Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good

Checking In

2011-11-09T15:21:00.000-08:00

Hey, everybody. I just got e-mail from a worried blog reader who wondered what my absence here meant, and hoped I was okay.

I'm fine! Actually, better than fine, since we're leaving for another cruise on Friday. Yay!

I'm spending my time on Facebook these days because a) it gives me a sense of what my friends are up to and b) I get much more feedback there. If you're on FB too, please look for me. If you aren't on FB because you just never got around to it, think about joining: it's fun, and you don't have to spend vast amounts of time there. If you aren't on FB because you don't like it, I understand; feel free to shoot me an e-mail once in a while if you'd like to hear from me.

I'll still post long things like homilies here, although my new church -- which is having its own financial problems, and I'm praying won't go the way of the old one -- doesn't have me on the preaching schedule as often as the old one did. I'm only preaching about once a quarter now.

If there are any big publishing announcements, I'll post those here too.

Everyday nattering, though, is over at The Other Place.

Thanks! Be well, everyone!

Occupy the Kingdom of Heaven

2011-10-08T20:16:00.000-07:00

Here's tomorrow's homily, a juggling act if ever there were one. You can read the pesky Parable of the Wedding Banquet here.

I'll be preaching at three services, and the last one will include the Blessing of the Animals, right in the middle of the service. We'll see if the barking dogs and wailing cats drown me out! As always, I'll bring photos of our three, but won't subject them to the alarm and indignity of being stuffed into their carriers and driven to a Place With Dogs.

*

Today we observe the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Born in 1181, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant, Francis spent his early years partying with rich friends. He was a rising merchant himself, but after a religious conversion in his mid-twenties, he put aside his costly clothing to wear beggar’s rags. Determined to imitate Christ’s life by doing Christ’s work, Francis founded an order devoted to poverty. He turned from the riches of the marketplace to the splendors of the natural world, calling all creatures his brothers and sisters. He is the patron saint of the poor, of merchants – those two sound like a contradiction, until you know his story – of ecology, and of animals. At the 5:00 service today, we will bless companion animals in his name.

Today we observe the Feast of St. Francis. Today we are also called to ponder the Parable of the Wedding Feast, which contains its own contradictions. Who wouldn’t want to attend such a fabulous party? And why, after being dragged in off the street at the last minute, is one of the guests thrown out again for not wearing party apparel? That detail’s especially startling against the background of Francis pulling off his stylish threads to wear a hair shirt. Isn’t casual Friday what Christ would want? Since when does God have a dress code?

The parable offers some clues about why the people on the first guest list don’t show. “They made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business.” These guests have no time for a party; they have to work. The farmer grows his own food. He doesn’t need anybody else’s banquet. Another needs to tend to his business to make money. No handouts for these two, nosirree. They’ll put their own food on their own tables all by themselves.

In his homily last week, Father Kirk talked about how difficult it can be for us to recognize grace, the unearned gifts we receive from God. The parable of the wedding banquet is a prime example. When the invited guests reject God’s grace and send regrets, the banquet’s thrown open to everybody. But we still have to wonder what’s up with the dress code.

Nine years ago, I heard a very fine preacher explain that the wedding robe is metaphorical. The guest didn’t bring his best, most joyous self to God’s banquet. Whatever his body wore, his soul wasn’t clothed in its brightest garments. That’s a good answer, but it didn’t completely satisfy me. Nine years later, preparing to preach today, I found the tensions between wealth and poverty in Francis’ life starkly mirrored in the news. Exploring those parallels, I found another possible answer to that nagging question about the banquet.

However you feel about the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the grassroots protest that has now spread across the country, no one can deny that issues of poverty and privilege are at its heart. The protest is driven by rage at economic injustice, at the growing chasm between rich and poor. Reading about it reminds me not only of Francis’ call to voluntary poverty, but of Jesus’ challenges to the wealthy and powerful of his own day. But the rhetoric on both sides is filled with anger, ugly us/them divisions. Where is the love Jesus insisted on? Watching this hurts.

And then, a few days ago, I found a blog maintained by a group of Boston-based Christians, many affiliated with the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, who call themselves Protest Chaplains. One of them, Kevin Vetiac, writes about marching down Wall Street: “We were there to be a specifically Christian witness against corporate greed and excess and the exploitation of the poor.” Protest Chaplain Marisa Egerstrom, writing on the CNN blog, describes the community created by the protesters. “Trained medics volunteer their skills to treat injuries and illness. The food station is ‘loaves and fishes’ in action: There is always more than enough to eat, and homeless folks eat side by side with lawyers and students off of donated plates.” Protest Chaplain Dave Woessner, describing Occupy Boston as “real community,” lists free food, free medical care, and “the ‘really really free market’ of clothes and supplies.”

Always more than enough to eat? That sounds like a banquet to me. These descriptions also sound like the early church in the Book of Acts: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” And when I read about the “really really free market” of clothes, the wedding robe in today’s Gospel suddenly came into new focus.

The king in the parable sends his slaves out into the streets to gather anyone they can find. What if those streets are occupied by a real community, with a really really free market of clothing? What if anyone can have a wedding robe, just for the asking, and this unnamed guest has refused to ask: out of pride, out of sloth, out of shame at accepting the generosity of others? What if he won’t take anything he hasn’t earned or paid for? What if he refuses grace? If he can’t accept a free robe, how joyously can he accept the king’s hospitality, all that free food?

This is a partial answer too. Jesus told parables to make us ask questions, to make us think. When this reading comes around in another three years, our answers will look different, because we’ll be living in different circumstances.

There is no doubt, though, that Jesus wants us to occupy the Kingdom of Heaven in the here and now. This isn’t the afterlife; it’s the reign of God here on earth. Jesus says it is within us and all around us. The keys to its gates are love of neighbors, forgiveness of enemies, and renunciation of wealth and power. Sometimes we catch glimpses of the Kingdom even in the midst of chaos and violence.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has produced disturbing reports of police brutality. They’re among the grimmest of the us/them stories coming out of the demonstrations. But Protest Chaplain Julia Capurso writes in delight about a police officer who, instead of beating or macing the sidewalk protesters, coached them instead: “You need practice! Stand together so you’ll look stronger! Keep your feet moving!” This officer proves that us/them divisions can be overcome, that those in power can reach over social barriers to offer aid and encouragement.

Here’s another story about power, poverty, and feasting. It happened right here in Reno, and it includes St. Francis’ beloved animals. During one of my volunteer shifts at the hospital, a nurse told me about a homeless patient who’d come to the ER. Waiting for some tests, the patient worried about his pets. “I had to leave them outside, with my shopping cart,” he said.

The nurse went outside, and found a shopping cart loaded with the patient’s possessions, including two clean, spacious pet carriers. In one, a calm, healthy cat was eating a piece of boneless chicken breast. In the other, a calm, healthy guinea pig was nibbling on a piece of biscotti. The nurse went back inside and told the patient, “Your pets are fine. Don’t worry.”

But a passerby saw the animals and called Animal Control. The patient was terrified that his beloved pets would be taken away. But after the Animal Control officer had looked at the cat and the guinea pig, he came back inside to talk to the patient. “Your pets look fine, sir, and I can tell you’re taking good care of them. But, you know, it’s dangerous for them out there, because someone could steal them or hurt them. So here’s my card. The next time you have to come to the ER, please call me, and I’ll come watch your animals to make sure they’re safe.”

Instead of abusing his power, the Animal Control officer used it to love a poor neighbor. I think both Francis and Jesus would approve. I think the Protest Chaplains would, too.

Amen.

Return of The Necessary Beggar!

2011-09-22T00:14:00.000-07:00

My favorite of my books, The Necessary Beggar, is finally available on Kindle. For months, the release date read "December 31, 2012." I'm so glad they got it out there early!

The weightless edition, just in time for the holiday season!

Mass Casualty

2011-09-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

The first I knew of the horrific crash at the Reno Air Races today was when my friend Arthur Chenin called me a little before 6:00 and said, "You should go back to the hospital." I'd only gotten back from my afternoon volunteer shift a few hours earlier.

I tried calling the ED to see if I was needed, but of course couldn't get through, so I threw my scrubs and ID badge back on and just drove down there. The ED itself was like something out of Breugel: More staff than I've ever seen in the department, because everyone had been called in, and much, much more seriously injured patients than I've ever seen in the department. As I commented later to Gary, the place made ER look like Sesame Street. I've never seen that much blood. The doctors all already had thousand-yard stares. One of them spotted me, plucked at my sleeve, and pulled me into a room where a patient was surrounded by at least five staff members, and somebody was saying "the CT looked really bad, we should go on to the next person," and I left that room and spotted a staff chaplain and asked him what to do and he told me just to go around letting people know we were there, but I couldn't get into any of the rooms because the beds were circled by so many medical people, and anyway those patients weren't conscious or in any shape to ask for chaplaincy services. I did speak briefly to a fellow in one of the minor-injury rooms -- he had a cut finger -- who, with a buddy, was watching the disaster coverage on the news, both of them wide-eyed, and I introduced myself but they didn't need anything, and I warned them that they'd probably have to wait much longer than usual to be seen, and they said, "Of course, of course, don't worry about it. Thank you for talking to us."

So I left again, spotted another staff chaplain, and followed her into the waiting room, thinking to find family members there, and indeed there were dazed and bruised and bloodied people, and other people frowning down at cell phones, but the staff chaplain and the nurses had it covered, so I went back into the ED and asked what I should do and someone said, "Go downstairs. They're setting up waiting areas for the victims' families in the auditoriums."

I went down there. I helped move tables and chairs around. Dietary was bringing in beverages and snacks, so I ate some myself, thinking I might need my strength. Various other chaplains wandered in: hospital chaplains, hospice chaplains, law-enforcement chaplains. I think every chaplain in Northern Nevada had converged on the place. We stood around chatting, and a few family members and other bystanders showed up, and we chatted with them, but at any one time, there were more chaplains in the room than chaplainees, and that was before a phalanx of smartly uniformed Trauma Intervention Program volunteers marched through the door.

To be sure, I heard my share of horrors. Several people said, "Body parts were everywhere." Someone said, "I had to step around brains." Someone said, "I saw a shoe with only a foot in it." Lots of survivors' guilt: "I heard a voice in my head telling me to get out of there, and I did, but now four of my friends are in the hospital." "I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I came back, my box wasn't there anymore." I talked to someone who saw the pilot as the plane crashed: "You could tell he was trying really hard to wrestle that plane away from the grandstand and back towards the tarmac." I talked to two people who said, "We were on either side of our buddy, and a piece of metal came flying towards us, and he got hit and we didn't." I talked to someone who knew one friend was dead and didn't know about other friends; I talked to several people who had loved ones in surgery ("Oh, he got off really lightly, he only lost a finger, he'll be fine"); I talked to people who didn't actually know if their loved ones had been brought to this hospital and were desperately trying to get information.

Most surreal moments: 1) The snippets of Brahms' lullaby that came over the PA twice, alerting us that babies had just been born in the midst of the carnage. 2) The Code Blue that came over the PA for a room in the ED. Every emergency responder in the hospital's already there: you need to call a Code to summon them?

I told the people who came to the auditorium to take good care of themselves, told them to watch out for signs of PTSD (repetitive thoughts, nightmares, etc.), told them that clergy and therapists and journaling can help. I listened a lot. But, for the most part, there was nothing for me to do that fifty other people in the building couldn't do as well or better, so after three hours, I left.

As selfish as it may sound to put it this way, here's what I learned from this experience:

1. I've always wondered if I could handle trauma. After tonight, I think I could.

2. I must really like being a chaplain, because I wanted to do more tonight, not less (not, God knows, that I don't mourn and grieve the occasion).

3. In a mass disaster, every helping resource in the area shows up, and I trust those resources will continue to be available to everyone touched by this horror -- and the psychological toll alone will be huge -- in the coming months. So, weird as it sounds, the work I did during my much quieter afternoon shift today seems more important, because those folks weren't on the news. Nobody else was rushing to their side. The suicidal patient who sobbed and hugged me and was so grateful for prayer didn't have every chaplain in northern Nevada showing up to offer help. My weekly conversations with ordinary ED patients are (usually) much less dramatic than the ones I had tonight, but they're also less redundant.

Which is all a way of saying that my quiet little niche is fine with me, thanks.

And now I'm going to have a very delayed dinner. Rice Krispie Treats and peanuts just don't count as a meal.

Handwoven Two-Pocket Shoulder Bag

2011-09-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest craft project. I used lengths of wooden dowel to reinforce the top of the bag and the bottoms of the two pockets. The body of the bag's one length of fabric, folded and sewn. Fun!

The Full Set!

2011-09-01T17:12:00.000-07:00

I inadvertently left the pretty white rock out of the first photo. My bad!

Caprica Climbing the Drying Rack

2011-09-01T16:02:00.000-07:00

This is on Facebook, but I couldn't resist posting it here, too. Isn't she adorable?

Pretty Pebbles!

2011-09-01T16:01:00.001-07:00

flask sent me these lovely pebbles, all individually wrapped and labeled, from New England and Canada! Thanks, flask! I love them!

Also cookies . . . which, sadly, I can't eat because of the gluten issue. But Gary and our houseguest will enjoy them!

Why God's Love Matters

2011-08-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

I'm cross-posting this from Facebook, because I think the question's important.

*

Last night, my friend Chris Coake, motivated by his intense dislike of Pat Robertson, posted some quotations from Jillette's new book about atheism. You can find that post, and responses to it, here.

My rather forceful dislike of these quotations (which imply that Christians are pathetic losers who need imaginary friends because they don't have real ones) resulted in a conversation in which Chris posed this question: "Why, exactly, is the love of Christ/God so valuable to people of faith, and not to atheists?"

There are all kinds of answers to that question, and other people have addressed it more thoroughly than I can, and my own answers change according to my mood and circumstances. But for me, right now, the answer can be summed up in two words: social justice.

Look around. There are a lot of people in the world who aren't loved by other people: prisoners, addicts, mental patients, the poor. Look at all the hatred that gets spewed on Facebook itself, not to mention a whole lot of other places. The kind of Christian faith I admire and try to practice -- because there are many versions I don't -- is predicated on the core belief that God loves everybody, and therefore we're called to love everybody, too. Even people we don't like. Even people we'd rather hate. Even people who hate us. Even -- oh, honestly, you can't mean it? -- Pat Robertson. (Insert gagging sound here.)

Jesus loved everybody, and made a particular point of loving the people the rest of his culture hated. Lepers. People with despised ethnic/tribal identities, like Samaritans. Women. The unclean, the untouchable, the stigmatized, the scapegoated. Jillette's quotations suggest that if we have the love of our family and friends, we don't need God; Jesus spoke out quite forcefully about the fact that people who remain within the cozy cocoon of their families and friends are barricading themselves against the broken, hurting world we're all called to help heal. Sure, we're called to love our families and friends, but we're also called to love "the least of these," the people who make us really uncomfortable, the people we've been told to have nothing to do with, the people we'd rather ignore. We're called to love everybody, like Jesus did. That's the whole point.

It's worth noting that even he didn't get there right away. It was a process. My favorite character in the Bible is the Samaritan woman -- despised both for her gender and her ethnicity -- who asks Jesus for healing for her daughter and, when he declines (because she's not the Right Kind of People), stands up for herself, very cleverly, and gets the blessing after all. She's the only person in the Gospels who argues with Jesus and wins, and she's a stigmatized minority. You go, girl!

The Christian story reminds us that radical love isn't easy, and that it will get you killed in, oh, three years or so if you really practice it. (MLK Jr. and Oscar Romero are more recent reminders of that fact.)

Now, to try to address some inevitable objections: can the non-faithful love this way? Sure. People who do this work as part of faith communities often have a lower burnout rate, though. And are there people who call themselves Christians who don't love this way? (Hi, Pat Robertson!) You betcha. But they aren't the only Christians out there, even if they want to make you think they are. (As a person on the left, I believe that the Christian Right is the Christian Wrong, even though I know the Christian Right considers the Christian Left the Christian Left Behind.)

As for God's love not mattering to atheists, well, I personally believe it's what sustains all of us even if we aren't aware of it. You're free to disagree.

And those lonely, pathetic people who need to believe that God loves them because nobody else does? Are you going to make fun of them? Really?

Let me tell you a story.

Many people reading this know that I volunteer as a lay ER chaplain (and if you're reading this on the blog, rather than on FB, you've probably already heard the story). One evening many years ago, I knocked on the door of a room and heard a soft, "Come in." Inside, an emaciated man hooked up to IVs lay on a gurney. When I told him I was the volunteer chaplain, he started to cry.

"No, I visit everybody here," I told him. "My being here doesn't mean you're dying. Don't be scared!"

"That's not why I'm crying," he said. "I am dying. I'm dying of AIDS, and fifteen minutes ago I was praying for God to send me a sign that he still loved me, and then you walked through the door. You're a sign from God."

He needed God's love precisely because other people had stigmatized and isolated him, but what reassured him of that love was a flesh-and-blood person, not an imaginary teddy bear. My friends who work with prisoners have lots of similar stories. God calls us to love everybody; surprisingly often, that's simply a matter of showing up.

Okay, I'll stop now. I'm sure I haven't persuaded anyone who didn't already agree with me, but well, Chris, you asked. For evidence that other people are on this side of the issue, rather than Pat Robertson's, check out The Christian Left and Seminary of the Street.

Outcomes

2011-08-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

The surgery went fine, thank goodness. Our friend will be in the hospital for about a week; her husband will be staying with us, since they live a bit too far away for commuting to be practical. I'm grateful we have a guest room to offer.

