As noted in my previous post, today is Earth Day. Today we cherish the mother who bore us, and make plans to keep her alive and healthy.

More than a decade ago, I first saw the pictures of the disappearing glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Humanity shrugged. Eight-two percent of the cap has vanished since 1912, accelerating rapidly as we speak.

Kilimanjaro is predicted to be ice-free by 2020.

I’m trying to avoid spewing vitriol here, but I get told by religious evangelists that I just need to open my eyes to see God all around me. My eyes are open. What I see is a species that is destroying their Garden.

I think that it’s depressingly probable that, as a species with too much power and too little care, we’re too stupid and selfish to survive.

I don’t know an answer. I wish I had more to offer than another Jeremiad. I’d rather be proposing something positive and clever and upbeat in this post.

But all I have tonight is this:

It’s coming at us fast, people. We need to change ourselves and the way we do our business, and we need to find some most excellent technical fixes before the mass extinctions kick in.

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Kilimanjaro
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Science fiction has a rich tradition of telling stories with the theme ‘If This Goes On….’

I wrote and recorded ‘Kilimanjaro’ this weekend. It’s not final draft, but I learned more about how to use my tools. I’m rather pleased in that the whole thing is handmade. Not a loop or any automation in it anywhere.

There has been some vocal tuning, of course, and will be much more when I get back to editing some more. You have no idea how yowling-awful it sounded originally.

It kills me that I can’t sing the song that is in my heart.

Fortunately, I have some friends who sing — you know who you are — and I’ll eventually bully them all into singing what I cannot.

Today is Earth Day, as all of us good lefties, libs, enviros, and rads know.

Our friends on the right gently admonish us that injecting over six and half billion humans into an ecology, along with all of our toys, has no significant deleterious effect on the environment.

I wish I could believe their insane, self-serving fantasy.

I’m struggling with a rather humorless song this weekend, trying to keep it from sucking too awfully. Probably failing — and you’ll get to be the judge later tonight, unless I just abandon it.

I’m also finding myself contemplating what will happen when we hit the big tipping points in our destruction of the environment. Say, when all of the bees die, perhaps within the next year or so.

As a result of all of the above, I’m feeling a modicum of melancholia.

I figured I need an antidote for that, one that takes the more responsible longer environmental view.

So, how about Bill Bailey’s ‘Insect Nation‘?

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I feel better now.

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Here it is, 11PM Saturday, and I haven’t written my blog post yet. You see, I have a very good reason for not having my post up: My office is strewn about the house. The upside? There’s a gorgeous, new wood floor in my now-empty office.

Today, Jesse and His Crew of Renown installed the last half of the new floor. They would have had it done yesterday, but, as I have discovered in all the projects I’ve done in Casa Spector, if there was a funky/cheap/bizarro way of fixing/installing anything, that was the method preferred by the previous residents. Every man Jack of them.

This means every project, no matter how apparently straightforward, takes roughly three times as long as it normally would. (I realize that this is the case with most household projects, but really, it’s super-special in my house. Really. We just don’t have room here for details.)

And now I need to paint the office.

I hadn’t planned on painting the office, but there were places where the walls needed patching. When I went to look for my can of touch-up paint, it had vanished.

I found my original paint sample and took it to the office to compare the colors. The paint on the wall had faded, so even if I got a quart to match the paint sample, it would be darker than the walls.

Now I have to paint that bad boy before they deliver the new bookcases on Wednesday.

New cases that I wouldn’t’ve needed, except when we were moving the old bookcases out to put the new floor in, we discovered that most of them were too rickety to continue using. (They’re fifteen-year-old particle board with melamine coating. Hard to believe, eh?)

Somehow or another this floor thing has snowballed . . .

And it’s all the cats’ fault. I wouldn’t have needed a new floor in the office were it not for the cats.

And I’d explain why all this is the cats’ fault, but it’s 11 PM, and I’m falling asleep, and you’ll just have to trust me.

It’s the cats’ fault.

This ad was apparently nixed by Microsoft’s lawyers, and never broadcast, for reasons that will become apparent as you watch. It’s completely demented.

