Liberty's Torch: personal notes

Showing posts with label personal notes. Show all posts

Thursday, July 2, 2020

Errata-tatta-tatta

These are just a few personal notes. I’ve been getting a lot of email lately from readers piqued by certain comments I’ve made. As the political garbage is even more garbagy than usual, and Linda and the Colonel are doing a fine job of addressing it all, I decided that this might be an acceptable time to answer some of the questions I’ve been asked.

Joy The Corvette.

The day I sold her was a sad day, really. But there comes a time when one must admit to one’s limitations, and my physical limitations have worsened considerably since I acquired Joy. Inasmuch as the time is drawing near when I wouldn’t be able to get out of a vehicle that low-slung without external assistance, I decided the time had come for us to part company, that Joy might bring a little joy to some younger and more limber owner.

Joy was fun to drive. I hoped to get more use out of her than I did: in part because of the Wuhan Virus and the associated shutdowns; in part because the C.S.O. didn’t like driving her; and in part because I have another fine car that’s more versatile and needs exercise just as much.

But I shall remember her fondly.

Joy the Newfoundland Puppy.

I should never have agreed to this. I don’t think I’ll be getting a lot of sleep between now and the grave. But some decisions, once made, cannot be unmade.

Joy is, in many ways, a joy. She’s already bonded to us both, very affectionate, and endlessly playful. But she seems to need to pee and poop about once an hour. You should see my back yard...no, strike that, perhaps you shouldn’t. Anyway, she gets us up in the middle of the night just about every night for that reason. The consequences of not responding to her cries are severe.

The C.S.O. keeps saying that “she’ll get used to it.” (“She” meaning Joy.) I don’t know that I ever will. Does anyone have any advice about how to get a 12-week-old puppy to sleep through the night?

Idaho.

Yes, we really are preparing for a grand relocation. Our current target destination is North Idaho, the region around Coeur D’Alene. It will be my first move in more than forty years – but it’s not going to happen right away. Among other things, we have a house to sell, possessions and animals to make provisions for transporting, and finances to arrange for a major purchase. In all probability, it will be a year or more before we can pull the trigger. Moreover, events over that interval might change any or all of our intentions.

Why North Idaho? Well, I have a long-distance friend there – Adrienne, who runs her own little corner of the Web — who’s spoken so glowingly about the area that I had to look into it for myself. I’ve liked everything I’ve learned about it:

It’s a conservative sort of area;
It has seasons much like New York’s;
There are lots of Catholics and Catholic institutions;
There’s plenty of space despite the recent surge in relocations to the area;
The cost of living is less than here on Long Island;
The homes for sale in my price band are quite impressive;
And the folks there know what it will take to protect what they love.

For a wonder, the C.S.O., who’s been adamantly opposed to relocating ever since we got involved with one another, likes it too. But as I’ve already said, it’s not going to happen this week. Stay tuned for developments.

The Fiction.

I recently decided that Amazon was not a sufficient retail channel for my fiction. Accordingly, as their current KDP Select intervals have expired, I’ve been moving my books to Draft2Digital, a publisher / redistributor that places books with all the significant online retailers, not just Amazon. If you prefer a retail outlet other than Amazon, chances are you’ll be able to find my fiction there fairly soon, if not right now.

Amazon was instrumental in making the eBook a force to be reckoned with, and bless it for that. But the eBook can now stand on its own as a respectable medium, so it’s time to “go wide,” and thus to promote a greater degree of competition in that marketplace. Hopefully this move will also bring me a wider readership, though given my abysmal promotional skills, I can only wait and hope.

Commentary.

Yes, my op-ed stuff has been getting both shorter and less frequent. I’ve been doing this since 1997, and it’s begun to pall on me. How many times can I say essentially the same thing? How long can I keep doing it, seeing the country proceed on its wobbling, intermittently self-destructive course, and not become too frustrated to continue? The sense of futility, especially in light of the events of this year of Our Lord 2020, has become difficult to dispel.

I’m not going to toss in my cards just yet. But don’t be surprised if my op-ed emissions dwindle still further. What’s the use? is a hard obstacle to surmount, especially for an old man with a seemingly endless list of tasks before him.

At any rate, Liberty’s Torch will go on for a while longer, at least. I’ll keep writing. So will Linda, the Colonel, Margaret, Historian, and Dystopic. Hopefully our aggregated efforts will manage to keep you entertained.

Enjoy your day, and Independence Day weekend.

Friday, May 22, 2020

Personal Marginalia

Yesterday was a difficult day. I was grateful for the two meaty contributions from Linda and Margaret, as they freed me from feeling an obligation to write anything for this site. However, in looking back on the day, it has occurred to me that bits of it might be at least slightly amusing to the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. Besides, I’m in no mood to blather about current events, so here goes.

We keep a rather unusual schedule here at the Fortress. Most Americans would find it uncongenial. We’re normally in bed at around 8:00 PM and out of bed at or before 4:00 AM. That’s the product of many years commuting in Long Island’s legendary traffic. The habits formed during those years have proved impossible to break, so far.

One consequence of that schedule is that when one of us has a hard time sleeping, it’s normal for both of us to sack out even earlier the following evening. Nothing unusual there, eh? Everyone needs to get enough sleep. But the problem is stiff, as it’s very difficult to sleep when the sun is shining, no matter how dark and dense your bedroom drapes might be. For that reason and others, completely sleepless nights are not uncommon here.

Yesterday, because I’d suffered a series of such bad nights, I didn’t awaken until the unGodly hour of 5:20 AM. When my eyelids finally rolled back and I noted the time, I felt like some kind of degenerate. I stumbled out of bed, robed, and scurried to the kitchen for some ~~cardiac starter fluid~~ coffee, and found the C.S.O. perched before her computer. She was already at her day’s work.

She gave me the proverbial gimlet eye and drawled “Well! Good morning, sleepyhead.” At 5:25 AM Eastern Daylight-Savings Time.

Perhaps this happens in the households of dairy farmers. I wouldn’t know.

We have a cleaning lady who comes in on alternate Thursdays. She spares us having to do the “heavy” cleaning that’s tough on old backs and joints. I’m grateful that we can afford such a service, and would not think to complain about any inconveniences involved...usually. But with New York not yet “open for business,” there are extra difficulties involved.

You see, every cleaning lady – in my experience at least – comes with one or more eccentricities. I had one, back when I was “between wives,” who saw me as in need of her matchmaking services. (“I have this really nice friend, Fran...”) Shortly after her, I had one who wanted to rearrange my furniture and could not be dissuaded from doing so. Her successor had very definite ideas about what constitutes trash, and acted on them despite my repeated pleas not to throw stuff out just because she thought I no longer needed it. I’ve striven to adjust to such foibles for the sake of a clean home.