Still no writing today, but I am wet-finishing two pieces of weaving I'm pleased with. Tomorrow the car goes to the garage and I'll be stuck home most of the day. Will. Write. Then.

Honest.

Later: Got a little writing done after all. Ha!

Monday

2011-08-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

Hella original post title, what?

I didn't write today, alas. I wove a bit, swam a bit, wasted entirely too much time on Facebook, and wound up going to the hospital after all (to visit a friend, not to volunteer). The friend will have surgery tomorrow. I can't be more specific here for privacy reasons, but let's all pray for everyone facing surgery, shall we?

Meanwhile, my friend Inez flew back home to discover that a hailstorm had destroyed her car's windshield while she was gone. So while we're at it, let's pray for everyone dealing with severe weather. Also, car repairs.

Which reminds me that I have to take our car in to the shop, so they can fix my perpetually illuminated "check engine light" icon (which has already been fixed at least four times) long enough for the car to pass its smog so I can renew my registration. My mechanic assures me that the CEL issue doesn't interfere with the actual operation of the car. What he needs to do to fix it this time, though (since the other fixes have lasted about ten miles each) will cost about $400.

Gack.

Today the loom I want (used and discounted) was advertised on Ravelry, but someone else snatched it up ten minutes before I saw the ad. Just as well, given the car situation.

Sunday

2011-08-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

WorldCon is over. I'm registered at Fourth Street Fantasy for next year and on the waitlist for World Fantasy this year. I bought the Laurie Edison ring (tourmaline and sterling silver, gorgeous) as a birthday gift to myself, but because she has to size it, I probably won't have it until after my birthday. Elsewhere in birthday land, I went to Inez' birthday party, thrown by several of her old friends in Reno, which featured a truly fantastic Day of the Dead birthday cake.

Tomorrow, Inez flies back to Iowa.

Many other people are already gone.

I'm both sad and relieved. For five days now, I've been on a little piece of My Planet. Now, most of My People are going home, and I have to resume the stranger-in-a-strange-land gig.

On the other hand, tomorrow I get to sleep in. And exercise again, which hasn't been possible during the con. And maybe get some writing done. I'm very glad I had the foresight to cancel my hospital shift tomorrow!

For the rest of this evening, I plan to be a vegetable.

WorldCon

2011-08-21T00:07:00.000-07:00

This WorldCon has, at the very least, been wonderful for me. It may turn out to have been life-changing.

For one thing, I got to see all kinds of old friends, including my beloved former students Kurt Adams and Inez Schaechterle -- with whom I've hung out for much of the con -- and my editor/NYC buddies Ellen Datlow, David Hartwell and Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden (most of whom have also edited me at one time or another).

I got very satisfying strokes for the panels I moderated, especially the one on "Faith and Science," which went very smoothly despite the potential for catastrophe. I went to excellent panels and presentations. I got a lot of knitting done.

But I also got a lot of very specific reinforcement about my own identity as a writer. For instance:

* At my first panel, someone showed up with, I swear, a copy of every book and story I've ever written, asked me to sign them, and then gave me a beautiful piece of fluorite to thank me.

* When I was wandering around the Dealers Room, someone told me that "Gestella" is "the best werewolf story ever written."

* Only ten people attended my reading, but one of them was Cory Doctorow, a Much Bigger Name than I am, who appeared to genuinely love the reading and told me it reminded him of some of Kelly Link's work. She's an Infinitely Bigger Name than I am.

* I didn't expect many people to come to my signing today. It was a group signing, and Carrie Vaughn was signing at the same time; I figured she'd have lines around the block and I'd be twiddling my thumbs, so I brought my knitting. Carrie -- sitting next to me, as it turned out -- indeed had long lines, but mine weren't bad. I signed solidly for the first half hour. After that, it got a bit spottier, but not enough for me to get any knitting done. There were a few people who had multiple copies of my books, and someone who had a copy of my very first story, published in 1985 in Asimov's, and someone who said that he's bought anthologies simply because they contained stories I'd written, and several people who heaped praise on "Gestella." And towards the end of the hour, Mega-Infinitely Bigger Name Than I Am Carrie Vaughn turned to me and said, "Susan, I just want you to know that 'Gestella' blew my mind, and as a writer of werewolf fiction I tell other people to read your story, because I think it's definitive."

Holy crap.

* I've always been deeply moved and honored that Jo Walton, whose work I admire tremendously (and who's also much better known than I am), has said glowing things about my work in print. I was very excited to learn that she'd be at Renovation. I looked forward to meeting her in person. I was flattered when she asked if we could have tea together and hang out for an hour between panels, and more than a little startled when she said that one of the reasons she came to the con was to meet me, "because you don't travel much, and I knew you lived here."

Jo proceeded to give me a bracing pep talk. She reads the blog (hi, Jo!), and, among other things, said briskly, "It's perfectly obvious from your blog that you spiral down into depression and then pull yourself back out, but you need to get to more cons. The external validation's really important." We talked about cons: WorldCon and World Fantasy are often impossible because they conflict with teaching. Lately, the only cons I've attended have been WisCon and Mythcon, and even that's been spotty. I'm going to Mythcon again next year; I've been waffling about WisCon. Jo recommended the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention, which I've heard about but have never gotten to. Inez and I are talking about sharing a room there next year.

After tea with Jo (coffee for me, actually, which may have been unwise that late in the afternoon), I went home to help Gary get ready for dinner, since we were having Inez and Kurt and Kurt's wife Shauna over. I babbled to Gary about all this. Before I'd even told him about Jo's depression comment, he said, "You need to get to more cons. This is doing you more good than all the meds you've ever taken. It's all about connection and community."

Yep.

I know this probably sounds like a lot of insufferable bragging, but I've effectively been in exile from my community for a long time. Part of that's geographical; a lot of it's been self-imposed; and it's been reinforced and deepened by my increasing marginalization within my department. Some people there admire the fact that I write, but as far as I can tell, none of my English Department colleagues read my fiction, or particularly like it if they do (other university friends, especially in the music department, have been loyal fans and a wonderful cheering section). Various of my colleagues clearly think I'm a little strange -- one person I like and admire once called me a "fanatic" to my face -- and between all that and the fact that the job's become more difficult and less rewarding for all of us, leading to a universal nosedive in morale, I haven't felt deeply affirmed at work. I know some of that's my fault, especially because I'm terrible at certain kinds of political games, but blaming myself only makes me feel worse.

Church has filled in a lot of the holes -- faith's really a huge antidepressant -- but it can't do everything.

The recent three-year grief-fest hasn't helped any of this, of course (and that's not my fault, and I think my reactions have been entirely human and understandable).

So I went to WorldCon figuring that I'd see some old friends and that nobody else would know who I was, and that would be okay, because it would be my fault, because I haven't been writing much.

What I discovered instead is that people in my field know my work and admire it. People I've never met know my work and admire it. People I admire, blazingly successful and famous and talented people, know my work and admire it. I've written things that matter to other human beings.

It is very difficult to communicate what this feels like. Like floating in airless space and then finding yourself standing on solid ground in a beautiful forest? Like being a ghost and then regaining a body? (Good heavens: am I empathizing with Sauron and Voldemort?) Those are cheesy metaphors, and unsatisfying besides. Let's just say that I've found my country again, or my planet, and learned that I was always welcome there.

So yes, I'll definitely try to get to more cons. I'm exhausted, and I'll be grateful to get back to a normal schedule when WorldCon's over, but I'm going to be very sad when everyone leaves.

In the meantime, I may buy myself a token of citizenship. Y'know how in some fantasy stories, people think their adventures Elsewhere were just a dream, until they discover that they still have a coin or a key or a crown they were given there? The fluorite rock would work, but I can't keep it with me all the time, so I may indulge my shopping obsession and buy a ring. Laurie Edison makes gorgeous jewelry and sells it at cons. It's pricy, so I've never bought any of it. But today I tried on a series of rings and both Laurie and I went, "Oh, wow," at one particular one with a shiny blue stone that looks like opal but I think is something else I can't remember at the moment.

If that's still available tomorrow, I may spring for it, as a sign of renewed commitment to my SF/F citizenship. If it isn't available, I'll cart the fluorite around, maybe, or get some smaller thing. Either way, I'll be registering for Fourth Street.

This is an exceedingly long post. Thank you for bearing with me!

Today's Keeper

2011-08-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

Among volunteer chaplains, it's axiomatic that even one good visit a shift means it was worth coming to the hospital that day. Some volunteers say all their shifts include a visit like that. Mine don't -- some shifts are dull, and some are exhausting and infuriating -- but today's did.

A nurse told me a psych patient had asked for a chaplain. The patient brightened when I introduced myself. "I'm glad you're here. I've been waiting for you. Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Why's God letting me suffer like this?"

Oh, man. Theodicy 101. "I don't know. I do know that it's okay to ask questions, and it's okay to be angry. You can yell at God. God can take it."

The patient nodded. "That makes sense. That's a good enough answer for me."

I relaxed, since that particular subject usually gets a lot more complicated. "Would you like me to pray with you?"

"I don't know how to pray."

"That's okay; I do. It's kind of what I do around here." The patient laughed, and I offered my standard-prayer-with-personalization (you can find my Hospital Prayer 101 post here).

By the end of the prayer, the patient was crying. That happens pretty often, so I'm used to it. When other people have prayed over me, especially for healing, I've sometimes cried too: there's something about a) knowing that your concerns have been heard and b) handing them over to Somebody Else that tends to release the floodgates.

I handed the patient some tissues. "Here, you can keep the pack. This is something else I do around here."

The patient laughed again. "Can I tell you something?"

"Of course."

"That prayer moved me more than any prayer I've ever heard."

"Thank you!" I said, floored. Patients often say "that was a nice prayer" or even "that was beautiful," but I'm not used to superlatives.

"May I have a hug?"

"Of course," I said, and hugged the patient, and then moved on to the rest of what was a fairly chaotic, and intermittently crappy, shift. But it was okay. I had my keeper. It mattered to someone that I showed up today.

Please note that I'm not claiming any special skills here: I think any chaplain who walked into that room would have had the same effect, since the patient was clearly primed and eager for the visit. But I'm selfishly glad that I was the one who was there. It's also axiomatic among volunteer chaplains -- and volunteers in general -- that we get much more than we give.

The Same Boat

2011-08-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

Here's tomorrow's homily, which I'll be giving at the St. Stephen's reunion in Wadsworth, on the Pyramid Lake reservation. The readings are 1 Kings 19:9-19 and Matthew 14:22-33. Special thanks to Ken Houghton for helping me find a copy of the Patrick O'Leary poem on very short notice!

*

Good morning. I’m delighted to be here, and to see so many of you again, and I’d like to thank Eric Heidecker for inviting me to preach today.

This morning’s readings are about people, scared out of their wits, who learn that they can’t get away from where they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be doing. Elijah, hunted by people who want to kill him, flees to Horeb, only to have God command him to go back. He still has kings and prophets to annoint. He doesn’t get to run away.

In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is still badly shaken by the death of John the Baptist. His first attempt to sneak away for some alone time was interrupted by a huge crowd, desperate for healing, who followed him. He healed them, but then they needed their supper. We heard about the famous Feeding of the Five Thousand last Sunday.

When the story picks up this morning, I imagine that Jesus is pretty tired. “Finally!” he must be thinking. “They’re all healed. They’re all fed. Now I can send everyone home and have some time to myself.” And so he does: packs the disciples off in a boat, dismisses the crowds, and climbs up a mountain to pray. He spends all night there, a much-needed mini-sabbatical. But in the morning, he again has work to do. The disciples, hapless as ever, are stuck in their boat in the middle of a storm in the middle of the Sea of Galilee.

I’m told that the Sea of Galilee is quite geologically similar to Pyramid Lake. The winds on Pyramid Lake can be really dangerous, and anyone who’s been in a small boat, or even a larger one, knows how terrifying a storm on the water can be. People die out there. Anyone who knows the water knows that, so it’s a pretty safe bet that the disciples were frightened out of their minds even before they saw a ghostly figure walking towards them across the churning water.

Seeing the ghost freaks them out even more, until Jesus speaks words of comfort. That’s when Peter says, “Lord, if it’s you, command me to come to you on the water.”

Peter’s always doing stuff like this, trying to set himself apart. Yesterday, August 6, was the Feast of the Transfiguration, when Jesus climbed up the mountaintop and was joined by Moses and Elijah just before being clothed in light. Remember how Peter responded to that event? “Hey, Jesus, let’s build some houses and stay up here.” That time, Jesus said no. Sorry, Peter. We have to go back down the mountain. We have work to do.

This time, he says yes. Peter isn’t speaking out of pride now; he’s frightened, and Jesus wants to comfort him, because that’s what Jesus does. So he calls Peter, who starts walking on water just like his beloved teacher. Mind you, the storm hasn’t stopped yet. It won’t stop until Jesus gets back into the boat. I think Peter’s so desperate to be out of that blasted, bucking boat, so desperate to rejoin his Lord, the source of his safety, that he doesn’t even realize at first what’s happening. But the minute he looks down and sees the whitecaps under his feet, he panics again. He sinks, and Jesus has to haul him, sputtering and coughing, back up.

Where does Jesus take him? Back into the boat, while the storm’s still raging. Sorry, Peter. You can’t stay on the mountain and leave your friends behind. You can’t get out of the boat and leave your friends behind, either, not for good. You still have work to do. You’re in the same boat with the other disciples. You’re in the same boat with Elijah, and with me. You’re in the same boat with everyone who has heard God’s voice, whether it’s offering comfort over the raging winds of the storm or issuing commands in the perfect silence afterwards.

God’s people don’t get to run away, and they don’t get to opt out. Jonah learned that. Elijah learned it. Jesus learned it, when he prayed for the cup to pass from him and it didn’t.

All of us here this morning are in that same boat. All the baptized are in the same boat, whether we’re safely ensconced in a church we love, or bailing furiously to try to keep a parish from sinking, or flailing in the freezing water after our beloved home has vanished under the waves. Whatever else is happening in our lives, whatever storms we’re riding out and whatever fears we’re facing, we’re still bound by the promises we made at baptism. Our job is to feed the hungry, to comfort the sick, to seek justice for the oppressed, and to welcome the stranger. Sometimes that work is exhausting. Sometimes it’s joyous and uplifting. It’s always with us.

This morning’s Gospel lesson reminds us of the promises that come with this backbreaking responsibility. God will grant us the rest we need, the mountaintop respites we need to replenish ourselves. If we listen for the voice of God, we will indeed hear it. In the midst of chaos, we may discover a startling ability to walk on water, however briefly, and when we sink, Jesus will haul us up by the scruff of our necks. Necessity is leavened by grace.

Above and beyond those promises lies the larger one, the ultimate one, the promise that the ends we fear -- economic collapse, disaster, death -- are not really the end. Beyond death lies resurrection. To get there, though, you have to stay in the boat.

I have to admit that when St. Stephen’s closed, I thought about simply leaving the church. I’m at St. Paul’s now, and I like it, but it’s still not home for me, not the way St. Stephen’s was. I know it never will be unless I stick with it, so I keep doggedly going to church every Sunday. But now St. Paul’s is having some of the same problems -- financial shortfalls, sparsely filled pews -- that brought down St. Stephen’s. This is happening to mainstream denominations all over the country, and it’s only one symptom of the very scary economic storm the entire country is weathering right now. The fact that churches are having so much trouble means that the people they serve are having even more trouble. When churches struggle, our baptismal promises become more important, not less.

I’m praying that St. Paul’s will pull through. In the meantime, I still volunteer as a lay hospital chaplain. That work reminds me, every week, how many people in this storm need any rescue we can offer, whether it takes the form of a hot meal, a cup of cold water, or simply the lifeline offered by anyone willing to listen. And it reminds me every week that when human rescues fail, God is still there, waiting to haul us out of the water by the scruff of our necks.

I don’t believe that belonging to a church is the only way to do God’s work of healing the world. It’s the way that works best for me, and for many of us. In church, we can all pull on the oars together. But church is only one vessel. God has given other people other vessels, and will give us other vessels, too, if we need them. Ultimately, though, the planet itself -- God’s beloved creation -- is the boat we share with everyone else who lives here. This ship, we can’t jump.

Shortly after the horrific events of September 11, 2001, poet Patrick O’Leary wrote a poem called “The Boat.” I would like to close by reading it. It speaks to the time when it was written, but I believe it speaks to our time, too, and to Jesus’.

The Boat
by Patrick O'Leary

I am in a boat.
No. We are in a boat.
And it's not a boat
but you know what I mean.

And the boat is going somewhere
Or maybe nowhere.
But it is floating for now.
Unless it's sinking.

It is so comforting to be in a boat.
To have a vessel. A destination.
We don't know the destination.
But at least we're floating.

But then there is the ocean
Or this small part of its depth
That surrounds us, buoys us
As if it wanted us to be here get there.

We do not think about the depths
Below us. The cold dark water
Unbreathable undrinkable.
Who would want to drink an ocean even if they could?

So this boat. This water.
You and I
between here and there.
Is somebody rowing?

In this whole world
There is only you and I and this boat
On this ocean. And what happens
depends on us or the ocean.

I say we have to be very careful.
We are only so strong.
A boat is a delicate thing.
And I have never seen an ocean broken.

I say we love each other
But that is so easy to say.
That means knowing
who we're rowing with.

We did not choose the ocean.
We did not choose the boat.
We did not choose each other.
But we must choose.

Amen.

First Woven Scarf

2011-08-01T17:23:00.000-07:00

Actually, it's the second, but the first was so ugly I'm not counting it. This one's not perfect, but I'm still happy with it. It's 7 inches wide by 61 inches long; hard to tell scale from this photo. Weaving it took less than two days!