Steve is travelling, so I’m subbing for him tonight for my good-bye, Friday! post. I managed to snag a copy of Cory Doctorow’s latest book in manuscript entitled LITTLE BROTHER. The story is about some young hackers in a could-happen-tomorrow future, who use their abilities to fight against a tyrannical branch of the US government.

It’s going to be marketed as a YA, but I’m telling you right now that this book has a much broader audience. Besides being a gripping, fun story (it kept me up half the night last night), it’s a thought-provoking and well-researched book about the perils of putting too much power and information in the hands of too few fallible humans. Doctorow’s story illuminates beautifully why it is so imperative that we all — right, left, and center — work together keep the internet free and democratic, and to protect people’s right to privacy.

When it comes out, buy it. Seriously. I don’t care if you are working two jobs and don’t have time for recreational reading anymore. I don’t care if you are seventy-six and haven’t picked up a YA since a decade or three before they were called “juveniles.” Read this book. It fucking rocks.

It’ll be a while—it’s not even listed on Amazon yet. But put a note in your calendars to check again in six or nine months. It’s worth it. (And btw, the title is perfect.)

And in combination with the horrific VA Tech shootings and the ensuing discussion about guns and the constitution, the book gave me an epiphany. I’ve always thought of the constitutional protections for a democratic internet as being a First Amendment issue, and that is absolutely the case. However, I’m no lawyer, but I see an interesting case to be made for the Second Amendment as well.

The Second Amendment was clearly intended to protect from seizure the tools the citizenry need to defend themselves from tyranny. Muskets and bullets were the tool of choice back then, but it’s quite clear that the underlying intent was to uphold ordinary people’s ability to defend themselves from a government gone wrong.

In a very real sense, the right to privacy and a free internet is the new “right of people to bear arms.” Even the expression “forewarned is forearmed” gives this notion a nod. Access to information is the new equalizer. There may be no way an ordinary citizen, even armed with an uzi, can stand against the assembled might of the US government, as our founders intended, should our government fail in its duty to not abuse its authority. But we can keep them honest, with access to information and the right to protect our personal information from unreasonable search and seizure.

The struggle against tyranny has graduated from bullets to bits.

Update 4-21-07 12:54 pm MDT: Minor text edit.

This was a dark week, and it’s difficult to think of anything else. But it’s too soon for me to write about it.

So instead I’ll do something I’ve done before, and post a reprint.

My selection this time is a brief essay I wrote about my beloved home city in early 1997, first published as an introduction to my story “We Love Lydia Love” in the 1998 collection ONE DAY CLOSER TO DEATH.

This time around, though, I’m including footnotes to comment on what’s changed (or hasn’t) over the past ten years.

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AUSTIN, 1997^{(and 2007)}

There’s an old adage that says writers (or artists or musicians) should write (or paint or sing) only about things they know firsthand, and I’ve met a number of writers (etc.) who take that adage to heart. Their chain of logic is as follows:  1) Writing (etc.) is about life. 2) Life at its purest involves suffering and confusion. 3) I must therefore suffer and become confused. And 4) Hey! Drugs and destructive liaisons could be a fun way to accomplish 3)!⁽¹⁾

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I interview James D. Macdonald and Debra Doyle about the mysterious radioactive spider origins of the Viable Paradise Writers Workshop.

Steven Gould: Tomorrow I take choo-choo.
Rachel Harper: Where to?
Steven Gould: overnight train to LA.
Steven Gould: I got a sleeper compartment and =everything=.
Steven Gould: I just gotta remember to wear the right shoes.
Steven Gould: Every train movie I’ve ever seen, they end up on the roof of the train and the wrong shoes could be very bad.
Rachel Harper: Very true, AND bring a pistol.
Steven Gould: Nah. They say you’re not allowed to, so I’m bringing a bullwhip.
Rachel Harper: If it’s a bullwhip, then you’ll need a cowboy hat to match. Also a kerchif.
Steven Gould: And a leather bag. And I can’t shave. Not for four days.
Rachel Harper: Exactly.
Steven Gould: Hopefully deodorant is allowed.
Rachel Harper: Abolutely not.
Steven Gould: You’re old school.
Steven Gould: Can I post this conversation at Eat Our Brains?
Rachel Harper: Ha! Yeah, sure.
Steven Gould: Okay. Laura’s calling me to supper now. ttfn
Rachel Harper: Bye!