Our current cleaning lady – I’ll call her Jane, which is not her name – is a talker. She’s from my parish and always has something to chat about that she’s certain I’ll find interesting. That’s not a serious problem under normal circumstances. However, currently the C.S.O. must work from home, her little office is near to the geometric center of the house, and she can’t stand to hear Jane gabble. So keeping Jane and the C.S.O. from clashing is part of my job – and just now, it’s four hours of hell every other Thursday.

Yesterday was particularly trying. Jane really wanted to talk, and whenever I was within earshot she’d start to regale me with all manner of tidbits about the parish, her health, her other customers, the cleaning products she uses (she strongly prefers unscented Mr. Clean^®) and how she uses them, and whatever else came to mind.

After an hour of this, the C.S.O. grabbed me and said “Stay away from her! She won’t talk if you’re not nearby.” And so began a three-hour game of Yar’s Cleaning Lady’s Revenge, in which my goal was to stay as far from Jane as possible at all times – in a longline ranch in which Jane was moving erratically from one end to the other.

I have seldom been as frazzled as I was when Jane finally departed.

Writers’ problems aren’t usually of interest to non-writers, but this one might prove an exception.

Shortly after Jane (see previous segment) departed, I sat to my computer fully intending to get back to my own work. At present I’m writing a romance, somewhat along the lines of my little novel Love in the Time of Cinema, whose working title is Love in the Time of Capitalism. Now, romances don’t often involve science-fiction motifs...at least they didn’t until fairly recently. This one isn’t intended to involve any such...uh, make that wasn’t intended to do so, until yesterday.

A writer friend – I’ll call him John, which is not his name – rang me up before I could get started on my book. John wanted to talk: about my recent near-future science-fiction novels, the characters and scientific / technological motifs in them, whether I had more uses in mind for them, and whether I would mind if he were to borrow a couple of them. When John gets charged up about a subject, he can keep you going for hours. And of course, as we were talking about my books and how they might help him with his latest project, I was willing to listen as he spun out idea after idea.

When John and I finally rang off and I returned to my romance novel, I found myself conceiving of the two entirely mundane protagonists of what was supposed to be a fairly ordinary romance – one an aging singer, the other a venture capitalist – enmeshed in all manner of bizarre adventures. I imagined them involved with dangerous new technologies, an orbital habitat, a high-tech presidential assassination, and a brief, bloody war in space. No matter how hard I tried to pull my thoughts back to my original plot line, it eluded me maddeningly.

There are days I’m strongly tempted to pull the phone out of the wall. Lately they’ve been in the majority.

The day ended fairly normally: the two of us perched on the sofa with our dogs and cats clustered around us. I tried to read a competitor’s most recent novel – it’s not up to his usual standard, so I won’t besmirch his reputation by telling you more about it – while the TV droned some inane British mystery to which the C.S.O. likes to sleep.

I’d had the dogs out for their last yard visit of the evening and was about to drag the C.S.O. off to bed when a phone rang: a smartphone I acquired recently out of sheer necessity, and which I keep forgetting to turn off. I hurried to where I’d left it, snatched it up, answered it and said “Hello?”

There was a moment of ominous silence. Then a deep voice said, “Who is this?” in a tone of menace.

“Hey, you called me,” I replied. “Who the hell are you?”

“Never mind that,” my distant interlocutor snapped. “How did you get this number?”

I was thoroughly befuddled by then. “What are you talking about?”

“Damn it all!” he shouted. “You’ve ruined everything!” And he hung up.

I looked at the screen. “Private Caller,” was all it said.

Maybe I’ll find a use for it in a novel.

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Notes And Reflections From A Bad Day

Do you remember what blogs were like at the outset? I mean, back at the Start Of It All, before we had big, politically-oriented sites like National Review and Media Matters, and “aggregator” blogs such as Instapundit? The early blogs were personal in nature – some of them to the point of “too much information.” The term “web log,” from which “blog” emerged, originally connoted an online diary of sorts, open to those interested in the writer’s doings. The shift to news-and-opinion blogging, political advocacy blogging, and special-interest blogging eclipsed those early, personal blogs rather swiftly.

These days, owing to Facebook and similar sites, bloggers’ personal emissions are pretty rare. But that’s what I have for you today, so I hope you haven’t stopped by for a hit of Ultimate Truth or Cosmic Illumination.

We’re all familiar with Murphy’s Law, right? Well, according to O’Toole’s Law, which I first encountered in Paul Dickson’s book The Official Rules, “Murphy was an optimist.” My yesterday stands as evidence to that effect.

The facts must come first. I have a cat named Zoe who likes to grab small bits of cloth and scatter them around the house. She does this when the house is dark, probably for dramatic effect. It had a pretty dramatic effect on me in the wee hours of yesterday, when I arose to use the bathroom, stepped on a hand towel, and took a fall that left me unable to rise for several minutes. Thank you, Dad, for all those useful Navy phrases with which to express pain and displeasure.

When I arose for the day, I found that rather than toss it back onto my lawn, the local garbagemen had dropped my recycling pail in the middle of the street. I discovered this as it was being flattened by passing traffic. I complained to the town, and was brusquely told that the town takes no responsibility for the actions of its “collectors.” These folks expect deference and instant obedience from us hoi polloi; the “collectors” expect gifts at Christmas time.

After morning Mass, I checked the parish bulletin for Outreach pantry shortfalls, noted the prominence of apple juice among the pantry’s needs, and headed off to a local supermarket to help out. On the way, a large van stopped dead in front of me – in the left lane of a 55 mph divided highway. I slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid ramming my Corvette’s snout into its bumper. No reason for the sudden stop was apparent.

On the way from the supermarket to the parish, a driver ambled out of a side street onto that same highway right in front of me and without looking. Once again, I barely averted a collision. It got me thinking about the invisible connection between charity and mortality: specifically, mine.

When I reached the parish, I discovered a change: the door to the Outreach pantry and offices was locked. This was utterly new to me. There was a camera-intercom-doorbell apparatus of the sort that’s becoming popular, so I pressed the bell and smiled into the camera. Nothing happened for about three minutes. I pressed it again. Still nothing. This, while eight half-gallons of apple juice were tearing at my shoulders.

I pressed it a third time and screamed: “I’m standing here with eight half gallons of apple juice and if someone doesn’t unlock the door within fifteen seconds, I’m going to leave them here for you to carry!” Someone came to unlock the door. I’ve seldom seen such a sour, irritated face on a charity volunteer. Inside I was told that the lock had been installed because undesirables had been found wandering around inside the Outreach center. How they could be distinguished from the undesirables who come there for free food and clothing, I was not told.