Lotsa Stuff

2011-07-31T10:11:00.000-07:00

Hi, everybody! Sorry not to have posted in a few days; I'm spending a lot of time over at FB these days. It really is a fun way to keep in touch with people.

A few items of note:

* For those of you in Reno: On Saturday August 13 at 2:30, I'll be giving a talk and reading at the Nevada Historical Society. This is part of a Worldcon promotion. The curator says that after my talk, "we will show the bad sci-fi movie 'Godmonster of Indian Flats' for Nevada-themed sci-fi." Mark your calendars! Bring popcorn!

* I now have 71,000 words of the rough draft, with completion of same estimated around August 10.

* I love weaving on my new Cricket loom and can't wait to try different techniques. My first scarf was short and ugly; the second, currently in progress, is longer and less ugly.

* It's really wonderful to be going into August without having to worry about prepping fall classes. I needed this sabbatical!

* Caprica is well; she goes to the vet for her FIV/FLV tests tomorrow, and, we hope, will be "released to GenPop," as Gary puts it, soon thereafter.

* Last night we watched a TV special about the Serengeti. As a baby elephant and mom traipsed across the screen, James Earl Jones praised the devotion of elephants and said, "The bond between mother and daughter can last fifty years." My first thought was, "Lucky elephant. I only had my mother for forty-nine." I'm doing better, but still miss her.

* There was a wildfire across the street two nights ago, about half a mile away. We watched it from Gary's study; when someone started pounding on our front door, I thought maybe we were being evacuated, but no, it was two friends who'd come over to watch the fire. Summer sport in Reno! (Cars lined the street, too.) Luckily, they got it under control quickly, and there was never any threat to structures.

I think that's about it. Hope you're all well!

Kneady Paws

2011-07-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

Got Things to Say!

2011-07-27T09:01:00.001-07:00

The Cat We Said We Wouldn't Get

2011-07-26T21:20:00.000-07:00

Remember my noble resolve not to get another cat until after my sabbatical, when I'd be better able to handle vet bills on a restored salary? That lasted all of twenty-six days.

Today the Nevada Humane Society sent out an urgent appeal via Facebook for people to adopt pets: they're swamped with dogs and cats, and were offering reduced adoption fees: $5 for an adult cat and $30 for a kitten. And they were making dire noises about how animals would have to be euthanized if they didn't find homes. So, sucker that I am, I asked Gary if we could adopt a kitten now; sucker that he is, he agreed.

There were a lot of people there, adopting, which was heartening, because I've never seen so many animals in the building. The appeal had said they had "hundreds" of cats, and they weren't kidding: cat-cages three-deep, housing several cats and kittens each, lined the walls of each room and hallway, and that's outside the normal cat rooms. (There were also quite a few rabbits and other small mammals. We didn't even go into the dog kennels, but I'm sure they were similarly crowded.)

We walked around for a while, checking out the kittens. All of them were adorable, but we wanted a female, so that narrowed it down. (When we got Bali, we thought he was a female, until the fateful surgery, and by then we weren't about to return him.) We also wanted a cat we'd be able to tell easily from the other two; there were a lot of gorgeous all-black kitties, but we already have Bali, and we saw several very pretty kitties who were the spitting image of Figaro.

We also had fairly exacting age requirements: young enough to be accepted easily by the two grown cats, but not so young that early weaning would cause behavior problems. A lot of Bali's weirdnesses can be traced, we think, to his not getting enough time with his mom. I fell in love with a very spunky black-and-white kitten, but she was only four weeks old, and Gary said, "Nope. I don't want to go through that again." And there were other black and white females, but I thought it would be better to have a cat who didn't remind me of Harley.

I thought an orange cat would be nice; I've never had one, and there were lots of cute orange kittens. The problem was that they all seemed to be boys. "Why not ask if they have any females?" Gary said.

So I did, and a friendly staffer checked on the computer, and sure enough, back in one of the cat rooms, there was a four-month-old female who'd just been brought in today (after being spayed at Animal Control next door). The staffer took us to visit, and we fell in love with her, and because she's just at the cusp of when they define cats as adults -- although technically, they're kittens for the first year -- we only had to pay five dollars to adopt her. He told us that orange females are unusual, so that was another plus.

We named her Caprica. (BSG fans out there will recognize "Caprica Kitty" as a pun on "Caprica City.") She has incredibly soft fur and lovely spots; we think maybe there's some Bengal in there. Her purr fills the room. She's litter trained. She's curious and friendly, and has already given me head bumps. We think she must have had previous owners and gotten out or been abandoned; she's clearly been well cared for.

We're keeping her in isolation for a week or two, as we do with all new cats. She needs time to heal from her surgery, and we need to get her tested for FIV/FLV -- which NV Humane Society doesn't do, because it's too expensive, although she's had all her other shots -- and keeping her apart from the other cats will give everyone time to calm down and get used to the idea of being roommates. Right now, Bali's an even needier wreck than usual (he had fits the minute Gary got the carrying case out of the garage, even though it wasn't for him), and Figaro and Caprica are facing off on their respective sides of my study door, trying to suss each other out.

See? Facebook's useful after all! Also a lot of fun; I'm really enjoying it.

So now we're up to our full three-cat complement again. I thought that was the limit for cat ownership in the county, but the NHS staffer said no, the limit's seven. "You shouldn't have told her that," Gary said. Hmmmmmmm . . . .

Little and Big

2011-07-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

Here's today's homily; the readings are 1 Kings 3:5-12 and Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.

I'm preaching again in two weeks, at the St. Stephen's reunion. I've rarely, if ever, had to write two homilies this close together, and I have deep respect for people who do this every Sunday.

*

In November 1998, Esquire published a cover article by Tom Junod about Fred Rogers, host of the beloved children’s television show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Junod’s immensely moving profile includes this story:

On December 1, 1997 . . . a boy . . . told his friends to watch out, that he was going to do something "really big" the next day at school, and the next day at school he took his gun and his ammo and his earplugs and shot eight classmates who had clustered for a prayer meeting. Three died, and they were still children, almost. The shootings took place in West Paducah, Kentucky, and when Mister Rogers heard about them, he said, "Oh, wouldn't the world be a different place if [that boy] had said, 'I'm going to do something really little tomorrow,'" and he decided to dedicate a week of the Neighborhood to the theme "Little and Big." He wanted to tell children that what starts out little can sometimes become big, so they could devote themselves to little dreams without feeling bad about them.

The really big news this week is the horrific massacre in Norway, which seems to be everywhere we look, inescapable and omnipresent. Our Good News this week, our Gospel reading, is about really little things, the seemingly insignificant items we can so easily overlook: the mustard seed that grows into a large, life-giving shrub; yeast, invisible when stirred into dough, that transforms it into the miracle of bread; a fine pearl, grown from a grain of sand, that’s worth more than everything else in the market.

The Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus says, dwells in and results from these really little things. Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and I have a strong hunch that he was thinking about this Gospel passage when he planned his week of “Little and Big” programs.

Jesus is speaking metaphorically, indirectly. As usual, he doesn’t tell us everything, but forces us to figure things out for ourselves. From this morning’s metaphors, here are a few things we can figure out about the Kingdom of Heaven.

First, it requires patience. Mustard seeds don’t become large plants overnight.

Second, it requires faith. You won’t plant the mustard seed unless you believe it will grow. You won’t look for the pearl unless you believe the market contains things worth finding.

Third, it requires discernment. Here’s a jumble of stuff in a market stall: souvenir t-shirts and plastic fridge magnets and 100% genuine local handicrafts made in China, and hey, the merchant’s offering a special sale on paste-glass rhinestones, five hundred for ninety-nine cents, and over here, almost hidden in a corner, is a small, round white thing with smelly bits of oyster still clinging to it. What are you looking for, and what will you buy?

And finally, attaining the Kingdom may require sacrifice, both of wealth and reputation. Dude! You can get five hundred of these pretty paste-glass rhinestones for ninety-nine cents, and you’re selling all that you have to buy that little smelly round white thing? Are you nuts?

A firm grasp on history helps with all this. Just as that large shrub started out as a tiny seed, famous King Solomon started out as “a little child” in the midst of “a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted.” We most easily discern the Kingdom of God, then, when we look both forward and back.

In fact, the Kingdom is everywhere around us, and also, Jesus promises, within us. Because our really big news is so often about atrocity -- Norway, 9/11, Columbine -- all of us need to cultivate the discipline of seeking out and tending the Kingdom, the Good News that starts out really little, usually where no one else is looking. It might show up, for instance, in a stable, in an obscure corner of an occupied territory, in the form of that weakest of creatures, a newborn human infant.

But that was two thousand years ago. If the Kingdom is everywhere, invisible and omnipresent as yeast in bread, where do we find it now?

With luck, all of us have many answers to that question. Here are two of mine.

First, I firmly believe that we become citizens of the Kingdom, helping to create and maintain it, when we perform even the smallest acts of mercy and charity, loving our neighbors as Jesus commands us to do. The really big bad news, the horror we see on TV, is often the work of people who’ve used terror and violence to tear huge holes in creation. It’s easy for us to despair, to believe that nothing can fix these gaping rents. Certainly we cannot do so by ourselves. But each tiny act of kindness is one stitch, repairing those holes, and enough small stitches will mend even the most tattered fabric.

Some of you know that I volunteer as a lay ER chaplain. On Friday, I helped an elderly man eat his lunch, cutting his turkey for him because he couldn’t do it himself. That tiny act couldn’t fix what happened in Norway, but it made me –- and him -– feel better. It kept me focused on what I can do instead of on what I can’t, and it reminded me that even the smallest kindnesses are infinitely valuable to those they help. When any of us feed our neighbors, we expand the Kingdom, giving despair and atrocity a little less growing room.

Here is my second example of finding the Kingdom in something small and easily overlooked. A few years ago, my husband and I spent a week in Honolulu, staying in one of the garish Waikiki mega-hotels. We love to snorkel, and before flying to Oahu, we’d read guide books describing the best snorkel spots on the island. Most, because they’re in the guide books, are overcrowded tourist meccas.

Our first morning on the island, we strolled along the Waikiki beach until we reached a small park, a series of pocket beaches separated by jetties. On a whim, we asked one of the lifeguards, “Hey, any good snorkeling around here?”

The lifeguard pointed two jetties over. “There. The fish love the rocks and the coral.”

We walked over to the tiny beach he’d indicated, donned the snorkel gear we’d brought along just in case, entered the water -- and found ourselves in heaven. The water was crystalline, filled with brilliantly colored fish, so numerous they could not be numbered or counted. We watched schools of angelfish, butterflyfish, yellow tang. We stayed there for hours, hovering above endless parades of fish. We saw no other humans. This little beach wasn’t in the guidebooks. All of our fellow snorkelers had rushed to the tourist meccas.

We returned to our pocket beach every day. It never failed to delight us, to create deep joy. We didn’t sell everything we had to keep visiting it –- although airfare to Hawai’i can feel like that –- but we did forego a host of more famous, high-profile attractions.

Coral polyps, as most of you probably know, are very small animals. Coral reefs take even longer to grow than mustard plants do, and like mustard plants, they support an enormous diversity of life. If Jesus had been a snorkeler, I’m sure the Gospels would include some parables about reefs.

I’m home in Reno now, but that little reef is still inside me. During the really big news from Norway, I’ve found myself revisiting it, cherishing its fragile peace and beauty. In the midst of horror, it comforts me. May all of us find such Kingdoms, and help others find them.

Amen.

Dangerous Woman

2011-07-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

Today was my first volunteer shift at the hospital since Mythcon. It was good to be back, but I guess my reputation as a wannabe social worker -- which is what a former spiritual-care supervisor always called me, in some exasperation -- has solidified. When I checked in with the ED case manager to see if there was anyone I should see first, he said, "No, the social-service cases are all gone."

Ha!

So I didn't get to research special-needs AA meetings today, or call shelters to get beds for homeless patients, or hand out business cards for our local crisis hotline to single parents struggling with employment issues. My most weighty visit was with an elderly patient who was having trouble communicating, but who managed to croak out "Food!" I alerted a nurse, who ordered a food tray. When lunch appeared -- turkey and stuffing, Thanksgiving in the ED -- I cut up the turkey and helped the patient eat. It reminded me poignantly of doing the same for my father.

Near the end of the shift, I did a quick sweep of the ED waiting room, which is part of my official territory (although, as usual, no one there needed my services). I jotted down the number of people I'd spoken to, since we have to keep a census of each shift, and was heading back into the department proper when a security guard snagged me. "Hey, Susan, hey, c'mere a minute, okay?"

I know most of the security guards pretty well; they're some of my favorite people at the hospital. This guard, whom I'll call A, took me gently by the arm, swung me around so I was looking directly into one of the ceiling-mounted security cameras, and said into his walkie-talkie, "Hey, B, I think I've found the security threat. Is this her? Hey, B, look at your camera! Is this her?"

"Yeah," came the crackling reply. "That's her."

"What the heck?" I said.

A was laughing. "B saw you on the cameras and told me there was a suspicious woman walking around writing things down."

"Why would that be dangerous?"

"Beats me." A shrugged and went off to respond to some other situation, hopefully one more deserving of his attention, and I went back into the department to finish my shift.

We now have a spiffy new ED with private rooms for each patient, but some of the rooms in our old quarters had three beds per cubicle, with only thin cotton sheets between them. In the old digs, a nurse once came up to me, laughing, and said, "Hey, y'know that lady who asked you for prayer in Room 12? I just brought meds to the patient next to her, and that patient whispered, 'One of your nurses is sneaking around praying over people!' I said, 'Ma'am, that's our chaplain. She's supposed to do that. It's her job.'"

As far as I know, that's the only other time I've ever alarmed anyone in the hospital. But I was really curious about the writing-as-terrorist-threat issue, so after I signed out, I stopped by the security office. When I knocked on the door, I heard A, inside, call out, "Hey, B, it's the dangerous woman!"

B was rather embarrassed, and couldn't really explain why I'd worried him so. "You were walking, and then you stopped dead and wrote something down, and I thought, 'I need to find out what this is, even if it's none of my business.'"

"But what could it have been that would have been dangerous?" I asked him. As Gary pointed out, I'm hardly the only person in the hospital who carries a clipboard and takes notes.

B didn't answer. "You could have been drawing plans for how to take the place out," A said cheerfully. I showed B my notes to reassure him, and then noticed something odd in the office next to his.

"Why do you guys have naked store-window mannequins in here?"

Actually, only one mannequin was naked. The other was wearing a t-shirt and a cardboard smiley face. "They're to model the new hospital t-shirts," A said. (Gary's theory was that the guards use these things to practice pat-downs.)

"Can I take a picture? I gotta get a picture of this." I took a picture, and they admired it, but we agreed that I probably shouldn't post it anywhere online, in case someone decided to magnify it and somehow acquired HIPAA-protected info, like the identity of the mannequins. So you'll just have to use your imagination.

I suspect B took some more teasing from his co-workers after I left. Poor guy! Better for him to be over-zealous in his duties than not careful enough.

Adventures in Alternative Medicine

2011-07-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

Today I went to see my acupuncturist, who's also a western-trained MD, for the third time. The first time I saw him, he sternly advised me to get back on western stomach meds and then used his needles to work on my sinuses, which indeed felt better. The second time I saw him, I mentioned writer's block and frustration and he did a longer session, something called "detox acupuncture," which I'd ordinarily scoff at, except that it also made me feel better.

That was at the end of June, right before my state-employee health insurance crashed and burned on July 1. (Our family deductible has now gone up to $3,800, which means that if I'm lucky, I could get through the entire year without insurance covering anything.) "Next time," I told the good doc, "I'll have to pay your full fee, not just the $25 copay."

He pondered this. "I charge $130 for a private session. I really think you should have one more detox session, and then you can start coming to the clinics." He offers acupuncture clinics where he'll treat a group of people at once, for only $40 apiece. "But you have to decide what you can afford."

I talked to Gary about it; the treatment really had made me feel better, and Gary said, "If it's just once, and it helps, then pay the $130."

So I went back today. Before we got to the needles, I asked the good doc about adrenal fatigue, which I know is highly controversial in allopathic circles. Does he believe in it? He pondered this and offered a thoughtful and carefully nuanced version of "no." (That's why I love this guy: he really does combine the best of both worlds, and so far he's never made me feel like I'm asking a stupid question.)

So then we got to the needles. "Last time we detoxified the front of your body," he told me. "This time we'll be doing the back. The front works on internal dragons; the back works on external dragons."

"Mmmmph?" I said, already lying on my stomach on very comfy cushions, which meant I was talking into one of those donut pillows massage therapists use. "Dragons?"

"Chinese dragons," he said. "They're good dragons. They chase away evil. The internal dragons chase away internal evil; the external dragons chase away external evil."

"Ah," I said, and he inserted the needles and left me to "cook" for a few minutes, as he put it, and then came back to check on me.

"How you doing?"

"Fine," I said into the donut pillow.

"Remember the dragons."

"I'm trying to visualize them."

There was a short pause -- I'm sure he was pondering -- and then he said, "They have long mustaches, and they're slightly iridescent, and they like to drink tea and don't eat peanuts."

"Ah," I said.

"No peanuts," he said, and left the room again, leaving me to reflect on what has to be the strangest conversation I've ever had with a medical professional. But I was all comfy and feeling very nice, except that my hands kept falling asleep, and I still couldn't visualize the dragons, although I did have a vivid mental image of a sleek black panther lounging by the side of the massage table. (What the heck was in those needles? I hear you asking.)

