked is fun.

Be happy, kids.

2009-06-08T14:10:00.003-05:00

10 Ways to Keep Books You Love in Print

There are books you love, books that change your life, books that make you realize that you aren’t alone. But sometimes, those books go out of print and are no longer available. You gnash your teeth and curse the vagaries of publishing. You feel helpless and frustrated, but you know that there’s nothing you can do about it.

Not so! You can do something! Publishing is a capitalist enterprise, driven by sales and profit (as well as a love of books). But even if you’re too broke to buy a paperback book, you can influence book sales and affect a publisher’s profits.

What can you do?

#1 Review the book you love online in a newsgroup, on a webzine, on an e-commerce site, or on a personal web site. This is an easy way to tell a lot of people about a fabulous book. People pay attention to reviews. Hey—authors read reviews. With a good review, you can make an author’s day.

“Of course I read my reviews on Amazon.com. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself. When readers write and say they loved my work, I’m ridiculously happy for days.”—Pat Murphy, author of There and Back Again.

#2 When asked what you want for your birthday, or Hanukkah, or Christmas, or any other gift-giving occasion, answer with your favorite author’s current book.

“Ask for books as presents! Not only do you get a present you like, you get bonus karma points because you’ve been a decent human being and haven’t forced your friends to rack their brains and run all over town looking for some gift for you that you probably wouldn’t have liked anyway.” —Michaela Roessner, author of The Stars Compel.

#3 Give books as presents. If someone has a favorite author, buy that author’s latest title. If the gift recipient doesn’t have a favorite author, buy a book by an author you like. If your friend likes the book, you’ve done the author a big favor by creating a new fan.

#4 Ask for books by your favorite author at your local library. If the library doesn’t have a book, request it. Checking a book out of the library helps establish that there’s a demand for that author’s work. Demand leads library systems to buy books.

#5 Tell writers how much their work has affected you. Go to readings—even if you can’t afford to buy the book. Urge your local library bookstore or your school to invite the writer to do a talk, a reading, or a class visit. Sometimes writers just need to know that someone is listening.

“I remember the first time anyone ever made a comment to me about a published story. Since writers aren’t allowed to carry Tip Jars, this kind of validation is quite meaningful.” —Leslie What, author of “The Cost of Doing Business.”

#6 Talk about books and authors at work, among friends, and in other not-necessarily literary environments. If you belong to a writing group, recommend your favorite authors to the group. If you add a book to your reading group, tell your favorite bookstore what you’ve done and buy your books there. The bookstore may put them out front on display.

“I named my dog Rhodry after a character in Katharine Kerr’s Deverry novels. This has led directly to at least a dozen people reading her books, including my sister, who has now read most of them twice. (‘That’s an interesting name, where does it come from?’) My truck is named Tesah, after a starship in Rebecca Meluch’s first novel. I got a couple of people to read her work as a result, but you don’t call your truck as often as you call your dog—at least I don’t.” —Susanna J. Sturgis, editor of The Women Who Walk Through Fire: Women’s Fantasy and Science Fiction.

#7 Point to good books in the bookstore and tell people, even total strangers, “That one is great.” If you see someone looking at a copy of a book you like, encourage them to buy it.

“I like to turn waiting time (especially in airports) into a guerrilla act—I find my favorite authors’ books in the bookstore and turn them boldly facing out. Then I run for my plane before a clerk catches me.” —Ellen Klages, author of “Time Gypsy.”

#8 Carry around a copy of a book you love. Read it on buses, in waiting rooms, and in other public places. Be prepared to wax eloquent about it—spontaneously or only when asked; that’s up to you.

“Ooh ooh, I’ve got a wicked idea! Make book covers out of your favorite titles and put ‘em on whatever book you’re reading!” —Susanna J. Sturgis.

#9 Just because a book is out-of-print doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t get it. Lightning Print Inc. is currently asking for suggestions for books to reprint. You can vote now at their web site: . Then from their “Resources” menu select “Nominate titles for POD and eBook”, then tell them what books you’d like to see reprinted!

#10 Nominate your favorite authors for awards. Any year that you are a member of the World Science Fiction Convention, you can nominate and vote for the Hugo Award. Nominate gender-bending works for the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award and works with gay or lesbian content for the Lambda Literary Award. If you subscribe to Locus Magazine, you can nominate works for the Locus Poll and Survey. And yes, it’s worth taking the time—awards make a difference to an author’s sales and that helps keep books in print.

Above all else, keep reading!