I made it home just in time to catch a serviceman who’d come to fix my hot tub, which has been out of service for more than two months. It was his second visit. On the first visit, he’d brought the wrong replacement parts. Yesterday he didn’t bring enough of them. “I don’t understand it,” he said, “we ordered a complete set from the manufacturer!” He promised to be back as soon as...well, soon.

I became aware that the events of the day had rendered me unfit for others’ company, so I decided to hide: I descended to my basement rec room with my dogs and my Kindle. That probably saved a life: not mine, that of my cleaning lady. She decided it was time to wash her cleaning rags. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to use my washer. After she was gone I found that she’d put detergent in the bleach dispenser. It took me an hour to clean it out, and another hour to get all the sand and grit from her rags out of my dryer. In the process I discovered that she’d managed to clog the drain of my slop sink.

Why I haven’t unpacked the Barrett .50 and the emergency package of Oreo^® Double-Stufs, I still don’t know.

Everyone has a bad day now and then. The temptation to overreact, to start raving, smashing things, and condemning others, can be very strong. One of the traditional functions of a diary is to get it all out before it can poison you from the inside. However, people don’t keep diaries any more, which goes a long way toward explaining the trend toward public inconsideration and incivility.

In this connection, Sarah Hoyt recently had a relevant encounter:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE if you’re talking to amuse yourself on an airplane, no matter how much your seat mate likes it, try to keep your voice down. Seriously. And you might think you know a lot about some subject, but if there is some controversy, still keep your voice down.

Please read it all. It’s an example of why I stopped traveling by air, even before medical considerations ended my flying. (No, it wasn’t because I’d ruined my shoulders.)

Lynne Truss, in her marvelous little book Talk To The Hand, sets forth the Grand Principle Of Courtesy:

Remember You Are With Other People;
Have Some Consideration.

This is an important reminder to a public once known for the highest degree of courtesy and civility ever observed among men – a public that’s become nearly unbearable to be in public with.

You may be having a bad day. You may have troubles such as the world has never seen before. You may be suffering physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and in every other fashion Mankind has ever suffered. The people around you, with rare exceptions, are not responsible for it. They don’t deserve to be treated rudely or roughly because you need to vent.

Get yourself a blog. Write about your travails. Entertain those who are looking for someone worse off than they are with a few witticisms about the disaster your day has been. It’s a handy detoxifying technique, as I’ve discovered. And when you’ve gotten it all down in pixels and are feeling fresh and clean once more, pray. Get down on your knees, you ungrateful churl, and thank God for the blessings you, a citizen of the greatest nation in history, enjoy each and every day. I mean, there are children in Asia that don’t have any Corvettes or hot tubs at all, right?

Besides, today will surely be better...well, almost surely. Mustn’t tempt the Fates.

Saturday, May 25, 2019

A Stretch Of Quiet

No doubt the regular Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch have noticed that things have been a trifle static here for the past few days. One of my reasons for encouraging various other commentators to join me here as Co-Conspirators was to avoid such a stretch of stagnancy. By and large the tactic has worked well; when one of us was otherwise occupied, the others would still be contributing. But as any sports fanatic can tell you, there will be days when all the games are interrupted by commercials simultaneously, and there is nothing to be done about it.

Just now Linda Fox is in Cleveland. Colonel Bunny is busy with private matters. Mike Hendrix appears to be focused elsewhere. We haven’t heard from Scott Angell or Patrice Stanton in a dog’s age. And I, who’ve been Mr. Essay-A-Day for something like twenty years, have been fixated upon completing Novel #14, to be titled The Wise and the Mad.

The final stages of a novel-project always drain me dry. The sense of having shot every round in my arsenal, with the concomitant need to sit back a while, “rearm and reload,” is difficult to countervail. While I can’t speak for others, it’s part of the price this novelist pays for his antisocial habit. Lawrence Block once compared it to finishing a marathon. Few persons who reach the finish line immediately start lifting weights or doing calisthenics.

To be somewhat more concise, writing is hard work, at least for those of us who take it seriously. The fatigue it can induce is as serious as the social, cultural or political events and trends upon which it’s focused – and such things are the only inducements to composition that can animate me.

So, with the very recent completion of the aforementioned novel, I decided to “kick back” for a few days: to pen the occasional funny piece or brief personal reflection, but to let the “little gray cells” (Agatha Christie) have some time to relax and recuperate.

Times of repose are not necessarily times of idleness. Some of the very best relaxation comes not from sitting still but from switching tracks. In my case, that can mean anything from hopping into Joy, my red 2009 Corvette convertible, lowering the top, and zooming around New York in a totally frivolous, expensive, and unproductive manner, to rereading the collected works of Herbert Spencer, to meditating at length upon matters of faith and the spirit.

I’ve spent much of the past few days doing something no one who knows me at all well would expect from me: redecorating my home. When I first moved in here thirty-nine years ago, the Fortress of Crankitude was a pretty Spartan place. I had very little furniture, few “creature comforts,” and little inclination to think about esthetic factors. I was spending about sixty hours a week at my day job, and the Fortress itself needed too much work for me to spend time on irrelevancies. I was kept hopping just from the work involved in earning a living and keeping the roof over my head...well…over my head.

Time brings changes. Today I no longer work for wages. I spend most of my time at home. That has elicited a desire to make that home as pleasant and convenient as possible, short of hiring a fleet of servants. But I’ve delegated the heavy stuff to a handful of professional contractors. That leaves me time to gussy up the place in smaller ways.

Of course, some of the seemingly smaller ways can come with large price tags. $6000 to build Beth the office of her dreams. $3100 for a lighting system. $2000 for having the living room floor refinished and stained a beautiful dark walnut. $5200 for a new leather sectional. And here’s the latest absurdity:

Hey, we have an empty corner in our newly refinished and refurnished living room! I have to fill it with something! (Beth originally suggested a “bar globe” that you can keep whiskey bottles in, but we eventually decided that would be tacky.)

The Fortress is approaching a state in which no further improvement is conceivable. I suppose when that point is reached, I’ll have to sell it and move.

Anyway: Yes, I’m okay. Yes, there will be a return to normal levels of dynamism here at Liberty’s Torch. No, that won’t occur right away. I need a day or two more to recharge, to fiddle with the placement of furniture and tchotchkes, and to think about Life, the Universe, and what major fiction challenge to tackle next. But you shouldn’t worry. Unlike this celebrated bird:

…I really am just resting. I’m sure Linda, the Colonel, et alii will also be back in due course.

Be well. Be free and happy. And keep the faith. Remember: it might be even money that the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train, but that means it’s even money that it’s not, too. So look on the bright side. Until you get run over, at least.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Blogging Hiatus

Terrible things are happening to me just now. I’ll spare you the specifics, but they’re bad enough that I can’t give anything else a decent amount of attention. Please bear with me for a while as I try to get my own life in order. Hopefully, the affairs of the larger world can wait a few days for me to comment on them.