When he came back in, I mentioned the circulation issue, and he removed the needles so I'd be able to move around again, and I told him about the panther, wondering if he'd laugh. He didn't bat an eye. "Well, the dragons are just a metaphor. Your dragon might be a panther. Someone else's might be an eagle." I suspect my panther had more to do with watching Crystal the were-panther on True Blood the other night than with anything else, but that's okay; I'm a champ at metaphor, after all, and I was all relaxed and happy-like, so I floated out the door to pay my $130.

I like this doctor a lot. I do not like his young front-office person one bit. I'm sure she's a lovely human being, adored by her family and friends, but every time I've been there she's struck me as supercilious, with a tendency to lecture, and with the uncanny ability to look down her nose at me even when she's sitting down and I'm standing up.

"That will be a $25 copay," she said.

"No, actually --"

"I need you to pay that," she snapped, as if I'd been planning to offer her my firstborn child or barter with a stick of Juicy Fruit instead.

"Actually, I need to pay more," I said, trying not to snap back. "It's after July 1. My insurance just changed. So I need to pay the $130."

She scowled. "You can't pay the $130 if you have insurance."

"No, my deductible's $3,800, so --"

She slid into lecture mode. "The $130 is for private-pay patients without insurance. I'll have to see what the bill will be with insurance." She got up, went into another room, came back with a sheaf of papers, typed on her computer for a bit, and then said, "If we bill your insurance company, that will be $289."

"Excuse me? Two hundred and eighty-nine dollars?"

She flashed me a phony smile. "At least you'll pay your deductible sooner!" Mentally, I was trying to sic panthers and dragons on her. I know it's not her fault, but couldn't she be just a little bit sympathetic and acknowledge the utter absurdity of the system?

"I came here prepared to pay $130. That's what my husband and I budgeted."

She resumed looking down her nose. "If you pay the $130, we won't bill your insurance and it won't count towards your deductible."

Reader, I paid the $130. If I go to any of the clinics, that $40 fee won't count towards insurance either. It seems absolutely insane to me that with insurance, the treatment costs more than twice as much as it would without: the extra money goes into administrative expenses, no doubt.

Dragons and panthers and bills, oh my.

Yeah. You know I couldn't resist that one. Anyway, I was feeling a bit less floaty when I left, thinking in annoyance that the dragons and panthers hadn't worked very effectively against the evil of the billing system. As we all know, though, American healthcare is one heckuva job even for the most potent metaphorical ninja-beasts. Or maybe somebody slipped the dragons some peanuts; as Gary observed, they're probably allergic.

A dragon in anaphylactic shock: now there's an image.

Right. I'm clearly punchy. Must go work on the book. With material like this, who needs to write SF/F?

My Worldcon Schedule

2011-07-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

Worldcon begins on August 17 and will be held at the Convention Center. I don't see the knitting panel here, but will make inquiries. Note that I'm moderating both the Nevada-as-setting panel and the religion panel, which should be interesting. I've moderated faith discussions at WisCon, so I hope this will go as well. In any case, I'll be busy that weekend!

Wed 12:00 - 13:00, Welcome to Reno (Panel), A02 (RSCC)

An introduction of what to see and do in Reno by locals!

Arthur Chenin (M), Karyn de Dufour, Margaret McGaffey Fisk, Richard Hescox, Mignon Fogarty, Susan Palwick

Wed 18:00 - 19:00, Nevada as a Setting for SF & Fantasy(Panel), A03 (RSCC)

Nevada's mountains and deserts have provided a fertile landscape for writers and movie makers for over 150 years. Join regional writers to learn more about the books and movies that helped to define this area.

Susan Palwick (M), Colin Fisk, Connie Willis, Mignon Fogarty, Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Thu 11:00 - 12:00, When Faith and Science Meet (Panel), A09 (RSCC

Many SF tales, from Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star" to Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz to Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, deal with the intersection of unexpected discoveries on the faith of the characters. Cultural discourse often presents religious faith and science as polar opposites, and certainly there's a long history of conflict between them. But many people of many faiths have happily and successfully reconciled their beliefs with a scientific worldview, and SF/F is no stranger to spirituality, either. Both Joanna Russ and David Hartwell have described SF/F as essentially religious. This panel will present a civil conversation -- between people who respect both faith and science -- about how the two inform each other, both in SF/F and in the rest of the world.

Susan Palwick (M), Eric James Stone, Laurel Anne Hill, Moshe Feder, Norman Cates

Thu 14:30 - 15:00, Reading: Susan Palwick (Reading), A14 (RSCC)

I'll probably read some short chapters from Mending the Moon about my invented comic book, Comrade Cosmos.

Thu 22:00 - 23:00, Short Talks about Art (Talk), A03 (RSCC)

Susan Palwick, Light and Shadow: Family, Pulp Fiction, and the West.

Kelley Caspari, Susan Palwick

I'll be reading a short essay, originally published in NYRSF three hundred years ago, about my grandfather Jerome Rozen, a well-known pulp artist who painted some of the original covers for The Shadow.

Fri 11:00 - 12:00, KaffeeKlatsch: Fri 11:00 (KaffeeKlatsch), KK1(RSCC)

Howard Tayler, Susan Palwick, Ken Scholes

Sat 12:00 - 13:00, River and Echo: The Evolution from Victim to Hero (Panel), A05 (RSCC)

Irene Radford (M), Lee Martindale, Susan Palwick, Charles Oberndorf

The description got cut off, but I think the title works fine. As a longtime Whedonphile, I'm delighted to be on this panel.

Sat 14:00 - 15:00, Autographing: Sat 14:00 (Autographing), Hall 2 Autographs (RSCC)

Woven Scarf in Progress

2011-07-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

It's far from perfect, but I still like it!

Blah

2011-07-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

I'm back, after a rather more inconvenient trip home than my very easy one out. Flying East always seems to go more smoothly than flying West.

I haven't been able to get myself going today. While I enjoyed Mythcon a great deal (and have already registered for next year in Berkeley), the hotel was horrendous. I was allergic to something in the AC, and the bed was too soft for me, and they didn't have an espresso machine so I had to take the hotel shuttle to Starbucks to get my brain in gear each morning -- the shuttle folks were very nice about this, but it was still a hassle -- and there was, I swear, not one comfortable chair in the entire place. The wifi in my room was erratic. The laundry I delivered to the front desk the first morning (getting everything into carry-on was predicated on being able to do laundry) was never picked up, so I had to do the laundry myself, and the front desk was out of laundry soap, so I had to buy some. At least they had a small laundromat onsite and the machines worked, although someone else doing a load told me the hotel staff had warned her not to run both dryers at once.

There were also bizarre issues like my housekeeping tip being apparently stolen out of the room the first day, vanishing hours before any housekeeping was done, and the fact that two of us in my hallway returned from evening programming to find washcloths wrapped around our outside doorknobs, while the people across from me found their door open, although nothing was missing. The front desk staff had no interest in any of this. Someone Googled the hotel and learned that it has a reputation for theft, and while there may have been some perfectly logical and harmless explanation for the little strangenesses, I found myself on edge. (One of the conference attendees was indeed robbed, but I think she may have been staying at another hotel.)

You get the idea. Travel's tiring, and so's being ill at ease in a strange place. (One of the shuttle drivers told me the Reno Aces stay at that hotel when they're in Albuquerque. Gary's response to this was, "Yeah, that's how they know they aren't the majors.") I think it's a testament to my exercise regimen and my chiropractor that my back held up during all of this, but I'm still a lot more worn out and fuzzy-brained today than I usually am after a trip. Maybe it's dehydration. Maybe it's my age showing. Whatever it is, I have no energy -- although I did exercise for an hour -- and I've gotten no writing done yet today.

Yeah, I know. Okay, Susan. Stop whining. Go write!

An Extended Metaphor

2011-07-17T15:16:00.000-07:00

Greetings from sweltering Albuquerque, where the locals are praying for rain and those of us staying at this hotel are praying for reliable wifi (which I think I've finally found in a public area) and decent coffee (the acquisition of which required a hotel shuttle ride to a Starbucks this morning). The conference is great; the hotel's more than a little wonky.

I've been doing some knitting here -- finished a pair of socks for Gary's mom -- but I miss weaving, as much for its psychological and cultural resonance as for its physical pleasures. Weaving's been a very potent symbol since people started doing it, of course, so my thoughts on this subject probably aren't remotely original, but I wanted to get them down anyway.

My novice understanding of weaving, or at least of the weaving I've been doing, is that a cut or broken weft thread is no big deal: you just use another piece of weft and keep going. In fact, the fabric's more interesting the more varied the weft is. But if one of your warp threads breaks or is cut, you're in big trouble, because that's the structure that holds everything else together.

On an individual level, the weft is the variety of our life: the different things we do, the different places we go, our varied friendships. The warp would be whatever we consider our bedrock, the things it would be crisis to lose. For some people, that means job or career; for others, it means social status; for most of us, it includes both our core beliefs and our most significant relationships.

On a larger level, the weft is the huge diversity of life and cultures through time; the warp is God, gravity, thermodynamics, whatever we think of as the glue that holds everything together.

Often, though, we don't think about the glue. In weaving, there's a style -- often seen in rugs and tapestries -- called weft-faced weaving,, where the weft is so closely packed together that you can't see the warp threads at all. This would correspond to a life or creation so full of day-to-day processes and routines that the warp -- the underlying structure or ordering principles -- never gets thought about, and effectively becomes invisible.

We become aware of the warp in two circumstances; either when a warp thread breaks (when we lose one of our foundations) or when the weft thins out, becoming less densely packed and revealing the underlying structure.

In chaplaincy, it's axiomatic that people facing The Big Stuff -- disease, disability, death -- are usually engaged in some kind of theological reflection (even if they don't recognize it as such) and welcome company and guidance. The Big Stuff, losing your health or your mobility, or facing the end of your life, or watching a loved one die, can feel like the breaking of a warp thread. Everything's falling apart. A good chaplain (or any other friend or advisor) can try to help the person re-envision this: No, your warp threads are still there, but you have to work with different weft now.

That quintessential chaplain's question, "So how are you getting through this?" asks the person to examine and name warp threads: friends, family, faith, whatever. The warp is what keeps us going, what allows us to continue into the future, or to imagine a future at all.

Hospital patients also engage in theological reflection, though, because they're lying flat on their backs and, often, have so little else to do. Their daily routines are temporarily absent. They aren't going to work or school, doing housework or gardening, chatting (as much) with friends. In other words, their weft threads have thinned out to the point where they start asking, "Hey, so what're those other things under there?" For some people, illness is the first opportunity they've had or taken for this kind of exploration, for the examination of their lives' deep structure.

That's as far as I've gotten with the metaphor, and people who know more about weaving than I do can probably say more about how one repairs broken warp threads. But I do think this metaphor shows why weaving has always been such a powerful image.

Thoughts, anyone?

O. M. G.

2011-07-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Facebook: The Non-Essential Information Superhighway.

On the one hand, I now get what this is about. As I said on Facebook itself, it's the internet version of crack cocaine. In less than twenty-four hours, I've accumulated more friends than I have followers here on the blog, and I've reconnected with three old friends I haven't spoken to in decades. I also found someone (whom I haven't friended yet) whose friend list includes basically my entire high school class, including the guy who used to molest girls in band class by trying to stick his drumstick between their legs. That's a completely literal description, and it happened multiple times each class period. We later heard he was doing prison time for rape. I guess he's out now. I hope he's acquired some new hobbies.

Also, I've had some interesting mini-conversations with people. Facebook is fun. New items from friends pop up almost literally every second; you could spend all day there.

That's also the problem.

As I also said on Facebook itself, being there is a bit like standing on a skateboard in the middle of a freeway during rush hour. Everything's moving so quickly that you can't possibly keep up. Whoosh friend #17 has posted a link to a political article and whoosh friend #32 has posted a link to a funny YouTube video, and by the time you watch the YouTube video and come back, seventeen more people have posted and someone's sent you a message and someone you've never heard of wants to be your friend and whoosh friend #47's agonizing over which shoes to wear today and whoosh look at this gorgeous photo friend #4 just took and by the time you're done "liking" that and posting a comment about it, twenty-three more people have posted and . . . .

There's no downtime in this medium. There's no space for reflection. And status updates are limited to 400-ish characters, so you couldn't indulge in narrative complexity even if you wanted to.

No wonder so many of my students have the attention spans of ritalin-deprived fruitflies.

I spent entirely too much time on Facebook yesterday, and need to be much more self-disciplined today. I keep telling myself that I've gotten along just fine, for years, without minute-by-minute updates of who just bought orange juice and who's about to leave for a trip to Yosemite and whose kid just hit a homer in a Little League game.

But I'm also feeling more connected to a lot of people, including my old SF community in New York, than I have in a long time. So there really is an upside.

Peer Pressure

2011-07-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

I have finally, God help me, cracked and joined Facebook. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the thing, but I got tired of being inundated with invitations, plus my sister and cousin are on it now, so it may be useful to stay in touch with them.

If you're on Facebook and would like to friend me, go ahead.

My Very Own Zoo

2011-07-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

Because our weather's been so nice, I've been spending hours every day sitting in the shade on our deck, writing and weaving and knitting. This is more deck time than I've done before, and it's made me very attuned to the wildlife in our yard.

We have finches and quail, of course, as always, and this time of year, we have quail chicks, who are very cute. We have doves. At one point we had quite a lot of pretty yellow butterflies, although I haven't seen any for a few days. We have rabbits: evidently there's a warren in one corner of our large and messy backyard, and last week I saw either three bunnies or one bunny three times. My gardener friends would consider this a catastrophe, but I don't garden and I love rabbits, and I'm happy that they love our messy yard.

On Sunday, a friend and former student -- a student from my very first semester at UNR, in fact -- stopped by with her little boy, who's fourteen months old and very cute. They were down for the weekend from Portland, where she and her husband live now, so I hadn't met the baby before. While the rest of us ate Gary's homemade scones and fruit salad, Will conducted experiments with gravity and grapes, and had a fine time.

At one point, his mother glanced up at the ugly power lines running along our yard and said, "Hey, look, a hawk." Sure enough, a red-tailed hawk was perched on the power pole, being harassed by a much smaller bird who did pendulum passes past the hawk.

"The hawk has a bunch of feathers in its mouth," said Pam, who has much better eyes than I do.

"I bet it ate a baby bird and the mother's trying to drive the hawk away from the nest," I said.

"Who knew that our backyard was a nature special?" said Gary.

Our yard is notably unlovely, dirt and weeds, although there are a few clumps of pretty flowering peavine. We're on a third of an acre, and a fair amount of that is a Sierra Pacific easement -- remember the power lines? -- so between the prohibitive cost of landscaping and the fact that the power company has the right to come in and tear up anything we put in, we've left it alone. The patches of weeds spread out every year, and I'm enjoying the process of watching the yard turn into a meadow. I suspect this is also why critters like our yard.

Before too long, though, most of the weeds will be gone. We're getting into fire season -- there have already been wildfires near here -- and every year when the weeds start to dry out, Gary tears them up to reduce the amount of flammable material and create a defensible zone around the house. (To our relief and pleasure, the current weeds don't seem to be cheatgrass, an invasive species that's extremely flammable, and that we battled for quite a few years.)

I'm grateful for Gary's hard work tearing up the weeds, but I'll miss our meadow, and I hope the bunnies will still like it here when the cover's gone.

Advancing the Warp, Part 1

2011-07-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

So here's the scarf freed of the bottom notches in the cardboard, with ends tied off to compensate. As you can see, the scarf gets narrower further up -- I tried to prevent that, to no avail. It's a crooked little scarf, but it's my crooked little scarf, and I'll wear it happily when I finish it.

Advancing the Warp, Part 2

2011-07-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

Here's the warp held (reasonably) taut by the chip clip. I use a thick wooden ruler to adjust tension when I need to. I gotta say, although this Rube Goldberg loom is working, working on it's a bit like trying to build a car with my teeth. After this project's done, I'm getting a real -- but inexpensive -- loom!

Wild Horses Framed by Train Window

2011-07-09T15:44:00.001-07:00

Wild Horses from Window of V&T Train

2011-07-09T15:42:00.001-07:00

View from the V&T Train to Virginia City

2011-07-09T11:30:00.001-07:00

The Scarf So Far

2011-07-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

It's a little rough around the edges, but I'm having great fun with it, and in general, I'm pleased.

I'm going to sign up for our art museum's two-day course in tapestry weaving, in September. That should help with edges!

New Column

2011-07-07T19:05:00.000-07:00

I have a new Bodily Blessings column up; this one's about my ambivalence about the musical culture of churches.

In less happy news, BLR rejected the sonnets -- sniff -- so I have to figure out where to send them next. I'm pretty clueless about poetry markets, so I have to do some research, but I probably won't get to it until I get back from Albuquerque.

Warp Thirty, Mr. Sulu

2011-07-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

Here's the warped loom, finally (although, as you can see, I haven't gotten much actual weaving done yet). Today would have been Mom's 86th birthday, and in her honor, I decided to spend extra time on handicrafts today. As far as I know, weaving's one of the few she never tried, but I think she would have been fascinated.

The Engines Canna' Take Much More of This

2011-07-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

Here's the back of the warped loom. Keeping all thirty warp threads sorted out was definitely a challenge, but it would have been worse if I'd used the clothespins! The cardboard roller works pretty well and is easily secured with binder clips.

I wouldn't want to do anything longer, though. (This warp's about seventy-two inches.)

Well, Nertz

2011-07-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight I took a cute video of Bali playing with a toy; I was going to post it, but the "add video" button doesn't seem to exist on the post editor anymore. I did a bit of research and discovered that I'd have to switch back to the old editor to post videos, but I'm not sure how to do that, so at the moment, you'll just have to imagine a fluffy black cat romping around chasing a small green pom-pom. It's adorable, honest.