I will be riding Southwest Chief tomorrow into Los Angeles. The train I will be riding on has already left Chicago and will (hopefully) roll into Albuquerque around 4:10 pm (though when I just checked, it was running about 17 minutes late and they expect it to depart my fair city about 37 mintues late.) As I post this, it is probably in Kansas City.

I was going to do the whole trip in coach as it costs about $500 more (round trip) to get one of the sleeper roomettes, but Amtrak called me up on Friday and offered the roomettes for $200 (round trip.) This is a pretty good deal as it comes with meals, privacy, beds.  I’ll get on the train, have a lovely meal, write for a while in the privacy of my roomette, climb into bed later, wake up, shower, have breakfast, and, about 8:15 am Pacific Time, step off at Union Station in L.A.

The last time I went on a train for overnight, it was a trip from Bangkok to Malaysia in 1966, approximately 48 hours through the jungle, no A/C. No sleeper car. No dining car meals. The vendors would hold their wares up to the windows at the stops and you bought fruit and fried rice and whatever.  I’m pretty sure that bathrooms featured a direct drop onto the tracks.

It was an interesting trip but I hope for a higher degree of comfort this time.

My Friday post, from L.A. may have video and pictures.

If I don’t fall off the train.

Doug Potter pointed this out to me.

Lemon Chiffon Pie

Some food makes promises.

When I was in first grade, my mother started doing temp jobs. Within a few years she would be working full time. I hated it, of course. It meant that on days she had a job I would go to Teresa’s house. Teresa was my best friend, and I liked her mom, who was a war bride from Britain and spoke with an English accent. We both lived in slab homes, 1000 square foot brick ranches that could have been right out of Levittown. But I preferred to go home. Even though I lived the farthest from the bus stop of anyone (a whopping seven houses.) Everyone would peel off to their house and I would be left walking by myself. I remember one snowy day I looked back and saw only my tracks. I was six, carrying a red plaid book satchel (no back packs back then.) I’m sure my legs were cold since we had to wear dresses. At the bus stop in the morning I squat and pull my skirt over my legs.

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Have I mentioned that, in addition to being brought up in a Barn, I grew up in Greenwhich Village? Not only that, I went to Little Red School House, a bastion of lefty education, for ten years before we migrated to the Berkshires. That’s Greenwich Village and LRSH in the sixties, yo. Part of the process of growing up has been figuring out a way to hold on to my liberal hippie ideals while acquiring property and a family. The result is a big, stinkin’ pile of liberal guilt (which guilt is complicated by the fact that I am way lazy, and not always inspired to do what I believe to be the right thing if it means stirring my inert butt).

So.

Across the street from our house is a little green area. It’s a narrow strip, roughly triangular and about a block long, sliding down an embankment to San Jose Avenue, with trees, a fence, the odd flower, and grass that grows unchecked until the Parks Department sweeps in for one of its infrequent seizures of grooming. Periodically skunks, possums, raccoons and birds that wander through it. The Emily Dog can spend half an hour just sniffing the various trails. It’s her local watering hole, so to speak–the venue for a quick squeeze, first and last thing of the day. Our front window looks out on the little green, and Emily frequently sits and observes the passers-by, making the world safe for…us? Who knows what’s in the mind of spotty dogs?

In the last week someone has taken to sleeping down the street in the greenest, most tree-shaded corner of the green. He or she is swaddled up in a sleeping bag, with empty bottles piled on one side and some clothes and a backpack on the other, all rather tidily. This person (gender unknown) is there from roughly ten at night until about eight in the morning, so that when I bring Em out for her first-and-last walks, there he/she is. I don’t feel any particular menace from this person, even at 11pm. Mostly I hesitate to make a lot of noise to wake him/her up. But to Emily this is all menace all the time. She bristles. The short hairs on her neck stand up in a line. She growls. It’s possible that if I let her go over and sniff the bag and the person therein she would feel less threatened. As it is, I spend most of the walk wishing she’d just evacuate before we wake this other human being up.