All my best
Fran

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Homelies

Over the past few years, some Gentle Readers have lodged an unusual request: that I should occasionally say something about myself. My initial reaction to that was “Oh, surely not!” That’s like forcing your dinner guests to watch your home movies. Besides, if you’ve read my Amazon profile, you already know more about me than you should want to know. Some of the details in that squib should keep you awake at night, agonizing over the possibility that I might someday move to your neighborhood.

But it’s policy here at Liberty’s Torch to honor readers’ requests as far as possible under the constraints of the law, Christian ethics, and good taste. And I really don’t have any public-policy or political crap to vent about this morning, so...

I like to cook, as does the C.S.O. However, we have different attitudes toward measurement. I, the scientist, engineer, and man of precision in all things, measure all ingredients carefully. The C.S.O. does not; she seems to feel that meticulous measurement is the mark of the amateur. (“How could I ever be invited on Chopped if I were to insist on measuring everything?” she once said.) When she does give a measurement, it’s always in the Yiddish vernacular.

So I thought she might like these:

Let’s just say the idea didn’t go over big. But she did mention the names of a few people we know who ought to receive them.

While we’re on the subject of food, do you like yogurt? I do. I even said so through the mouth of a protagonist:

     Her lord smiled impishly at her as she cleared the last serving. “Finally full, dear?”
     “I am, my lord.”
     “Good.” He took her plate and utensils, deposited them in the sink, joined her at the table and took her hands. “You had me pretty worried.”
     “If I have exerted too great a strain on your finances—”
     He laughed. “Not about that. I’d have bought you your own supermarket if that’s what it took to see you healthy and smiling again.”
     “What is a—”
     He held up a hand. “It’s a big store filled with all kinds of food. Delicious food. Meats, fruits, vegetables, breads, cakes, pies, pastries, nuts, cheeses, milk, puddings, yogurt! You’ve never had yogurt, have you?”
     “I do not know that word, my lord.”
     “Easily fixed. I’ll take you grocery shopping some time soon and we can get all kinds of things you’ve never had. I love food.”

As do I, yogurt most definitely included. But of late, my historically preferred yogurt provider, Dannon, has been committing the contemporary sin of reducing portion sizes to avert a need to increase prices. What was once an 8 ounce cup was first reduced to 6 ounces. Now it’s down to 5.3 ounces, and We the Hungry have been given no assurance that it will cease to shrink. So I decided that it was time for a change.

I’ve taken to buying “big” yogurt: the two-pound containers one can find in the very same portion of the refrigerated section at the supermarket. I usually get the Stonyfield vanilla. I also make sure to have several flavors of preserves on hand. Now, each morning when I hanker for a cup of yogurt, I fill a coffee cup with it and stir in a fat teaspoon of preserves or honey. And it is good.

What with the cost of the preserves I can’t claim it saves money...but at least this way I get enough yogurt that I can pour four or five cups of coffee into me without destroying my stomach.

Speaking still further of food, I was recently moved to count up the number of scenes in Experiences that involve food. I got a big number. A really big number. If it were the sort of book that Barnes & Noble would carry in its brick and mortar stores, the staff might mistakenly put it among the cookbooks.

Fear not; there’s a lot of wine in there, too.

And so we segue from food to fiction. There are certain informal “rules” about how one structures a novel. One of the most widely trumpeted is about the novel’s opening scene:

It should “rev the engines,” to engage the reader with the story;
It should feature one or more of the novel’s protagonists;
It should give a glimpse of the major conflict.

I’ve broken that rule more often than I’ve adhered to it. A prologue almost automatically breaks the rule, and I’ve indulged several times in prologues, which (I’m told) publishers’ editors have come to despise. But even in novels that lack prologues, I’ve tended to start with an “out of the way” occurrence that doesn’t involve a protagonist.

Opinions, anyone? It would help if you’ve read any of my novels, of course. (Hint! Hint!)

Now and then I’m moved to praise the inventor, whether or not I know his name, of some convenience or assistance to good living that today tends to be taken for granted. For a long time it was the fellow who invented hot indoor running water. Most recently it was the inventor of caller ID, which makes it possible for me to sneer at a ringing phone with complete confidence in the justice thereof. But recently it occurred to me how swiftly we of Twenty-First Century America start to take some notable development for granted. This morning’s case in point: the “smart” cell phone.

I don’t own a smartphone. (The C.S.O. does, and many are the times I’ve had to suppress the urge to rip the devilish thing from her ever-clutching hand and stamp on it.) But these days it seems everyone — yeah, yeah, everyone else — has a smartphone. Moreover, the majority of smartphone owners seem to rely on them for nearly everything digital (plus a few things that previously weren’t).

Today, the smartphone is either taken completely for granted or very close to it. The “dumb” cell phone, which can only take and make calls, is an endangered species. But how long have smartphones been around? Less than twenty years.

When some “customer service representative” tells me that I’ll “receive a text” to inform me that the service tech will shortly be at my abode, I must tell the poor gal that I can’t “receive a text” – indeed, that I don’t own a smartphone. In the wake of that disclosure always comes a brief silence that positively rings with disbelief and disapproval. What sort of atavism is he? she thinks loudly enough to be audible over the wires. And I can only smile. What need, after all, does one who sits before a hot computer all the live-long day have for a smartphone?

A dear friend who, like me, has completely rejected the cell phone (and all its works, and all its empty promises) referred to it scathingly as “my electronic birth-control device.” I knew exactly what she meant. Oh, how well I knew!

And thus, my Gentle Readers’ request for some personal stuff is deemed satisfied, at least for now. Perhaps I’ll be back later with something more...important. Until then, be well.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Quickies: For Artists Of All Kinds

He who puts his efforts before the world must expect that some persons will react positively and some will react negatively. Mankind is reliable that way. Unanimity of opinion about a book, a movie, a sculpture, a painting, a song, an aroma, a recipe, or any other sort of artwork is vanishingly rare.

(Well, okay, except for BloodRayne, but that’s one of the exceptions. Besides, Kristianna Loken was very pretty, and Ben Kingsley probably had bills to pay, and...and...oh, never mind.)

My point, of course, is that the artist must be prepared to receive and weather the unpleasant reactions. In particular, he must abstain from interpreting them as attacks upon himself. They’re probably not attacks on his chosen art form, either. They might be attacks on his message, if he embedded one in his opus, but again, unanimity about such things is so rare as to be nonexistent for practical purposes. To give you an example, I once had a coworker who believed, and would argue passionately, that no one, including he himself, has a right to life. He meant it. Really.