Our Fourth was very quiet, which is how we like it. I'm not a big fan of explosions or Festivals of Drunken Driving (yeah, I know, some people are just no fun), so we stayed home and watched a few episodes of True Blood. I loved the first two seasons of this show, but two-thirds of the way through the third, I'm seriously annoyed with it.

For one thing, it's turned into one of those shows where hardly anyone isn't some sort of supernatural beastie. As I often tell my writing students, just sticking a label of "vampire," "werewolf" or "fairy" on someone doesn't automatically make that character interesting. One of my classroom mantras is, "If you can't write an interesting story about a mailman, you won't be able to write an interesting story about an elf, either." Having Sookie turn out to be a fairy who flits around in a white dress through a sparkling meadow with other fairies waving flowers -- talk about kitsch! -- makes her character less interesting, not more, at least for me. (I haven't read the novels on which the series is based, but I believe this is Charlaine Harris' doing, not Alan Ball's.)

And anyway -- as I'm also constantly reminding my students -- having too many vampires in town just doesn't work. Vampires are major predators. They need food. If their prey don't outnumber them by a fairly substantial order of magnitude, a lot of them are going to have to move on. In fact, I'm slightly suspect of highly organized vampire societies: seems to me much more likely, given the population biology of the situation, that they'd hunt on their own and spread themselves out very widely.

Then we have the infamous vampire-versus-werewolf feud, which has become such an old story that I yawn every time I see it. Then we have the really excessive amounts of gore, which has lost whatever shock value or interest it once had. Then we have the fact that every supernatural beastie on the planet seems to have settled in Bon Temps, and don't local law agencies suspect anything? Buffy at least explained this with the Hellmouth trope, and even had characters fantasizing about moving to non-Hellmouth locations (and, in some cases, actually doing it, as when Buffy moves away from Sunnydale at the end of Season Two).

To be fair, Being Human has a lot of these same problems too, but I think that series acknowledges them more honestly (and I find the characters more interesting). Right now, the True Blood characters I'm most interested in are Tara and Lafayette, who are still human (as far as I know) and dealing with interesting conflicts. The Tara/Franklin subplot this season was worth the price of admission, even if it was just a tiny bit reminiscent of Spike and the Buffybot. The most appealing supernatural at the moment is Jessica, who's trying to figure out how to get along with a human, fang-phobic coworker, instead of getting caught up in succession struggles and internecine bickering and Ye Old Nazi Werewolf Conspiracy Plots.

Nazi werewolves? Please! Has anyone else noticed that writers who don't know what else to do invoke the Third Reich? This really bothers me. For one thing, it's lazy writing. For another, it ultimately trivializes the subject, which I -- for one -- find problematic.

Okay, I'm done venting now. I still think Alan Ball is a genius, but at this point, I'm basing that on American Beauty and Six Feet Under, not on True Blood.

Yarn on the Hoof

2011-07-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

Driving to church today -- a route that takes me through a flat, ugly part of town, with lots of dismal strip malls -- I happened to glance to my left and saw, standing at a fence . . . two llamas! I goggled at them for a minute, thinking maybe they were huge, misshapen dogs, but quickly realized my error. I think maybe they'd been sheared recently; one reason they looked so weird is that large swathes of hair were missing.

I wonder if somebody around here is making llama yarn. Although, given the recent heat, they might have needed a shave to cool off, poor things. Anyway, they were grazing in a nice little enclosed meadow which, when I scrutinized the area as closely as I could on my drive-by, included some barn-looking outbuildings. I've never noticed this before. A lot of Reno used to be farm or ranchland, and there are still pockets of grazing land where you least expect them: a herd of cows munching away next to a bottling plant or self-storage place, say.

On my way back from church, I drove by the meadow again to see if I could get a photo of the llamas (llami?), but I didn't see them. I'll keep looking.

I turned the heel on my mother-in-law's first sock today. I'm afraid I may have made it a smidgen too long, and the thing looks huge anyway because it's made from relatively inelastic yarn, but I've learned that socks that look too big often fit fine. I hope to have them finished and mailed off to her by the time I leave for Albuquerque in twelve days.

The socks have created a delay in the scarf-weaving project. However, last night I had an epiphany and realized that instead of using thirty different bobbins for the warp (talk about a headache!), I can use a smaller notched piece of cardboard as a roller for all thirty warp threads at once. If that works, it will greatly simplify things. The moderator of the small-looms group on Ravelry thinks it should work, so that's heartening.

I'm still toiling away on the book, of course. For some reason, my left hip's been killing me for the last two days -- usually my right one's the culprit -- and I think that too much sitting time may be part of the problem, so I'm trying to get up and move around (limping like Quasimodo) at least every half hour. Swimming and using the elliptical has helped somewhat. I've also temporarily traded in my backpack for an extremely tiny pouch purse to lighten my load. I have to lug a fairly heavy backpack around when I go to Albuquerque (which I'm determined to do without checking, and paying for, luggage), so I want all the muscles rested and healed before then. I'll also have a rolling bag, of course, but I can't fit everything in there, and the backpack's the next best thing, as long as I'm walking okay.

Ah, aging. Remember when you bounded out of bed in the morning with no thought as to whether your joints would behave themselves? I'm infinitely happier now than I was in my twenties, but I could still do without the achy-creakies.

Back to Knitting

2011-07-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, I think, when I was completely infatuated with knitting socks, I distributed sock questionnaires to everyone I know. Yesterday, my mother-in-law's completed questionnaire arrived in the mail. She'd just found it on her desk. Luckily, I already had some sock yarn of exactly the weight, type and color she wanted (orange cotton, sport weight), so that worked out very well. I started her first sock this morning.

I'm continuing to research weaving; today I was tempted to buy a small, inexpensive loom, but then my clips and clothespins arrived and I decided to go back to Plan A for the scarf, mostly because I'm curious about whether it will actually work. I'm not going to start with the Sedona scarf, though. I'll do at least one other first, and will tackle the red rock scarf when I feel like I have at least a clue about what I'm doing.

The hospital was very slow today, but after last Friday, that was relaxing. I came home, took a long nap, and then wrote a bit. Now Gary and I are going to watch some television on DVD (True Blood, one of our favorites), and I may have a smidgen of my Kahlua.

Oh, speaking of over-the-top genre narrative, last week we saw Super 8 and thoroughly enjoyed it, although the image of a truck causing a train derailment was a bit too close to recent events here in Nevada. We highly recommend the movie, however: it has a solid story and believable, interesting characters, something of a rarity in these days of yowsa special effects. (It has those, too, but they're secondary to the story and characters.) I'm always grateful and relieved to see any film that doesn't make me leave the theater shaking, or scratching, my head and asking, "Why did anyone decide to spend the GNP of a small country on that?"

Today's Effort

2011-06-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

A little crooked, but it was fun to make. As Gary said, "Hey, you're only using a cardboard loom."

Today I started planning an insanely ambitious scarf, which is probably beyond the reach both of a cardboard loom and of my beginning weaving skills. Everything I've read says that to make a scarf on a cardboard loom, either the cardboard needs to be as long as the scarf, or you need to make the scarf in loom-sized sections and sew them together. Seems to me that if you have your warp on bobbins, and have a way to clamp the finished cloth to the bottom of the loom as the project advances, you should be able to weave a scarf in one piece on a workably-sized loom.

So today I ordered clothespins to use as bobbins and some kitchen clips -- the kind designed for bags of potato chips -- to use as clamps. Since we're talking about thirty bobbins, rewarping the thing whenever I need to weave a new section is going to be a hefty piece o' work. But looms with fancy rollers and whatnot cost approximately my annual salary (okay, that's a slight exaggeration), and I think cardboard and tapestry looms are better for freeform weaving, anyway.

So, the scarf: Longtime readers will recall that last July, my sister and Gary and I drove through Arizona's red rock country on our way from my cousin's funeral in Flagstaff back to our hotel in Phoenix, where he and his wife lived. We stopped in Sedona, where I bought some gorgeous orange laceweight yarn that reminded me of the color of the sandstone formations. I've since tried to knit with the stuff, but it's just too fine, and keeps defeating me.

But if I weave with it, especially in conjunction with other, thicker reddish-orange yarns, I think the results could be really pretty, and might even look something like the layers in the rock formations.

Or, I could just make a giant mess of expensive yarn. It's a toss up. But what's life without risk?

Tomorrow's the formal beginning of my sabbatical, and also the first day of my state-mandated paycut, and also the first day of our new, drastically unimproved health-insurance package, with its huge deductible.

I gotta say, I've been in better moods (although I'd feel infinitely worse without the sabbatical).

And on that note, back to work on the book.

Diagonal Lines

2011-06-29T23:11:00.000-07:00

Today's challenge was to weave cloth with diagonal lines, otherwise known as twill. The white portions of the cloth here came out nicely, I think, although the fabric isn't reversible. The twill pattern I used with the brown yarn is reversible, but the yarn keeps it from being very visible (even when, as in this case, I kept the weft yarn farther apart than I normally would). For any stitch I want to show, I need to use very plain, non-fuzzy yarn. In this group, that means the white: the brown and orange both do best with simple tabby stitch (one over/one under).

This morning I tried a piece alternating groups of white and brown warp threads, as per mbj's suggestion, but I was also attempting twill and did it completely wrong, so alternate warp threads on the reverse side wound up completely outside the weft. This looked like the macrame project from hell, so I didn't take a photo of it. I did bring it to tonight's church knitting group; the only other person who showed up said she liked it, so I gave it to her.

The knitting group's going to be very slow through the summer, I think, but I'll just hang in there and hope it eventually catches on.

Better

2011-06-28T11:51:00.001-07:00

It would look better if I'd left longer fringe, but now I know that, and it will be a perfectly respectable coaster.

Tomorrow I'll start experimenting with patterns that show the warp.

Such fun!

A Little Woven Thing

2011-06-27T18:19:00.000-07:00

Last night we finished watching the second season of PBS' Craft in America, which regularly makes me cry because everything the artists are making is so beautiful. One of the artists they featured was a weaver, and I became intrigued, so last night I read an article about how to weave on a homemade cardboard loom, and this morning I made one and produced the above object, a 2.5"x4.5" bit o' fabric (rug for a mouse?) which won't make anyone cry except in pain: but hey, it's my first effort, and considering that I have no idea what I'm doing yet, I think it could have turned out much worse. It's no object of beauty, although I had fun playing with the different colored yards, but it's an honest-to-goodness piece of dense, solid, tough fabric.

Anyway, making it was fun, and I think I'm going to try to produce more objects (coasters? placemats? maybe even scarves?), because among other things, it's a nice break from knitting -- I love knitting, but other ways to play with yarn are nice too -- and it will help use up scrap yarn. I realize that everybody else in the world went through their cardboard-loom phase in elementary school, but I seem to have missed that class.

Obviously I don't already have enough hobbies.

Equally obviously, I have a lot to learn, like what to do with the warp threads. Oh, mbj, turns out that scratchy wool I bought at the art store makes a pretty decent warp, and I bet the yarn there's for weavers.

Our local art museum school is offering a weaving class in September. If I'm still interested then, I may sign up for it.

Oh! And speaking of yarn, there's going to be a knitting panel at Worldcon! And I'm on it! What fun!

Random Updates

2011-06-26T21:21:00.000-07:00

Our local paper's been updating Amtrak crash news several times a day. The death toll's now at least six, with five passengers still unaccounted for.

The conductor who died was a 68-year old woman named Laurette Lee who lived in South Lake Tahoe. She sounds like a genuine character. You can read moving tributes to her here and here.

The truck driver's name hasn't been released yet, but that part of the story keeps getting stranger. He was leading a three-truck convoy: the other two saw the train and expected him to stop, but he didn't. He tried to brake, though, because there were major skid marks. So the "unconscious at the wheel" theory is out, and I guess we're back to the distraction theory, although everyone said the train was very visible. You can see a long way in the desert.

I don't think I'd be following this so closely if I hadn't met one of the people on the train, but now I feel connected to the story. I hope the guy I talked to is okay, and I really hope the person he carried to safety is okay.

In writing news, I've been churning out 1,800 words a day (a bit over six pages) for almost three weeks now. That's a lot, at least for me, but I have to maintain this pace if I'm going to have a complete draft by August. No one's holding a gun to my head -- my editor's very understanding and patient -- but I want the blasted manuscript off my desk and on someone else's, and I know I'll have to do at least one rewrite after I finish the draft.

At church today, I got a key for the next knitting night this Wednesday. One of the people who was there last week can't make it for the next two weeks, though, so I hope other people show up!

No Kahlua yet. Last night I felt like tea instead. Tonight my back's bothering me -- I worked out for an hour both yesterday and today, and may have overdone it -- and I took a Relafen, which I don't want to mix with alcohol. But the Kahlua will keep.

My pretty twin-leaf lace scarf is done. Time to go block it!

Decadence

2011-06-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

Because there's so much alcoholism in my family (and it's so genetic), I drink very, very little. For years, my only alcohol consumption was a sip of communion wine every Sunday. I never drink when we're out and about here in Reno, since Gary can't see quite well enough to get a driver's license, which means that I'm always the designated driver.

I like the taste of some drinks, especially cordials, but hate feeling drunk. Since I have absolutely no tolerance for alcohol -- a very good thing, if one has a genetic predisposition to alcoholism on top of a depression history -- my limit is something like two teaspoonfuls.

Over two hours.

On a full stomach.

On our Spring Break cruise, though, I didn't have to drive, so a couple of evenings I got an after-dinner drink while we listened to the string quartet. I had an Amaretto, which was yummy, and a few nights later I had a Kahlua, which was even yummier. Since they give you a bit more than two teaspoonfuls, I learned that I had to space these treats out over the entire evening, which was fine. I also learned, after a second Kahlua the evening after the first, that if I drank two nights in a row -- even slowly and on a full stomach -- my sleep would be disrupted. This is a well-known effect of alcohol, of course, but twice I awoke to hypnopompic hallucinations. In one case, I thought I saw Gary, lying face down, floating above me: I screamed, but when I turned I saw him sleeping soundly beside me in bed, and then the hallucination dissolved. The second time it happened, I saw a disembodied head floating above me.

Charming.

When I got home, I did enough research to learn that hallucinations upon falling asleep (hypnogogic) and waking up (hypnopompic) are fairly common and considered normal, although alcohol can exacerbate them. They often involve floating figures. I'll bet this is where stories about succubi come from; maybe vampires, too.

Anyway, these episodes were definitely enough to make me space out my after-dinner cordials! When we got home, I occasionally (as in once a week, max, but usually more like once every two weeks) had a tiny amount of a chocolate dessert wine a friend gave us for Christmas. No more creepy floating figures, so I must have gotten the interval right. I just finished the bottle last week, and Gary said, "You should get some Kahlua."

"Eh," I said, shrugging.

But today we were at the supermarket, and Gary got some wine for himself, and I went to browse the cordials section. "Are you going to get some Kahlua?" he asked.

"I think not," I said, goggling at the price.

"It's a premium liqueur," he said, picking up the smallest bottle, "and this will last you for a year."

The smallest bottle was under fifteen bucks, so I shrugged again, and we got it. I may even have a little tonight.

But if I start dancing on tabletops while wearing lampshades (a maneuver I'd consider highly dangerous even without distilled spirits, given how clumsy I am), anyone who cares about me is authorized to haul me into the Betty Ford Center.

The Train

2011-06-24T17:05:00.000-07:00

I was at the hospital today when "Code Triage Standby" came over the loudspeaker. This means, more or less, "get ready for a possible mass casualty." No one knew what had happened, but I checked the news on my BlackBerry and saw this story, which many of you have probably already heard about. Our local ambulance company gave the accident their highest emergency rating, and we heard that 150 people had been injured; although we knew the worst injuries wouldn't come to our hospital, we still expected a fair number.

As it turned out, the Code Triage Standby was cancelled, and we wound up getting only one patient. The most severely injured were airlifted to trauma centers; the most minimally injured were treated at the scene, which is about an hour from us. The paramedics who brought in our one patient told us he was the last person to be transported.

He had very minor physical injuries too, even though he was only one car away from the collision, but he was very shaken up. He'd felt the heat and smelled the smoke from the fire, and he helped carry another passenger -- someone much more severely injured, who wound up being airlifted -- away from the burning train. That person's blood was on his clothing; he repeatedly described the injuries. When he asked me for prayer, he wanted to pray for the other passenger.

He cried while we prayed. So did I. I told him to be sure to ask for help coping with this when he gets home. He has to take another train to get there; he was worried about getting back to the Amtrak station, whether they'd honor his ticket.

I'd never want to get on a train again (and it's not like Amtrak ever runs on time even without a huge honking disruption). I kind of hope Amtrak puts him on a bus, or, better yet, buys him a plane ticket. The accident wasn't their fault, but still.

The accident's really weird. How the heck do you run into the fourth car of a train? How do you not see the train? As Gary pointed out, most drivers of smaller vehicles who get hit by trains do so when they're racing across the tracks when the train's coming and don't make it in time, but in that case, they're hit by the front of the train.

The truck driver's dead, so I guess we'll never know, unless an autopsy turns up interesting toxicology. Gary said, "What do you want to bet he was on his cell phone?" but I dunno. Even if you're on the phone, how do you not see a train? It just doesn't make sense.

I've now, as of today's shift, volunteered 1,000 hours in the ER. I wish that milestone had been marked much, much less dramatically.