In a five minute walk, morning or night, I go through a full range of feelings about the new neighbor. On the one hand, this person needs a place to sleep. The weather is relatively mild these days; from the look of his/her possessions, the person is organized and relatively functional. Should I offer help, all unasked? At eleven pm with a skittish dog on leash, maybe not such a good idea. Should I report him/her? To whom? For what reason? Because I’m not comfortable with his/her lifestyle? Because he/she is a blight on the neighborhood between the hours of 10 and 8? Because my dog doesn’t like having someone there?

So mostly I feel guilty. Guilty that, all things being equal, I would prefer not to have a homeless person sleeping, however inoffensively, across the street from me, on my dog’s favorite toileting-spot. Guilty that I don’t know what to do about it: assume that this person is following an eccentric bliss, or that he/she is in need of social services fast.

The problem with vice-grips, of course, is that they make movement impossible.

When I was younger (so much younger than today) I guess I could have attended the Clarion Writer’s Workshop. It started at Clarion College (now Clarion University) back in 1968. I didn’t start trying to write until 1974, so it was around, first there in Pennsylvania, then Michigan, and now, this year, at UCSD in San Diego (Surf’s UP!)

Oddly enough, I wasn’t even aware of it until after I’d sold three or four stories and I had the feeling, then, that I was SO beyond all that. And that’s too bad.

I probably could have gone. My wife, Laura J. Mixon, went in ’81. Like many who’ve gone through that particular trial by fire, she still has many of the friends from back then (including our own Mad Robbins and frequent commenter, Terry Boren.) Laura managed to go because she’d already quit her engineering job to go into the Peace Corp when she was accepted. She managed to get her intake-date postponed with Peace Corp and was able to take that six weeks.

Six weeks. This, of all the barriers, has got to be the hardest thing about going to Clarion. Six weeks away from your job, away from your family, away from your friends. And it’s probably the best thing about Clarion. Six weeks! Six weeks to work on your craft, to steep yourself in it. Six weeks.

I wish I’d gone.

The deadline to apply to Clarion has passed (for this year.) But you still have two months to apply to Viable Paradise (June 15th.) Viable paradise is only One Week. This is almost an order of magnitude easier to manage. One can leave one’s job for a week without losing it. (They call it vacation.) One can leave one’s family for that amount of time without too high a chance of divorce (though, like Clarion, this has happened.)

I did a little audio promo for VP for Mur Lafferty to play over at her writing podcast, I Should Be Writing. It’s only 58 seconds (at the bottom of this post.) I also do the Podible Paradise podcast I’ve mentioned before which interviews former students and instructors. If you are someone who has always wanted to go to Clarion but couldn’t take that month and a half, consider Viable Paradise on beautiful Martha’s Vineyard island. This year it’s held September 30th to October 6th.

One week.

Y’all may have noticed that Morgan didn’t get a Friday post in this last week.  Various professional committments make that day particularly hard so Morgan and I are swapping days.

I’ll be doing my post today and then I’ll be doing one on Friday as well, then Morgan will start next Monday.

This means that Morgan, I guess, is Fair of Face (which is true) but I get to be Loving and Giving.

Hahahahahahahahahhaahhahahahahahahah.

Right.

“And then she picked me up and shook me with her Mind powers!”

Oh, I’m feeling so, so shallow and foolish right now.

We’ve all been preaching here about getting rid of our Stuff, and I myself have more than once mounted the pulpit to sermonize on the Evils of That Damned Evil Materialism.

I’m just a simple hippie boy at heart. All I need is my fair allotment of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, and I’m relatively happy. And when I’m not happy, I’ve got the Blues to get me through.

I don’t want a fancy car, a big home, lots of money in the bank, don’t want to own or consume unnecessarily, don’t want to use up the bounty of Mother Earth.

Don’t want what I don’t need.

But, right now, I need a 61-key to 88-key MIDI-enabled keyboard, dammit! With class-compliant USB connectivity, hammer-action (or at least semi-weighted) velocity-sensitive keys with aftertouch, and the ability to split zones. Send on sixteen channels so I can have maximum multi-timbrality. Easily assignable modulation and pitch-bend wheels.

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