If you ever find yourself so bored or involuntarily confined that you find yourself watching a televised cooking competition, you’re likely to see the competitors listening to judges criticize their dishes. Never mind that those judges probably couldn’t cook half as well as the least of their victims even if their lives depended on it; their function is to criticize, and to decide on winners and losers. But you’ll rarely hear a cook – even a master chef – reply to even the harshest criticism of his food with anything other than “Thank you.”

There’s wisdom there. There’s a recognition of the reality of divergent tastes. If only all artists could grasp the virtues embodied in it.

I mention this because I recently took the trouble to pan a movie at Amazon. It was a movie I had looked forward to seeing, and it disappointed me profoundly. As mine was merely one of dozens of negative reviews, I expected nothing to come of it. I was shocked when the writer / director wrote to me personally to rebuke me for my review!

That is the reverse of wisdom. Even though I understand the gentleman’s unhappiness at receiving a bad review – and I emphasize that mine was one of many – what intelligent person could possibly imagine that to be a profitable thing to do?

There are people who despise any item of artwork you can name. Nor are the reasons for their dislike necessarily rational. Great God in heaven, there are people who think Michelangelo’s David is obscene and should be destroyed! I’ve met one such person.

He who decides to present his artistic endeavors to the general public must develop calluses over any sensitivity he might have to criticism. No, it’s not legally required; it’s just what an artist must do to preserve his good name -- and his sanity. Take it from one who knows.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Faster! Faster!

     Alice could never quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying “Faster! Faster!” but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had not breath left to say so.
     The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. “I wonder if all the things move along with us?” thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, “Faster! Faster! Don’t try to talk!”
     Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. She felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and still the Queen cried “Faster! Faster!” and dragged her along. “Are we nearly there?” Alice managed to pant out at last.
     “Nearly there?” the Queen repeated. “Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster!”
     [Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass]

He whom children of the past century know as “Lewis Carroll” was born in 1832 as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was the son of an Anglican cleric, and rather religious himself. He was eventually made a deacon of the Church of England, and on several occasions expressed a profound Christian faith. Consider as an example this statement, made not long before his death, in response to a friend’s inquiry about his beliefs:

I believe that when you and I come to lie down for the last time, if only we can keep firm hold of the great truths Christ taught us—our own utter worthlessness and His infinite worth; and that He has brought us back to our one Father, and made us His brethren, and so brethren to one another—we shall have all we need to guide us through the shadows. Most assuredly I accept to the full the doctrines you refer to—that Christ died to save us, that we have no other way of salvation open to us but through His death, and that it is by faith in Him, and through no merit of ours, that we are reconciled to God; and most assuredly I can cordially say, "I owe all to Him who loved me, and died on the Cross of Calvary." [From Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll]

It is possible that much of Carroll’s “children’s fiction” was allegorical in nature. However, he never said or wrote any explicit statement to that effect. Here’s the closest I can find:

As to the meaning of the Snark [he wrote to a friend in America], I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book. The best that I've seen is by a lady (she published it in a letter to a newspaper), that the whole book is an allegory on the search after happiness. I think this fits in beautifully in many ways—particularly about the bathing-machines: when the people get weary of life, and can't find happiness in towns or in books, then they rush off to the seaside, to see what bathing-machines will do for them. [Ibid.]

For my part, the Red Queen’s Race in the snippet from Through The Looking-Glass speaks powerfully about haste and bustle: in particular, their tendency to become ends in themselves, rather than occasionally employed means to some unusually urgent end.

Many Americans of our time seem addicted to haste. Faster! Faster! This is critical! I need it by Friday! It has to be turned in by three! How can you just sit there staring at your cubicle wall? Faster! Faster!

Well, Gentle Reader? How’s your Haste Quotient (HQ) this fine Tuesday morning? Checked your pulse lately? How about your blood pressure?

I thought not.

Hello, friends. My name is Fran, and I’m a haste addict.

Among my greatest personal failings is this one: If I can’t see the end of an undertaking to be near and clear, I am powerfully inhibited against addressing it. It doesn’t matter whether the desire is at all reasonable. If I can’t envision the completion of the project at some time in the proximate future, I struggle to begin.

Most of the people who’ve known me professionally would find that difficult to believe. My reputation was and is for getting it done – whatever “it” might be – a day early. In all my years I never missed a deadline to which I’d agreed beforehand...and on at least one occasion it came damned close to killing me.

I’m not telling you this because it’s unique or exceptional, but the reverse: it’s become endemic among contemporary Americans. No, not everyone is quite as deep in the disease as I am. Some are better off; a pitiful few are worse. However, the majority of us suffer from it. The characteristics of the malady are uniform: the sense of time pressure, the race against the clock, urging us to ever greater haste in many if not most of the efforts we address each day.

Even today, though I’m retired nearly a year, I still feel the seconds ticking away no matter what my current task might be. It takes an extraordinary conscious effort to slow down, to remind myself that there are no deadlines any longer, and an even greater effort to enforce a less lethal pace upon myself.

However, that’s not the worst of it. The worst is the reluctance to start an extended project, knowing that I’ll feel myself to be in a Red Queen’s Race from the moment I begin.

I remember reading, many years ago, a statement by a columnist in Car and Driver to the effect that civilization depends upon speed. In one sense, this is irrefutable. The speed with which we can produce or acquire the necessities of life determines whether we shall have any leisure. The speed with which we can produce or acquire the optional satisfactions and luxuries we seek determines the magnitude of what we usually call our prosperity. In those contexts, speed varies inversely with the prices of the things we need or want.

But to enforce haste upon oneself – to demand that one operate at a high tempo – involves a price of its own. If it becomes habitual, the price can exceed any good one might purchase with it.

“The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long,” wrote Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching. In truth, that’s nowhere near the worst it can get; if pressed to flare beyond a certain brightness, the flame will burn itself out. This is no less true of men than of candlewicks.

You might think this is mainly, perhaps even entirely, about haste at work. It certainly has application to the working world, where supervisors always seem to be trying to get their subordinates to go faster. But it also has application to one’s private, personal undertakings.

Part of the reason I value my faith so greatly is its emphasis on peace. Peace might just be the most misunderstood of all the things we seek. Novelist Jo Walton made a particularly pointed observation about it some years ago, in reference to a specimen of warfare and the somewhat naive “peace” activists who were railing against it:

“Peace means something different from ‘not fighting.’ Those aren’t peace advocates, they’re ‘stop fighting’ advocates. Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.”

The secular condition we call peace has a dynamic character. It’s not something one can acquire once and fondle unendingly; like love, it must be perpetually remade, made new. The reasons are far beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that it is in the nature of existence under the veil of Time that peace must be continuously maintained and renewed by individuals, families, communities, and nations.

But secular peace is not the only kind, nor is it the most important. When in the Gospel According to John Christ says to His Apostles:

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. [John 14:27]

...clearly He is not speaking of “peace” as the diplomats mean it (“a state of tension falling short of actual armed conflict”), but of peace of the mind, heart, and soul. Moreover, it should be clear that the only agency capable of depriving us of that peace is ourselves.