History

2011-06-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

The Audible book I'm listening to right now is Eric Metaxas' biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It's fascinating stuff. Among other things, two of the plots to assassinate Hitler failed only because of unforeseen flukes: in one case, a bomb planted in Hitler's private airplane didn't go off because of low temperatures in the cargo hold, and in another, a bomb planted in a conference room did go off, but didn't kill Hitler because of the unusual construction of the conference table. One has to wonder how history would have unfolded differently if the little man in the mustache had died earlier than he did.

For me, the most moving part of the book so far has been Metaxas' account of Bonhoeffer's brief trip to the United States in 1939. Friends on both sides of the Atlantic had gone to a great deal of effort to arrange a position for him at Union Theological Seminary in New York, so he'd be safely away from the Gestapo. But although he'd lived in New York before, he was desperately homesick and torn about being away from the struggle in Germany. To the astonishment of the people who'd worked so hard to assure his safety, he sailed back to Germany on July 7, 1939, after less than a month on American soil.

July 7, 1939 was the day after my mother's fourteenth birthday. In April of 1938, her mother died in a car crash that also put her father in the hospital for six months, and my mother and uncle went to live with relatives on Long Island. I don't know if, by July of the following year, they were still there, or had returned to live with their father and grandmother in northern New Jersey. Either way, they were living within fifty miles of Bonhoeffer as he struggled with his decision.

My mother knew nothing about Bonhoeffer, of course, and was caught up in her own struggles: adjusting to life without her mother, navigating adolescence, getting ready to start high school. But Metaxes, at about this point in the book, mentions that anti-Semitism was becoming more severe in places outside Germany, including the United States, and that made me remember a conversation I had with my aunt -- Mom's brother's wife -- after my grandfather died in 1987.

My grandfather's last name (and thus my mother's maiden name), was Rozen. To the best of my knowledge, no one in the family was Jewish, but when my grandfather died, the hospital sent his body to a Jewish funeral home, perhaps because the name sounds Jewish and there were a lot of Jewish people in the area. Since no one in our family at that point was religious one way or the other, I wouldn't have thought it would have mattered.

My mother, though, had a meltdown. She couldn't stand the idea of her father's remains going to a Jewish funeral home. She was very, very upset, almost hysterical, and I was completely mystified. Mom thought all religion was hogwash and didn't understand why anyone would be involved in it at all, but I'd never heard her say anything intolerant about any particular faith. What was this about?

My aunt took me aside. "Susan, you have to understand that when we were all in high school together, people thought your mother was Jewish because of her last name. There was a lot of anti-Jewish feeling then. It was very hard on her. Later, she couldn't wait to marry your father so she could get rid of her maiden name."

I'd never known about this. My mother had never talked about it, and I still don't know what happened. Name-calling? Exclusion from clubs and social circles? I'll never know, now, but whatever it was, it was traumatic enough to send Mom into a tailspin more than forty years later. And I'm guessing that whatever it was, not being able to talk to her own mother about it probably made it worse.

I'm fascinated by the intersections between private and public history: in this case, how the daily life of a little girl growing up in New Jersey indirectly reflected the issues that led to the very political death of a world-famous theologian in Germany. I also love to think about how individual histories merge into shared history. That's not well-put, so let me give you an example. Gary was born in 1951; I was born in 1960. The day I was born, he was nine years old. Where was he that day? What was he doing? He certainly had no idea that his future wife had just been born. Our two lives ran on very different tracks until November 11, 1989, the day we met and began our shared, joint history. On that same day the year before, what was each of us doing? If you could draw a map or a diagram of our lives over time, what would the map look like before those two points converged?

My old parish had a retreat once where people talked about their histories before they joined the church. Everyone had lived all over the place, doing all kinds of things, before they wound up at St. Stephen's. We drew the journeys on a map. The diagram of how everyone arrived at this one community in Reno was much more complicated than the one for me and Gary, a veritable galaxy of converging lines.

Thinking about all this fills me with a kind of wonder. How many people are alive now who'll be central to my life at some point in the future, but whom I don't even know yet? What are the unseen forces that draw lives together, or deflect people from one another in ways they'll never even know? How do these seemingly random and individual interactions shape larger, public history?

Church Knitting Group

2011-06-22T21:05:00.000-07:00

After trying, without success, to find a night when more than two or three people were available, I finally just decided to have the first meeting tonight. My only firm RSVP was from our Senior Warden, and I knew she'd have a key to the church, so I didn't worry about whether I needed one too.

In retrospect, that was a mistake. She was late, and the church was locked tight, except for one door in the back -- the entrance to a women's AA meeting, it turned out -- which I never would have found if a kind AA member hadn't led me there. So I managed to get into the building and unlocked the front door, and then the Senior Warden showed up. Classic!

There were only three of us. I'd brought extra yarn and needles and various books, including Knitting for Peace, which I bought today just for this purpose. Two of us had brought food, so we served ourselves and started eating, and then it occurred to me to offer a prayer, which the others seemed to appreciate.

I asked if they were interested in charity knitting, or knitting as spiritual practice, or both, or something else; the Senior Warden said cheerfully, "Oh, it's summer. Let's just knit."

So we knitted. Actually, I knitted, and the Senior Warden went back and forth between knitting and crocheting, trying to find a pattern she liked, and our third member read a crochet book and finally crocheted a little bit, and we chatted about nothing in particular -- although there was a long string of cat stories (the Senior Warden was sad because a beloved elderly cat had to be euthanized last week) -- and all in all, it was mellow and pleasant.

We're going to do it again next week. I hope more people come. And I hope to have a key by then. If we keep meeting regularly, a direction will emerge. Or not. Whatever happens, I'll know some people at church better.

Another Renoversary

2011-06-21T17:45:00.001-07:00

Gary has been here in Reno fourteen years today. Happy anniversary, Gar! And happy summer, everyone else!

Go, Little Book

2011-06-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

As of this morning, the ED Sonnets are on submission at the Bellevue Literary Press. This is a stratospherically prestigious market -- the Knopf of medical humanities -- and the sonnet sequence is an odd, and oddly shaped, little project, so I expect this submission to be the first of many. But, as I always tell my writing students when we talk about sending out manuscripts, start at the top.

Gary thinks very highly of the sequence, and he's invariably a better judge of how my work will strike readers than I am, so that bodes well. (And no, he doesn't automatically praise my stuff just because he's my husband. I've learned over the years that if he says a given piece of writing doesn't work, none of the editors I send it to will think it works, either. This is both slightly galling and really useful.)

BLP says their response time is four to six weeks, which is both unusually fast and a small enough window that it will be difficult for me not to obsess the entire time. But it's not like I don't have other things to keep me busy, so I'm going to try not to think about it.

And on that note, back to work on the novel.

Missing

2011-06-18T22:13:00.000-07:00

Today my uncle in northern New Jersey -- my mother's brother, Ken's father -- had a family reunion at his house, with his kids and their kids and my sister and her husband and son. The occasion for this was that one of my cousins, who currently lives in Singapore, is back on this side of the pond with his family for a couple of weeks. Gary and I were invited, but couldn't be there, obviously.

I was sad. I missed everybody.

Tomorrow, of course, is Father's Day. Since neither Gary nor I have our fathers anymore, I've found the nonstop reminders of this occasion even more irritating than usual. When Dad was alive, Father's Day was often a bit of a challenge, since it was difficult to find cards that accurately reflected our relationship. I finally started writing my own notes in blank cards. Now that he's dead, the holiday just makes me wish I were still having trouble with cards. (Some people are never happy.)

Today I taught three Tolkien classes for the annual conference of a local foundation that offers services to gifted-and-talented kids. It was fun, but also very tiring. The last class I taught was to a group of over twenty extremely bright, energetic and distractible five-to-nine year olds: charming children individually, but more than a little daunting in a group, especially since elementary ed isn't my field. Let's just say that it wasn't one of my more stellar moments in the classroom.

The kids come from all over the country, and of course their parents are here with them (although parents don't attend classes), so I saw and overheard a lot of parent-child interactions. I was especially aware of the fathers. The ones I saw were loving and concerned and listened attentively as their children happily told them about gene-splicing or forensic science or whatever the topic of the most recent presentation had been. I hope those kids will one day look back on this weekend and treasure these conversations.

Getting There

2011-06-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

I'm now just past the 20,000-word mark on the manuscript, which means -- if all goes well -- that the new draft's roughly one-fifth done.

What I have so far is pretty uneven, but I still like it better than the old version.

After this chapter, I'll have to produce much more entirely new material, and won't be able to recycle as much from the old draft. So I'll probably be slowing down. But as long as I keep getting something done each day, I'll be happy.

Headless Susan and the Button Scarf of Doom

2011-06-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

Here's another one: much longer than the first, as you can see. I knit this from mystery wool. My local art-supply place sells unlabeled yarn in varying quantities, and I got about a bajillion yards of this stuff for $7 (after knitting the scarf, I still have at least a third of the yarn left).

I think the zig-zag pattern's fun. Finding matching buttons was surprisingly hard, since most of the tans I found were grayer than I needed. Also, since it's cheap, scratchy yarn, I didn't want to get really fancy buttons. But these match nicely and weren't expensive at all, even if they're a bit monochrome.

Since it's cheap, scratchy yarn, I'm keeping the scarf, which will also have to be worn with a turtleneck so as not to chafe my neck to bits. But it will be a nice warm thing for winter (modelling it was a bit much this evening; we got into the low nineties here today, and although the desert cools off when the sun goes down, it's still not turtleneck-with-a-wool-scarf weather).

I may very well use this same pattern, in a shorter length and in much nicer yarn, for some Christmas or birthday gifts. It knits up quickly, and my loved ones who appreciate funky stuff would like it, I think.

Mr. Eyes

2011-06-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

Another New Scarf

2011-06-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

This is Barbara Walker's Twin Leaf Lace, from the first treasury, worked up in a lilac sock yarn with a seed-stitch border. It won't be a button scarf, since it will most likely be a gift for someone with arthritic hands. Pretty pattern, eh? I love the three-dimensionality of it.

Deja Vu

2011-06-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

At the hospital today, I saw a patient who looked so much like my father -- same bushy eyebrows, same eyes, same hair -- that I almost started crying in the room (and did cry after I left: I hid in a back storeroom for a few minutes and sniffled). These days, I'm pretty good at comforting myself by remembering that I carry my parents inside me, but the shock of seeing those familiar features made me realize, quite painfully for a few minutes, how much I miss having them walking around in the world.

The department was exceptionally busy today. In two hours, I offered chaplaincy services to seventy-four people, and that was just patients, friends and relatives within the ED proper (lots of large family groups today, which always drives up the census). I visited the internal waiting room, but never even got out to the main waiting room. This meant that I didn't have much time to be sad, which was probably good.

A later visit, though, pushed the same buttons: a young woman sitting at her elderly father's bedside, weeping in worry and exhaustion. I gave her a hug and told her that I know how hard it is to be in that position. She seemed to appreciate the empathy.

Do I really want to be sitting next to my father's hospital bed again? Well, no. But I miss walking into any old room and finding him there, eyes twinkling.

Another volunteer chaplain's working from five to nine tonight. If his evening's anything like my afternoon, he'll have a very busy shift!

Bits and Pieces

2011-06-13T00:11:00.000-07:00

In no particular order:

* I've been making small but steady daily progress on the new draft.

* We had a lovely dinner tonight with a friend of mine from the hospital, an RN, and her husband. They have comp credits at one of the local casinos and treated us to a splendid meal at a fancy steakhouse there. Yum! It was really fun, and we hope to reciprocate by having them over here for dinner soon.

* On the way home, we stopped at Home Depot so Gary could buy various home-improvement items. While I waited for him, I started wondering if any hardware could be converted to knitting use. And, indeed, it turns out that o-rings used for plumbing repair are perfect stitch markers (although I'm not sure they're much less expensive than the stitch markers sold by knitting suppliers, which are already very reasonable).

* I'm in the process of trimming monthly expenditures, since this is my last month on full salary (next month is paycut plus the furlough that's being applied each of the next two years, plus sabbatical reduction). I reduced my Audible subscription from two credits to one each month; I'd been planning to cancel it entirely, but Gary said I should keep it. Then I started cancelling, or asking how to cancel -- since not all organizations make it easy -- my four small monthly donations to Modest Needs, the Humane Society, Doctors Without Borders and First Book. Modest Needs allows you to cancel a pledge from the website; I sent the others e-mail explaining that I'll reinstate my pledge when I come off sabbatical, and will also make occasional one-time donations during the sabbatical year as I'm able, but that I need to cancel the automatic pledge for the next twelve months. (I'll still be doing my ten percent tithe on discretionary purchases, so that's where one-time donations will come from.) This is prudent and fiscally responsible, but made me feel so wretched that I decided I really need to cancel the Audible subscription entirely too, as long as Audible can assure me that my wish list, and the books I've already purchased, will remain accessible. I've been stocking up on audiobooks in preparation for sabbatical, so it's really a purely symbolic sacrifice.

I'm not a big fan of "I can't have fun if anyone else is unhappy" thinking -- see recent yarn purchases, for instance -- but I decided I just wasn't comfortable buying audiobooks every month if I wasn't also, you know, helping starving cats and buying mosquito netting for field hospitals.

Note: In some quarters it's considered very tacky to talk about money, and especially to admit to charitable donations (that whole "when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret" Ash Wednesday thing). However, I've come to the conclusion that our society would be a lot healthier if more people were comfortable discussing finances, and I think an open discussion of how and where and why we give -- or don't -- is part of that. And I certainly talk openly about how much I shop, so this is just balance, yes?

Relaxation

2011-06-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

Haul

2011-06-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here's the haul. Between the fifty percent discount and the gift certificate from my sister, I got all this stuff for just under $150. That includes a lovely book of lace-shawl patterns, fifteen skeins of yarn (including some alpaca), two circular needles (including an ebony pair), and two sets of buttons, one handblown glass and one bone.

My yarn vault is very full and very happy.

The owner of the shop is closing just because she's tired and wants to do other things, but she'll still be active in local knitting groups. And she isn't closing until all her stock's gone, so she'll probably be there for a while yet.

Needles

2011-06-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

Today I went to see the new doctor, who's also a medical acupuncturist. (He told me that in fact, the insurance companies are pulling him off primary-care panels and listing him as a specialist, which means that I should list his nurse-practitioner as my primary-care person.) I like him a lot. He took notes and checked my records on a laptop, but made plenty of eye contact. When I told him why I wanted acupuncture -- for sinus and gastric issues, two of the conditions for which the World Health Organization recommends acupuncture -- he promptly asked for the history on both. When he found out that I'm not taking an acid blocker because I'm nervous about osteoporosis, he said, "The risk of not taking the pills is greater than the risk of taking them," and then he told me that not all of them interfere with calcium absorbtion at the same level. He said that Zantac is pretty benign that way, especially if I also take both calcium and Vitamin D -- which I already do -- so I'm back on that as of this evening.

After he took my medical history, he asked me what I do for a living, and then what I do for fun. As he was positioning the needles for the acupuncture, he said, "So, do you feel as if you've been able to do what you've wanted with your life?"

Nobody's ever asked me that broad a question: not psychologists, let alone any kind of internist. I was very impressed. This guy seems to have a firm grasp on both Western and Eastern medicine, is comfortable using both, and also pays attention to the Whole Person. My only quibble is that his voice is so soft that I often can't hear him, but I'll just have to ask him to speak up. (He works out of a medical spa, which has a very cushy waiting room with aromatherapy and soothing music and deep, fluffy chairs: it feels like the lobby of a high-end hotel. That's different from my usual experience, too, as was the fact that he came out to get me himself and conducted the entire visit without a nurse.)

The acupuncture was fine. He's very deft at needle insertion and was very solicitous about whether I was comfortable, putting a pillow under my knees and covering my feet with a blanket because they were a bit chilly. I'm going back for another acupuncture session in three weeks. I don't notice any effects from it yet, but I think it takes a while.

So that went well, I think. I also found the office much more easily on this second visit!

On a less happy note, this evening I facilitated a Literature & Medicine session at the VA and learned from some fellow knitters there that my favorite yarn shop is closing. This is really terrible news, and I hadn't even known about it. Evidently everything's half price, so I'm going to go over there tomorrow morning and load up on whatever's left (I still have part of a gift certificate my sister gave me for my birthday, but I'm sure I'll go over that).

Renoversary

2011-06-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

Fourteen years ago today, I arrived in Reno (several weeks ahead of Gary, who was still back East finishing up his own job and supervising movers).

What a long, strange trip it's been!

Progress

2011-06-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

I now have about twenty-five pages of the new draft, incorporating both old and brand-new material. I'm already much happier with it.

If I write five pages a day, I should have another complete draft by the beginning of August. This is of course wildly optimistic. On the other hand, I managed to get my five pages written today even though I also swam for forty minutes, went to a half-hour training for hospital staff and volunteers, attended a two-hour meeting of volunteer chaplains, and stopped by the store for some groceries.

I have big-chunk-of-time commitments through the end of next week; after that, I hope things will get a bit less hectic.

Caring for the Caregiver

2011-06-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

My latest column is up at the Church Health Reader. I think I've neglected to post links to the columns for the last few months, but you can access all of 'em via the sidebar.

Another column, Give Her Something to Eat, has been picked up by a company that publishes lectionary resources in Canada. I believe they're even going to pay me for the reprint rights. Woo-hoo!

(Note to self: Don't give up your day job.)

Plan Z

2011-06-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

As previously reported, I've now revised and rewritten portions of my three-hundred-page manuscript several times. Last night, settling down to the latest onslaught, I entered a bunch of revisions and then descended into a funk. The book had too many characters, and their stories were too complicated -- not to mention preposterous -- and the whole thing was emotionally inauthentic, and I hated it. Too much happened. Not enough of it mattered.

This sounds exactly like feedback I've given various of my writing students, so I gave myself the same advice I give them: Simplify. Focus less on plot mechanics and more on emotion. Figure out why this story should matter to the reader.

That's never easy advice to hear, of course. I gnashed my teeth, cried for a while, fumed, paced, and sat down to try to find the emotional core of the book.

When I was in college, I wrote a long paper on one of my favorite poems, William Butler Yeats' The Circus Animals' Desertion. It begins, "I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,/I sought it daily for six weeks or so" -- a sentiment to which any writer can relate -- and ends with the lines, "I must lie down where all the ladders start/In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." Last night, I tried to descend into the rag and bone shop.

Well, I got someplace, and it's a destination I couldn't have reached without the latest round of revisions (which is some comfort, since it means all that work wasn't wasted). Near the end of the current draft, a newly introduced character has one scene lasting a page or two. Turns out she's a main character. Turns out she's essential to the core of the book. Turns out the story's largely about her and her relationship with somebody who's been a main character since Day One.

Most writers can relate to that, too. Minor characters, once you start paying attention to them, have a way of saying, "Hey, this story's about me." We ignore our minor characters to our peril.

So this is good news, more or less (especially since the book is now unambiguously mainstream, which is what Tor asked for in the first place; I've finally weeded out the remaining spec-fic elements). The problem is that it means I have to rewrite the book from scratch, and that at least eighty-five percent of the three hundred pages will wind up in the trash. I'm still hoping to be done by WorldCon, but that's very ambitious, at this point.

I called my agent and said, "Well, I finally figured out what the book's about."

When she stopped laughing -- I started this project two years ago this month -- she said, "That's good, Susan." She told me I'll be fine: my publisher won't fire me, and she'd talk to my editor to explain the situation. Shortly thereafter, she e-mailed to say that she'd reached him and he's fine with it, too. (Thank God!) Meanwhile, I'd e-mailed him to ask him to call me so I can talk about the new shape and focus of the book. That hasn't happened yet; I'll feel better when it has.

Today I started the new first chapter. So far, it's using a lot of preexisting material, but tomorrow, I have to start in on the new stuff.

This is why I'm not more prolific. Too many of my projects follow very circuitous years-long paths like this. It's bad enough with short stories; novels are sheer torture.

I'll be so glad when this book's done!

Parish Reunion

2011-06-05T18:50:00.000-07:00

The Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, an hour or so north of here, boasts not one but two tiny Episcopal churches. The one closer to the lake is where I had my very unexpected first communion, before I'd actually been baptized, back in 2000.

The first communion happened when I went to hear my friend Eric preach. He's a priest whose first church job was working in Navajoland, and who's now working there again for part of each month. (Between those two gigs, he worked for the Diocese of Nevada for several decades.) Talking about his first Navajoland job, he told me once, "Yeah, all my liberal friends were aghast that I was riding off to convert the Indians. But actually, I was the new convert; the Navajo I worked with were fifth-generation Episcopalians who were indignant that we were no longer using the 1926 Prayer Book."

Eric regularly preaches at the second small church on the reservation, which has become home to a splinter group from my old parish. Last week, button shopping, I ran into a former St. Stephen's-ite who'd seen Eric at a church function and said he'd asked after me. I shot him an e-mail; he wrote back and asked if I was still preaching, and I said I was.

Turns out that the little church at the lake would like to host a St. Stephen's reunion to thank the St. Stephen's splinter group for all their help. Eric asked me if I'd be available to preach, and I said I'd be honored. One of the priests from St. Stephen's will be celebrating. (When I started attending St. Stephen's, we had three parish priests, but only one's still in the area, so it's good he can make it!)

I'm very happy that Eric asked me, and I'm looking forward to it.

Button Scarf

2011-06-04T18:20:00.000-07:00

Here's the new button scarf. Turns out it's long enough to work as a short scarf without buttons, but I think the buttons add visual interest, and they're fun to play with. I couldn't get my webcam to include my face in this photo, but it's probably the best shot of the scarf itself.

I'm experimenting with different ways of buttoning the scarf. The advantage of the lace pattern is that almost any point on the scarf can serve as a buttonhole.

The first time I sewed on the buttons, the edges of the button end tended to stick out in unsightly ways. And then the buttons started coming loose, because it turned out I'd never learned how to sew a button on properly.

So today I read an internet tutorial on the proper way to sew a button, and now I think they're much more secure. I ran out of the yarn I used to knit the scarf -- although the tutorial said one should use thread, anyway -- and I didn't have thread in the right colors, but I had some old embroidery wool of my mother's that matched.

I used a different color wool for each button. If I decide that's too goofy, I'll redo them again, but right now I like the effect.

Here's the "wrapped around the neck twice for maximum warmth" style, which I'll normally only use if I'm outside in cold weather (although it's once again rainy and chilly here, and I could've sworn I saw fresh snow up in the mountains).

I'm really happy with how this came out. I tend to love knitting things but to be a little bored with the final products, so I'm enjoying having so much fun with a finished piece.

Book Woes

2011-06-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

Struggling with the manuscript today, I realized that I have to completely redo the middle section -- a hundred pages -- to make the chronology work. This will probably mean that I'll have to redo a chunk of the final hundred pages, too, but I always knew that was likely.

I'm pretty discouraged, but as Gary says, at least I'm in there wrestling with the beast (and at least I've figured out what I need to do to fix one of the big problems with this project, although I still wonder if the dratted thing will ever be any good). So many of the edits I've already made are now irrelevent that, starting tomorrow, I'm just going to start all over again at the beginning of the book, but on the computer this time. Now the goal will be to produce a fresh manuscript which can then be line-edited.

My brain hurts.

Reorganized Yarn Vault

2011-06-02T18:25:00.000-07:00

This won't mean much without a "before" pic, but believe me, it's a huge improvement. All of my needles are now in the basket on the top shelf, next to the button basket.

I'm sad to report, however, that Mom's beloved button basket is getting pretty crumbly, and may soon have to go to the Great Craft Room in the Sky. After at least four decades of service, though, it's earned a rest.

Cold Rainy Windy Night

2011-06-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

Happy June, everybody. It's been really chilly and windy here all day, with rain since late afternoon. We always need moisture in Nevada, but I gotta say that I'm craving warmth and sunshine.

I got a slow start today. I've hit a rough patch in the book, as I knew I would, and while I'm doggedly plowing ahead, I'm in "this is garbage and no one will ever want to read it and who am I kidding saying I'm a writer" mode. Every project goes through this phase, and I know that, but this one feels especially bad. That's typical too -- "this is the worst thing I've ever written, and more than that it's the worst thing anyone's ever written, and I should just give back the advance and take up finger-painting" -- but it's never fun, and knowing that I always go through it isn't, at the moment, reassuring me that I'll indeed come out the other end. Y'know how it feels when you're in the middle of a bad cold or a bout of the flu, and can't even remember what it feels like to feel well? This is the writerly version of that.

So, anyway, I moped around in the Slough of Despond for too many hours, and then finally got on the elliptical for thirty-five minutes, which helped. Then I took New Tiny Computer to the computer shop around the corner. They're going to update the browser (it's running an old version of Google Chrome, and I can't figure out how to load a newer one because I'm so clueless about Linux), and also order and install a new battery. The battery life on this thing will never be brilliant, but it's been draining when the machine's off, which seems excessive, and I'd like to be able to go longer than half an hour without an outlet.

The computer geek in the shop beamed at me and said, "Oh, this is a great little machine!" Another computer geek at work, who actually owns one herself, said the same thing. So I think I made the right decision, and even after I pay the bill at the computer place, the entire project will come in for less than anything I could get new.

Then I went to the dollar store and bought some ziplock bags for knitting supplies. Then I got my hair cut, so I now look much less like a sheepdog than I did this morning. Then I came home, actually cleared off two small surfaces in my study -- miles to go, but it's a start -- and used the ziplock bags to sort circular needles by size. I reorganized the bottom shelf of the knitting cabinet, putting all my needles in another of Mom's baskets and untangling-and-winding tail ends of yarn, which went into their own small shopping bag for future use as gift ribbon. In the process, I found another button for the button box. The study still doesn't look as if I did several hours of tossing and rearranging in there, but after a few more days of this, maybe it will.

Then we ate dinner, and then, finally, I sat down with the dreaded manuscript and plowed through today's editing-and-revision quota, loathing every word. Back when writers still used typewriters, one of my writing teachers, Marta Randall, said that she hit a point in the middle of every book when she wanted to insert a fresh piece of paper in the machine and type, "Suddenly the sun went nova and they all died." I'm so there.

Then I knit for a little while to cheer myself up, and now we're going to watch some TV. Maybe tomorrow I'll stumble across a sentence in my manuscript that doesn't make me want to cringe with shame and crawl under a rock. Y'think?

Because Claire Asked

2011-05-31T19:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a photo of the new red buttons in my mother's actual button basket, the only one I ever remember her using. I spent many happy hours going through her buttons when I was a kid.

The basket's pretty beaten up, but I can't bear to get rid of it. Ironically, the button closure on the outside has broken off, so I may need to buy a new button for the button box. Oooooh! An excuse to go back to JoAnn's!

Button Heaven!

2011-05-31T17:26:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging from a Starbucks on the new mini-machine. It wouldn't connect at work, but my regular laptop doesn't connect at work either. It connected fine here, which bodes well for travel.

I went to my favorite yarn store to look for buttons today, but she didn't have any. "I get my buttons at JoAnn's," she said, and told me how to get there. I think maybe I was there a million years ago looking for yarn and was disappointed in the selection, so I promptly forgot about the place.

Their yarn selection's indeed very limited, but their button selection's fabulous: an entire wall and a half of everything you could think of. After much agonizing -- and a consultation with one of the clerks -- I bought three large, red, asymmetrical buttons for the scarf. I'll post a picture when it's done.

I'll definitely be going back there. I had to restrain myself from buying far more buttons than I need at the moment. One project at a time!

I am going to start a button box at home, though. Fun!

Be Very Afraid

2011-05-30T17:23:00.001-07:00

After I got home from the hospital today, I took a nap. I woke up with a weight on my chest to find this looking down at me.

Aieeee!

Translation: "Supid human. Why aren't you upright and feeding moi?"

Buttons, Anyone?

2011-05-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

The homily went fine; the mom of the baby being baptized even asked for a copy, so that was a nice compliment. I preach next on July 24, on Jesus' parables about the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew: mustard seeds, pearls of great price, hidden treasure.

Meanwhile, today I decided that the new scarf will need buttons so it can be used as a longish cowl (since it will be too short as a scarf), and that sent me off on an idea about using small bits of yarn to knit skinny necklace-like scarves fastened with buttons -- one loop gives you a necklace, wrap it around a few times and you have something more like a scarf -- which sent me on a button hunt. Lace would work well for this, since it provides lots of natural buttonholes. Of course, it may be a daft idea, but I'll try a few of them and see how they come out.

It turns out there are a lot of different kinds of buttons, and a lot of places to buy them on the internet (well, of course). Looking at all of them quickly made me dizzy, and anyway I don't think trying to match yarn color to monitor images is very safe, so I've decided that I'll only buy buttons in person. I stopped by Franklin's on my way to the second church service, but they didn't have anything very interesting, or anything that worked with the current scarf. Next I'll try the yarn stores in town. Do thrift or antique stores sell buttons? I guess I can call and ask.

This new little side hobby could waste hours of time.

Also, if I don't find anything I like in town -- or maybe even if I do -- I may take a road trip to a button shop near Sacramento (if they have a storefront rather than just being online, which I have to check). It looks like they have an amazing selection.

I have some antler and horn buttons a friend got in Alaska for me, so now I'm trying to figure out what yarn they'll go with. Also, check out this totally cool art-deco button (sorry for the blurry image; my phone's camera doesn't do well with close-ups of little things). I've had this since I was a child; I don't even remember if it came from my mother's button box or from a grandmother, but I loved it as a kid and have kept it all these years. Very occasionally, it pays to be a pack rat. There's only one of it, and it doesn't go with any of my current yarn. I'll have to buy special yarn for it.

Hey! A reason to buy more yarn! Bwah hah hah!

I wonder if my July 24 homily will wind up being about buttons.

Seen and Unseen

2011-05-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

Here's tomorrow's homily. The Gospel's John 14:15-21.

I had trouble with this one; for one thing, John's my least favorite Gospel, since Jesus' speechifying there sets my teeth on edge. Yeah, he speechifies elsewhere, too (Sermon on the Mount, anyone?), but to me -- and I know this is probably heretical -- John makes him sound like a pompous stuffed shirt. I like him much better when he's feeding and healing people. So sue me.

In my old parish, we always had an agape meal on Maundy Thursday, and while we were gnawing our fruit and nuts, one of our priests would read the High Priestly Prayer -- John 17 -- which even our clergy took to calling the I-Am-the-Walrus prayer, since "As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us," sounds a bit too much like, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." So one priest would solemnly read John 17, and we'd all say Amen, and then another priest would say, "Coo coo ka choo," and we'd all laugh.

But tomorrow's Gospel reading's from John, and also it's Memorial Day, and also we're doing a baptism (for a baby who's the grandchild of a parishioner but lives elsewhere). So this is one of those hodge-podge homilies that's all over the map. It's short, but that works with a baptism, and Atheist Gary has given it his seal of approval.

Speaking of clouds, it's snowing now. Ick!

*

For a little over a year now, my sister and I have been orphans. Our father died in March 2009; our mother, divorced from him many decades earlier, died in April 2010. Our parents are no longer with us in the flesh.

I miss them terribly. I miss their delight in the Reno landscape, my father’s love of music and my mother’s love of hand-crafted jewelry, the meals I shared with them. I miss hearing their voices on the phone.

At the same time, though, I am surrounded by reminders of them. Whenever I see quail, I remember how Mom and I watched a mother quail and her approximately seventeen hundred tiny chicks cross the road during a drive to Virginia City. Whenever I see a dramatic Nevada cloudscape, I remember how Dad loved to watch the changing colors of the sky. I wear my mother’s earrings and use the dining room chairs she gave us when my husband and I bought our house. Artwork we inherited from both of my parents hangs on our walls. When I sit on our back deck, I remember how much Dad loved sitting there, too.

In the months immediately after my parents’ deaths, these reminders were exquisitely painful. Everything reminded me of them, but I couldn’t touch them or hear their voices or ask their advice. The process of working through my grief, though, has gradually transformed each source of pain into a source of comfort. I can’t touch my parents, but I can touch things they touched. I can no longer hear their voices on the telephone, but I can hear them in my head whenever I want or need to, and occasionally even when I’d rather not. I can’t ask their advice, but years of knowing them has left me with a strong sense of what they would say. When I need the comfort of memories not my own, I can talk to other people who knew and loved them: my sister, my husband, cousins and friends.

My parents are no longer in the flesh, but they are everywhere in the world. They both dwell within me and surround me. The world no longer sees them; other people who look at clouds and quail see only clouds and quail, not my parents. But I see them. Technically, I am an orphan, but I have not been left orphaned. My parents live on in memory and in tradition.

This coming Thursday, June 2, forty days after Easter, the Christian church will celebrate the Feast of the Ascension. Jesus, who has been walking around breaking bread and cooking fish and generally carrying on like somebody who never died, is going away again. He’s going to live with his Father.

The Gospels of Mark and Luke describe the Ascension, although very briefly. Mark says that Jesus “was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” Luke tells us that while Jesus was blessing his followers,“he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven.” Matthew and John don’t describe the Ascension at all. Because our three-year cycle of Scripture readings – the lectionary used by the Episcopal Church and many other churches – is focusing on John right now, the editors have had to do a bit of fancy footwork. This morning’s reading comes from the instructions Jesus gave his disciples before the Crucifixion, before Easter. But they work just fine before the Ascension, too.

In a little while the world will no longer see me, Jesus tells his friends, but you will see me. I will not leave you orphaned. I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.

That Advocate is the Holy Spirit, who will descend upon the disciples at Pentecost, forty-nine days after Easter. This year, that’s June 12. On Pentecost, the Spirit arrives in rushing wind and tongues of flame, bestowing gifts of healing and prophecy. This astonishing and joyous event transforms Jesus’ rag-tag collection of followers into the church, the body that still keeps Jesus’ commandments alive in memory and in tradition, even though he is no longer present in the flesh.

Our faith assures us that Christ is alive. He will come again, in God’s good time; we will join him someday. But right now, he’s sitting at the right hand of God, dwelling in a far country we can’t reach via car or airplane. Telephones, e-mail and Skype don’t work there. Prayer works, but sometimes there’s static on the line: we aren’t sure what we’ve heard, or if we’ve been heard. The Spirit blows through us, bringing us messages, but sometimes we wonder if those are just our imaginations. The Gospel message of love, forgiveness and eternal life stirs our souls, but those words were written so long ago, and sometimes we find ourselves doubting or questioning them. We want Jesus with us here, now. We miss him terribly, just as the disciples must have missed him after the Ascension.

Our life in the church, the life we begin at baptism, teaches us to look for him even where others cannot see him. The church is a family of people who love God as much as we do, a family related by the water of baptism and by the bread and wine of the eucharist. We are all the beloved descendants of that first rag-tag group of followers.

We welcome Esten into this family today. We pray that one day he will welcome others. We trust that he, too, will learn to see Christ even where others do not.

We pray for Esten to know that although our Lord is no longer with us in the flesh, he is everywhere in the world. We pray for Esten’s church family to teach him to see Christ in bread and wine, in water and wind, in the faces of those he loves, and in the faces of strangers, even when those strangers are enemies. We pray that Esten will learn the discipline of seeking Christ in “the least of these:” in the hungry and homeless, prisoners and the outcast, those who are ill and those who are despised. With Esten, we promise to do Christ’s work in the world, striving for justice and peace.