The prevailing tendency to train oneself, or to flog others, to perpetual haste forecloses access to that sort of peace. It might be the worst of the superficially non-violent things any man has ever done, whether to another or to himself.

This is not an absolute or unconditional broadside against haste per se. Rather, it’s an exhortation to pace: the appropriate pace for the matter at hand. If haste is genuinely justified – by your judgment, no one else’s! – then make haste, but be aware of both the necessity, the reason for it, and the expiration thereof. At other times and in other circumstances, languidness or even stillness will serve you better. You’ll enjoy life more and will probably live longer. You’ll be more pleasant company as well.

No matter your age or your station in life, if you have the sort of penchant for perpetual haste from which I suffer, this might prove to be the most important thing you’ll ever read. Don’t let not being able to see the finish line deter you from starting. Don’t let a need to see the finish line drive you to unnecessary, destructive haste. Perhaps most important of all, don’t take any guff from anyone else about your choices in such matters. It’s the sort of advice I wish someone had given to me when I was younger and could really profit from it.

To those who are otherwise inclined – and especially to those who think they can profit by accelerating others! – I commend the late J. G. Ballard’s short story “Chronopolis,” about a society in which the pendulum has swung radically in the opposite direction and timepieces of the sort we use have been outlawed. Note in particular this snippet thereof:

     “Why is it against the law to have a clock?”
     Stacey tossed a piece of chalk from one hand to the other.
     “Is it against the law?”
     Conrad nodded. “There’s an old notice in the police station offering a bounty of one hundred pounds for every clock or wristwatch brought in. I saw it yesterday. The sergeant said it was still in force.”
     Stacey raised his eyebrows mockingly. “You’ll make a million. Thinking of going into business?”
     Conrad ignored this. “It’s against the law to have a gun because you might shoot someone. But how can you hurt anybody with a clock?”
     “Isn’t it obvious? You can time him, know exactly how long it takes him to do something.”
     “Well?”
     “Then you can make him do it faster.”

May God bless and keep you all. And may the shade of Frederick Taylor forever repent of his sins against frail, frightened, irremediably weary working men.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Return On Investment

“Opinions are like assholes: everyone’s gotta have one.” – Me

Just in case there’s anyone in the Liberty’s Torch readership who hasn’t noticed, what appears here is mainly opinion: lots from me, some from my Esteemed Co-contributors Col. Young, Col. Bunny, Scott Angell, and Patrice Stanton, and the occasional guest essay from Ol’ Remus

Opinions aren’t journalism, per se. Persons who consider them reportage of a sort are woefully mistaken. Many an opinion piece found in a “respectable” publication plays fast and loose with the facts in an attempt to justify its author’s exhortations. That includes historical facts multiply documented and cross-checked over the decades...or the centuries.

The explosion of blogdom in the late Nineties was driven by the desire on the part of millions of people to express their opinions to an audience wider than their families and friends. The subsequent contraction of blogdom in the Naughties occurred largely because no one was listening. After all, if “everyone’s gotta have an opinion,” what makes yours any more reasonable or valuable than mine? So why bother to read all that crap? And if no one is reading it, then why bother to write it?

Yet opinions continue to be expressed – horror of horrors! – right here on the World Wide Web. Some opinion writers are more popular than others. Some aren’t popular at all. And some draw the ire of the dissenting, which they express in colorful and insulting terms.

This isn’t one of the more popular sites. We get somewhere from two to five hundred readers on a typical day; the average seems to cluster around 300. Neither I nor any of my Co-contributors expects great wealth or a Pulitzer for what we post here. Indeed, there’s essentially no return on our investments of research, thought, and effort. So why do we do it?

Why are you doing it, Gentle Reader? Assuming that you are, that is. Several of you maintain your own sites, where you hold forth on your own views. What’s your return on investment (ROI)? Even if you aren’t one of us loony bloggers, do you ever express an opinion about political, social, economic, cultural, military, or religious issues to your family or friends? Why do you do that?

Think about it.

For some reason I cannot fathom, we feel it’s important to express ourselves on certain subjects. By “we,” I mean approximately everyone. From time to time just about everyone feels and surrenders to the impulse to give his opinion on some subject of public interest to others. Sometimes, a little fire starts, and friends or family start to build upon one another’s ideas. Sometimes there’s disagreement, and sometimes such a disagreement has unpleasant consequences. And sometimes – most of the time, I’d guess – nobody gives much of a damn.

But we do it anyway. Something in the human psyche occasionally rears up and demands that one express an opinion even knowing that the likely consequences range from indifference to hostility.

I doubt there are evolutionary reasons for it. Nor would I put cash on the proposition that it’s the result of an opportunistic viral infection. So why do we do it? Especially since any adult will know that the probable ROI is negative: an expenditure of breath or keystrokes to which the most likely reaction is silence.

I know of an extreme case that’s had extreme consequences: a fellow who has opinions about everything and who apparently cannot restrain them. Thirty seconds after he’s met you, he’ll have a multitude of opinions about you: where you live, what you do for a living, the company you work for, the company you keep, your taste in clothes, music, movies, food, politicians, women, and the way you knot your tie. And he won’t spare you any of them.

I don’t like him. He doesn’t like me. We both know it. Moreover, I don’t know anyone else who likes him. Indeed, he’s the most roundly disliked person I’ve ever met, and his inability to keep his opinions to himself is the reason. He knows it – and he continues on, forever unchanged.

Fancy that.

Everyone who makes his opinions known receives feedback of some sort. Very, very few receive only agreement and applause. Yet for the overwhelming majority of us who write for the Web, that feedback is all we get for our troubles. That’s why many a blogger departs for the silence of obscurity: either he doesn’t get enough feedback, or what he does get displeases him.

One of the early pioneers of blogging, Steven Den Beste, became well known for a number of reasons. One of them was his dislike of any reader feedback, however delivered. His site didn’t permit comments, and he became famous for repeatedly pleading with his readers not to write to him. Those pleas weren’t always heeded.

Den Beste was / is – I have no idea whether he’s still on the sunny side of the sod – an intelligent and accomplished man. For some time he indulged in the expression of his opinions about a wide variety of things here on the Web, even though his ROI appeared to be decidedly negative. Moreover, he would occasionally take up cudgels with those who disagreed with him: a strenuous undertaking that’s seldom brought anyone any meaningful gain.

He quit this madness after a few years. There were several reasons, but one was undoubtedly that he was unable to express himself without getting feedback he didn’t want to cope with. Those of us who valued his thinking and writing mourned the loss.

That’s what a negative ROI can do to you.

Today, those who disagree with an opinion monger will often try to silence him. One of the ways to attempt that is insult, delivered directly and in quantity. The tactic is more common among activists on the political Left, but it’s not unknown on the Right.

Sometimes the tactic works. When it works, it’s reinforced. It acquires greater popularity and staying power. This is a major contributing factor to our sociopolitical polarization.

Time was, gentlemen refrained from the direct insult. Oh, they insulted one another, but with a degree of adroitness and grace that would permit the target a dignified silence, perhaps reinforced by the Cut Direct. “A gentleman is one who never gives offense unintentionally.” Subtlety and indirection in giving offense were considered the distinguishing marks of the gentleman. (Gentlewomen slanged one another with no restraint nor compunction whatsoever, but then, women have always been like that. They still are.)

Of course, I speak of a time when gentlemen wouldn’t dream of going out of doors without their swords and often responded to a direct insult with an invitation to coffee and pistols at dawn. The prospect imbued the men of that time with a greater degree of circumspection than ours routinely exhibit.

Those were better days. The men were better men. And there was no World Wide Web. Coincidence? You decide.

“If there were more bloody noses, there’d be fewer wars.” – Hagbard Celine, in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus!

I’m getting pretty old. My energies are flagging, yet my obligations and activities continue to increase. Indeed, in all my years I’ve never been busier – and to drive that home, bear in mind that I no longer hold a “regular” job. At some point, I’ll have to sacrifice something.

The volume of reader commentary here is considerable. Most of it doesn’t appear; I find it insulting, whether to me or to a Co-contributor, and delete it. The process isn’t physically tiring, but dealing with such comments is nevertheless a wearying thing.

Near to the end of his blogging at USS Clueless, Steven Den Beste commented wryly that one who gives out free ice cream will eventually meet persons who complain about the narrow choice of flavors and the absence of whipped cream and sprinkles. “Free ice cream” became an idiom, a way of describing the emissions of us unpaid opinion mongers. Other bloggers who decided to lay it down would often comment to the effect that they’d run out of ice cream.

But some of those retired bloggers didn’t run out. Some just got tired of other people pissing on it. Too negative an ROI endured for too long simply bankrupted them. There’s a moral in there, somewhere.

Have a nice day.

Friday, May 1, 2015

The Last Day: A Completely Personal Rant

Relax; this isn’t about the Eschaton. It’s about a last day of another sort.

I commuted to work this morning for the last time. As of close-of-business today, I will no longer be an engineer; I’ll be a retired engineer.

It’s a nervous-making transition. I’ve known other retirees who turned completely inert. I know of one whose wife is absolutely frantic because he watches television all day. Literally: He gets up in the mid-morning, turns on the television, and perches himself on the sofa to watch. He only gets off the couch for bathroom visits and meals...and he’s been trying to get his wife to bring him his meals.

So it’s been done badly. On the other hand, it’s also been done...I won’t say “successfully,” but to a completely opposite effect. The fellow I have in mind is busier as a retiree than he ever was as an engineer, because everyone who knows him knows that he’s “handy.” People are constantly descending on him with requests “to help with this,” which, translated from the Weaselly, means, “could you do this for me?” As he never learned to say “no,” he works harder than ever, he has almost no time to himself, and he doesn’t get paid.

Somewhere in the middle lies a happy medium. I hope I can find it.

Here are my agenda items for the next few years:

To lose 15 pounds.
To complete two more novels.
To help out more at my parish.
To reacquire my old piano and guitar skills.
To deal with various minor problems around the house.
To “keep my hand in” at my trade, so I’ll be able to follow developments.
To get around New York State more, and reacquaint myself with its features and history.

Even though they’re listed in descending priority order, I have a feeling that #1 will be the toughest of them. As it ages, the body becomes ever more “possessive” of its flesh. All the same, I intend to put in the effort. As for the rest, I guess we’ll see.

The C.S.O. isn’t retiring, which removes a potential source of stress. Two retirees eyeball-to-eyeball under the same roof can create quite a lot of friction. But she loves her job – she ~~assists reluctant sky-divers~~ provides accounting services to Catholic religious orders – and is determined to keep doing it for as long as she’s humanly capable. So I’ll be alone much of the week. I doubt I’ll mind, as my pursuits are solitary ones anyway.

Yes, I’ll still be writing these obnoxious screeds. I haven’t used up all my bile yet, so do keep coming by.

For the rest of it, time will tell. I’m sure I’ll need the prayers of those of you who pray. (As for those of you who don’t, now might be a good time to start.) This is the last stanza of life. We know how it must end; we just don’t know when. “You know not the day nor the hour,” as the Redeemer has told us, and surely He would know.

If I have an overarching ambition, it’s to make these final years useful to others. I still have my intellect and my storytelling powers. Perhaps they’ll wither, but they might also blossom in new and unexpected directions. I’d like that.

As I told the C.S.O. this morning, today is the last day of the first of my life. She puzzled over that for a moment, but the meaning should be clear: everything after today is pure discretion – which I hope will mean pure discovery – pure adventure.

I’ll keep you posted.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Lethal Vanity: A Personal Tirade

Sorry, Gentle Reader. Nothing on politics, economics, sociology, Christianity, or fiction today. This morning I have an overriding priority to serve, as you'll understand shortly...if at all.

On a weekday, I'm usually on the road to my place of business no later than 5:30 AM. I commute at that hour because the New York Metro traffic pattern becomes too ugly for me to bear if I wait any longer. The delays, the stop-and-go character of the driving, and the overall waste of time are more than my easily-triggered temper can withstand. Yet even at just half past five in the morning, the roads are nearly full. The traffic moves at a good pace, but there's little room to maneuver and less room for error. That's life and automotive transit in the precancerous zone around the Big Apple.

I just avoided becoming part of a multi-car pile-up on the Long Island Expressway. It's left me rather badly shaken.

I don't know what caused the accident. It could have been any of a number of things. But damned few such accidents result from causes beyond the drivers' control.

It's many years since I got my driver's license, but the experience remains vivid in my memory, mainly because my instructor was a thinker, much like myself. He didn't just tell me what to do and what not to do in a didactic, formulaic fashion; he explained why this practice is a good one and that practice is to be avoided. His tutelage left me with an understanding of traffic patterns and conditions that not everyone possesses, including a sense for what contexts are inherently safer than others and why.

Limited-access highways are potentially the safest traffic context of all:

Everyone is moving in the same direction at nearly all times;
The cars are tightly clustered around a median speed;
Turn signals and horns are easy to perceive and interpret;
In the absence of "proper motion," threats to the pattern can be confined to the entry and exit points.

For those without a background in astronomy, "proper motion" is motion transverse to the prevailing pattern. For example, a car deliberately changing lanes is in proper motion; a car that remains in its lane is not. Because it violates the pattern, a car in proper motion imposes risks and costs on cars near it, which must take special care to compensate for it.

That's not to say that proper motion is to be rigidly avoided. However, it should be soberly considered before it's undertaken. Relative speeds, the available space and time, and the trajectories of other vehicles must be respected. Anyone who's ever launched a "longshoreman's blessing" at a car that lurched spasmodically across three lanes without signaling, cutting off dozens of other drivers in a mad dash for an exit ramp far too near for more carefully considered maneuvering -- my wife calls this "driving north-south on an east-west road" -- will grasp this without further explanation.

Ill-considered or unconsidered proper motion gives rise to nearly all highway accidents.

Sources of bad proper motion are many, but the most commonplace (and worst) of them is driver vanity.

Do you know someone whose confidence in his driving strikes you as unwarranted? Who swishes back and forth among the lanes like a matador showing off before a packed stadium? Who routinely takes his eyes off the road for frivolous reasons, for example to send a text message? Who removes both hands from the wheel to grope through the snacks in his center console or the CDs on the passenger side floor? Have you ever said to yourself "He's an accident looking for a place to happen?"

You're right. The odds are that he, or someone very like him, will cause the next highway accident, and possibly a few lives in the bargain. But there's no telling that to him. He takes the mere mention of risk as a mortal insult. He probably has one of those idiotic "NO FEAR" decals emblazoned on his rear windshield, where it can conveniently obstruct his road vision.

If you are such a driver, repent of your sins and reform your ways before it's too late -- "too late" being when you cause the inevitable high-speed accident or when you encounter me, whichever comes first. I have no patience for persons who impose unnecessary hazards on unconsenting others. But sadly, if you are such a driver, the odds are that you would never, ever admit to yourself that your skills are perhaps a mite beneath those of Michael Schumacher and Jackie Stewart. The wound to your ego might cause you to bleed to death.

It's highly unlikely that the burst of proper motion that caused the accident that almost encompassed me arose from a blowout, a suspension collapse, or some other mechanical failure. Almost certainly, it was the fruit of driver vanity. It might have cost lives; I didn't hang around to find out. I can only pray that it didn't -- and give thanks that I managed to stay out of it.

So, Gentle Reader, if you'll excuse me for today, I think I'll sit and shake for a while longer before addressing the morning's tasks. Be well, stay safe, and return tomorrow for a dollop of the usual drivel.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Assorted Notes

I don't do this often (for which I hope you're grateful), so please bear with me.

First, my sincerest thanks to those of you who've written to praise Freedom's Scion. Compared to the op-ed pieces I post here, writing fiction is much harder, but because of the pleasure a completed story can bring to others, it's far more satisfying. However, what's more satisfying still are:

Favorable reviews at retail outlets,
Revenue.

So to those of you who've purchased Freedom's Scion, or any of my other books, at SmashWords: If you have the time and the inclination, would you please post a review? It doesn't have to be long or elaborate; just a few words about what you thought of the book will more than suffice. And don't forget to include a "star rating!" Favorable reviews help to sell books, and the more, the better, as one of SmashWords's sorting techniques for customers perusing its offerings is by average review / number of reviews. You'll have my thanks.

And yes, Freedom's Scion will be made available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers, just as soon as my cover artist can produce the permanent cover art. (She's very good, very modestly priced, and consequently very backed up.)

Second fiction-oriented note: Yes, I'm working on Freedom's Fury -- the sequel to Freedom's Scion and the completion of the Spooner Federation trilogy -- even as we speak. This one will take a while; I expect to have it ready some time in 2014. The confluence of the major threads and themes of the saga will require extremely careful handling. I expect that you'll be surprised by the resolution.

Quite frankly, I've been rather surprised by the passion of the reactions, both to Freedom's Scion and to the first volume, Which Art In Hope. At least, readers who've written to me about them have been quite passionate in their statements. They all but universally celebrate what they see as the core idea of the Spoonerite Hegira and Hope as I've depicted it: the absolute abjuration of the State. The yearnings they've expressed for such a world have been painfully poignant to read.

A goodly number of readers have explicitly asked whether I find the notion of a completely ungoverned world plausible. Up to now I've refrained from answering that question, because the answer is central to the plot of Freedom's Fury as I've conceived and planned it. But perhaps the time has come for a partial answer:

Yes...and no.

Satisfied? Hey, I said it would be a partial answer. If you want the complete, unexpurgated version, with all the necessary elaborations, justifications, exceptions, and footnotes, you'll have to wait for Freedom's Fury. And I expect you'll be surprised by the conclusions: both mine and yours.

Concerning the "Debunkings" series: In the first paragraph of the first segment, I made the following statement of intent:

These "Debunking" pieces will have a common aim: to tell you, in no uncertain terms, what you already know but are unwilling to admit to yourself.

I've received a few emails expressing puzzlement over that statement, so I suppose I should expand on it just a wee bit.

One of the most observant, most penetrating statements about our political lexicon comes from that considerable master of the English language, the great George Orwell:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."

....Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

I contend that:

You know this;
You have always known it;
You allow it because you don't know how to fight it.

I am trying, most sincerely, to give you the tool you need. It's a simple tool:

Unpack the implications of the evil phrase and hold them up to the light of reality.

This must be done relentlessly, and hurled into the faces of the politicians using the evil, mendacious phrase.

Do you have the courage and the resolve for that? If so, the "Debunkings" series is your training ground. It has one or two more segments to run, but it will by no means complete the task of detoxifying today's political deceits. What I hope it will do is train you in the process involved.

I've done (and am still doing) my part. The rest is up to you.

You're probably aware that until recently, my health was in decline. I was pleased to experience a reversal of that trend, which appears to be holding steady...with one exception. Something has "gone wrong" in my left arm and shoulder. The panjandrums -- panjandra? -- of the medical-industrial complex are baffled by this malady; I've had more different diagnoses than Carter has Little Liver Pills. Whatever it is, it makes many physical chores painful to perform, including typing. Indeed, typing might just be the cause of the affliction; after all, I've done quite a lot of it for a very long time.

So I've begun to lean on a resource I'd previously disdained: voice recognition for text entry, in place of entry from the keyboard. Voice recognition software is better than it's ever been -- given what I remember from its early days, thank God for that -- but it's not perfect by any means. And of course, the same applies to me (though I'm willing to allow that I'm not "better than I've ever been"). So now and then, a mis-recognition by the voice-rec software will combine with an oversight by yours truly to produce...something other than I intended.

If you see the occasional howler in my pieces here, please be generous. Let me know about your discoveries in time to correct them before the men in the white coats decide they've finally got evidence enough, hoist their butterfly nets, and converge on Long Island with posters featuring my aged mug. That is, if Homeland Security and the IRS don't get me first.