Jesus, like everyone we honor this Memorial Day -- all of those we love but see no longer -- both dwells within us and surrounds us. We can hear him in our heads whenever we want or need to, and sometimes even when we’d rather not. When we need the comfort of memories not our own, we can talk to other people who know and love him: clergy, fellow parishioners, our brothers and sisters in Christ. We find him in creation even as we carry his name and his legacy into places of woundedness and destruction. In the words of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”

All of which is simply a long way of saying what we’ve said for several weeks now, the words we will repeat every Easter season until we ourselves go to join the Father, trusting that those who love us will see us, too, shining in the world around them. “The Lord is risen. Alleluia, alleluia!”

Hunkering Down

2011-05-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

It's frickin' freezing here: we may get snow tomorrow night! Some Memorial Day.

Yeah, it's our fault. We never should have had that awning installed.

Anyway, look who's being smart and cuddling up with a blanket.

Tiny Treats

2011-05-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

"There was coffee. Life would go on."

These lines are from William Gibson's brilliant short story "The Winter Market," and pretty much sum up my and Gary's take on mornings. (We use the quotation all the time; it's one of our tag lines.) So imagine our distress this morning when our industrial-strength coffee maker died. We have an emergency-backup French press, so we survived, although we consider the coffee quality inferior. Tonight we went shopping for a new coffee maker, though.

We got a Krups at Bed, Bath & Beyond. It was pretty pricy, but this is an essential home item, so it's worth the investment. Then we went next door to World Market, because Gary was thinking about getting more Adirondack chairs for our deck.

"Honey," I said, "we have enough chairs." In fact, we have chairs stacked in the garage we don't even use regularly. We used them for Dad's memorial service last July; we'll use them again for our Worldcon dinner party this coming August. We need them when we need them, but we just don't entertain that much.

So we didn't get any more chairs. Gary got a $29 side table, though, because he couldn't stand the idea of going into Memorial Day Weekend without any deck furniture to assemble.

Meanwhile, I browsed around the store. I love World Market because it has some of everything, and also brings back happy memories. In 2001, I spent Christmas with my father in Mississippi. He'd had quadruple bypass about a month beforehand, and he really needed me there. It was very much a turning point for the better in our relationship. Before I went down, I asked if he wanted anything from Reno for Christmas, and he said, "A baby elephant." So I went to World Market and got a bunch of elephant stuff: elephant ornaments, an elephant mug, an elephant wall hook, an elephant picture frame, and so forth. That shopping expedition was really fun -- one of my best Christmas memories -- and since then, the elephant items at World Market have always cheered me up.

I needed cheering up today. I'm fed up with the book (although I'm doggedly plowing through it), completely stuck on -- and panicking about -- the homily I have to write for Sunday, being pecked to death by small pieces of paperwork from a blizzard of sources, and basically out of sorts. I worked out on the elliptical for forty minutes before dinner, which helped quite a bit, but I was still cranky.

So I wandered through World Market, smiling at elephant soap dishes and paperweights and wall hangings and mosaics. I didn't buy any elephant things, though. There's just too much stuff in the house (including the elephant gifts I gave Dad that Christmas, and inherited after he died), and anyway, we'd just gotten the expensive coffee maker. I decided I could get a few very small items if they'd get used up, rather than sitting and gathering dust. So I bought two dark chocolate caramels with sea salt (a decadent little treat Gary and I shared in the car on the way home), a small box of fruit-shaped marzipan (because I love marzipan and my mother always gave me some for Christmas), a small tube of jasmine-scented hand lotion for my purse, and a slightly larger bottle of orange-scented body lotion to use after I shower.

Now my hands smell good, and I've eaten a little chocolate, and I have the marzipan stored away as a future treat. So I'm feeling better.

And there will be coffee tomorrow morning. Life will go on.

Scarf Info for Maggie

2011-05-26T20:38:00.000-07:00

Since you asked, the pattern is Barbara Walker's Indian Cross Stitch (third down on this page) although mine doesn't look nearly as neat or pretty as hers. I only wrap three times rather than four, which may make a difference, because I found four times too loose.

It's an easy pattern: four rows of garter stitch, a row where you wrap the extra stitches, and a row where you slip them (dropping the wraps), cross and knit. That part's a little tricky, but not inherently difficult. It's not TV knitting, though.

The yarn's a variegated sock yarn with short color repeats. I don't remember what it's called; I got it on clearance at a yarn store in Massachusetts two years ago, and have long since lost the label. I think the pattern would work fine with any yarn, but the short color repeats really make it pop, producing the "school of tropical fish" effect mbj noted. Fingering's a good weight, too. I think it would work really well in Plymouth's Happy Feet yarn, for instance.

I'm really sorry that I don't know what this yarn is -- although I think it may have been the last skein of a discontinued style or colorway -- because I suspect I'm only going to have enough of it to make about twenty-five inches of this thing, which isn't long enough for a scarf. A short table runner? A collar fastened with a pin? I'll figure something out.

Meanwhile, the baby sweater is going tortuously slowly, because I have to rip one sleeve, and I hate ripping, so I keep working on the scarf instead. The baby was just born, but this is a six-month size, and I don't think I'll be seeing his mom for a while, so I have time.

In an act of supremely foolish self-confidence, I finally ordered the wool for Gary's sweater. He wants a cardigan, and it has to have pockets, and he'd also like cables. He says the cables are optional, but I found a cardigan-with-pockets pattern with cabled sleeves, so that's what I'm going to attempt. Given how long the baby sweater's taken me, I shudder to think how many decades I'll be working on this one.

This is one of those sweaters you knit in pieces and then sew together, and I can't sew to save my life, but the owner of my local yarn shop will help me (if I ever get the pieces finished). The other day I ran in there in a panic about the baby sweater, and called out, "Florrie! I need you!" the minute I got in the door. Another patron, sitting and knitting at the front table, started laughing and said, "You have no idea how often I've heard people run in here and say that exact thing! I've said it myself."

Thank goodnesss for yarn stores.

Woo-hoo!

2011-05-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging on the new machine! It works fine. It even has Chrome pre-installed, although in an older version that won't let me use the apps store. It does everything I need it to do for a basic road machine, though.

Bad battery, but I'll just keep it plugged in. I'm happy!

New Scarf in Progress

2011-05-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

It will look better when it's blocked, but I think it's pretty even now.

In other knitting news, the church group may not work out for scheduling reasons: between vestry meetings, choir practice, classes, and other commitments, I don't think we can get more than two people in the same place at the same time. So we may need to just meet with the quilting group after all.

Nertz!

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie 7-Inch Computerini

2011-05-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

Oh dear. That sounds obscene, doesn't it?

For lo these many months, I've been looking for a seven-inch technogadget -- something small enough to fit in my purse -- that will give me easy access to e-mail and the internet, especially Blogger and Google Docs. I wanted something ultra-portable and ultra-cheap for short trips (like Mythcon) and local coffeeshop jaunts, occasions when hauling my netbook around is just a bit more trouble than it's worth.

The obvious candidate would be a tablet, but I really wanted something with a physical keyboard (and without a pricey phone contract). I'd thought about unlocked versions of the Samsung Galaxy Tab or Dell Streak, combined with a Bluetooth keyboard, but playing with the tablets at local stores hadn't made me sufficiently enthusiastic to justify their price tags.

I love Google's Chrome browser and have eagerly followed news of Chrome-based netbooks, but the first ones being released are even larger than my current netbook, not to mention (as many people have noted) ridiculously expensive for something that's basically a smart terminal.

I really wanted a seven-inch netbook. ASUS used to make them, but doesn't anymore -- the smallest netbook currently available is 10.1", and I own one of those -- and I kept reading snarky articles asking why anyone would want a netbook now that tablets are here, anyway.

Keyboards, that's why. Some of us still type!

Tonight, lo and behold, I discovered on Amazon a pair of used ASUS 7-inch netbooks for $150, and after conferring with Gary, snapped one of them up. As he said, at that price, it makes sense to try the machine out. The customer reviews praise it for internet and e-mail, which is exactly how I plan to use it. Everyone says the keyboard's small, but so are my hands. The machine runs Linux, but I believe I can install Chrome on it (and if not, I'll still be able to get to gmail and Google Docs, which is what matters). If the thing sucks or completely doesn't work, I'll return it, but this may be exactly what I've needed. If it works, I'll have an upstairs desktop, a downstairs/deck netbook, and a purse netbook.

I'd still bring the 10.1 netbook on longer trips, especially if I'm working on resident files (the ASUS doesn't have much storage). But for cloud computing, this could be pretty nifty.

Making a List

2011-05-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

I attended the early service at church today so I could be at the ministry fair afterwards. I can't remember the last time I managed to get to church at 9:00 a.m., so this was a small miracle. (Good prep for preaching, too, which I'm doing next Sunday, although then we'll be on the summer schedule of one service at 10:00 -- rather than two at 9:00 and 11:00 -- along with the evening service at 5:00.)

For some reason, probably just because I was tired, I got a little weepy during the service. Watching the deacon, who served at my old church and is now at this one, I found myself wondering if I did the right thing withdrawing from ordination. That hasn't bothered me for a long time -- like, years -- so I think it really was just my fatigue.

The ministry fair was fine. I got seven people to sign up for a possible knitting group, mainly by dint of snagging anyone who walked past my table and asking brightly, "Do you knit?" (One woman fell over in hysterical giggles: I gather she's tried, unsuccessfully.) If the person expressed even the slightest glimmer of interest -- as in "Well, ten years ago I gave half a second's thought to maybe learning one day" or, "Fifteen years ago I knit two stitches and then gave up" or, "I dunno, but yarn's kinda pretty" -- I beamed and produced my sign-up list. "Excellent! Sign here!"

I didn't even make them sign in blood.

Of course, I'll be happy if any of them show up at an actual meeting. I'm sure some of them signed the list just to get me to leave them alone. But the guy sitting next to me, representing Ushers, had a blank piece of paper (undoubtedly because he was much more polite than I was and didn't strong-arm anyone), and one of the priests walked by, glanced at my list, and said, "Hey! You got a lot of people!"

I laughed and described my tactics. This priest was in my preaching class, so we go way back. "Ahhh," he said, grinning. "It's that diaconal gift, even though you decided not to be ordained." (As I've said before, priests bless and deacons nag.)

I promptly teared up again. "Y'know, for some reason I was thinking about that today. I still think I made the right decision, but . . . ."

"I know," he said, looking sympathetic, and patted my arm and moved on.

I'm curious to see if this new regret/nostalgia lingers, or if it's really just a brain blip produced by not quite enough sleep. In the meantime, I've e-mailed everyone on my list to try to set up an organizational meeting. We'll see if this happens. It would be fun, but may be redundant, since there's a very active quilting group in the parish. One of the quilters told me that knitters would be welcome to join them, so if a separate group doesn't work out, I may just go to some of their meetings. They meet once a month, and I'd hoped for a weekly gathering, but that may be too ambitious.

Black on Black

2011-05-21T18:10:00.000-07:00

The End of the World -- Again

2011-05-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

So yeah, no Rapture. Not, mind you, that I expected it, but I feel sorry for all the folks who gave away their life savings or whatever, and now have to figure out a Plan B. A friend of mine commented the other day, "Oh, I'd be one of the people left down here, but that's okay, because I really wouldn't want to spend eternity with the others." I agree with him whole-heartedly. This is another way of saying, I guess, that we all get the heaven we deserve.

In any case, I spent all morning at church, but not planning for Judgment Day. It was a "getting to know you" session for those of us from my old church to meet some of the people from my new church. We shared bits of our history -- most of these intensely moving -- and wrote a group prayer at the end. (This was a quintessentially Episcopal document which, in the thanksgiving section, included the phrase "Thanks for postponing the Rapture.")

Because the session had been advertised as four hours long (and indeed ran that long), I brought knitting, a pretty new scarf I'm working on. Knitting's the only way I can survive marathon meetings, even when they're fascinating. At the end we were chatting about the Ministry Fair tomorrow, and I said, "So is there a knitting group here?"

The rector, sitting next to me, turned to look at the scarf and said, "There is now." So I'll attempt to drag myself out of bed early enough tomorrow to go to the Ministry Fair with a sign-up sheet and clipboard to see if anybody else wants to get together to knit.

In other news, I'm about fifty pages into this phase of the revision. If I can keep going at this rate, I should indeed have the book done before Mythcon, although I wouldn't be surprised if a snag somewhere slows me down.

My first short shift at the hospital went fine. My tally at the end of the two hours was a whopping 59 -- which is about average for a four-hour shift -- so my hunch that two two-hour shifts will let me visit more people may indeed be true. I don't think the numbers will always be that high, though. The ER was extremely busy, and lots of people asked for prayer, but there was no one with whom I had to spend a lot of time, which translated into lots of visits, because I was able to keep moving. If there were fewer people in the department, or if more of them had deeper needs calling for longer visits, the numbers would be lower (not that my supervisors really care: it's not like we have a quota or anything, but they do want us to do basic bean counting).

It was strange being there during the week, when the hospital's so much more populated! Signing in, I said hello to no fewer than three staff chaplains. I asked if I should still respond to non-ER codes, and was told, "No, we'll do it." In a way that's a relief, and in a way it feels like a bit of a demotion. Since the professional chaplains respond to all codes, I'll probably be playing a much smaller role even during ER codes: get there first, provide whatever comfort I can, and stand aside when the professionals show up. When my sabbatical ends I'll have to go back to working Saturdays, though, which means they'll probably want me on codes again (if only because an on-call staff chaplain can take longer to arrive than someone already in the building).

As the most recent shift showed, however, there will still be enough to keep me plenty busy. And a lot of patients love being visited by volunteers; they're moved and fascinated that people just like them do this, and ask lots of questions about whether they might be able to do it, too. We're an important part of the hospital ecosystem.

Mary Sue on the Moors

2011-05-17T23:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight we went to see the latest film version of Jane Eyre. Gary suggested it since I'm an English professor, which means it should be just my cup o' tea.

Please note: I love Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. I love the little-known The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by the least famous Bronte sister, Anne (in fact, I wrote part of my doctoral dissertation about it). But Charlotte Bronte bores me. I find both Jane Eyre and Villette dull and humorless; both of their heroines strike me as utterly self-involved drips.

A Victorianist colleague who loves Jane Eyre, and hates Wuthering Heights, once informed me that most people hate one and love the other, and strongly implied that smart people prefer JE whereas ignorati with no taste prefer WH. I stand by my guns.

I'd hoped to like the movie anyway, but neither Gary nor I enjoyed it. The actress playing Jane gave her all the personality and character of a doorknob. Her two suitors are both despicable and unconvincing. Even Bertha was boring. I mean, c'mon: if you can't make the madwoman in the attic colorful and compelling, something's wrong!

Watching the film, it suddenly struck me that Jane's a classic Mary Sue. She's an orphan who suffers terrible, unmerited abuse, but rises above it to become very accomplished, but of course is totally modest, but is nonetheless so fascinating that all the men she meets fall in love with her while most of the women turn snippy and jealous. She endures angst, unrequited love, rejection and exile, but nobly and selflessly forgives all the despicable people who done her wrong, and then -- surprise! -- discovers that she's really a wealthy heiress (previously defrauded by the despicable people who done her wrong), at which point she gets the guy.

In other words: too good to be true, which means boring. Aaaah: so that's why I've never liked her!

And yes, I know, Jane Eyre's an important book that captures the oppression of women in nineteenth-century England. That's fine. But Emily Bronte and Anne Bronte and Jane Austen do the same thing, and -- for my money -- are a lot more entertaining. They can laugh at their characters. Their characters can laugh at themselves. They're just more fun to read, okay?

Your mileage may vary, as does the mileage of the author of this blog post, who ponders the issue of whether JE is an MS, and decides she's not. The author of this review, on the other hand, agrees with me. Granted, it's a review of the film, which probably suffers from the problem much more than the book does, although I don't intend to reread the book anytime soon to find out.

DIY Art Therapy

2011-05-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

At the end of my last lesson with Charlene, she said, "Thank you for all your hard work." The statement caught me a little off guard. I've been very, very conscious of how bad my playing is; although I do have some abilities -- as Charlene said, "You have a good ear; if I play a tune for you, you can play it back to me" -- I don't speak the language of music and would never consider myself a musician. I'm somebody who enjoys scratching out very rough tunes on the viola.

But what Charlene said made me think, "Huh. Yeah, I have worked hard at this, haven't I?" And, more to the point, when I've been able to let go of my deeply ingrained perfectionist streak, I've enjoyed it.

The perfectionist thing goes way back. I'll spare you the history; suffice it to say that for many years, I was one of those unhappy people who measured my worth by my external accomplishments, especially grades. This tends, or tended in my case anyway, to turn into a glass-half-empty mindset: I measured myself according to what I hadn't done, and if you think that way, you'll always consider yourself a failure, because there's always someone who's done more.

I've been struggling with this issue lately at work. For one thing, academics are increasingly being evaluated as much by what they haven't done as by what they have, which is why I won't be going up for full professor. I have to keep reminding myself that even if I don't have the "national profile" required for promotion, I have published four books (with more on the way, I hope), and also perform community service I wouldn't have time for were I serving on MLA committees. The non-promotion situation, though, has re-sensitized me to how stressful glass-half-empty thinking is on colleagues and other people around me.

It's a tricky issue. Several of my students this semester have been very upset that I graded them on the results of their work, rather than on their effort. My response, and that of most professors I know, is that I have no way to measure relative effort, and that other arenas of human experience (most jobs, for instance) evaluate on results, too. Learning to come to terms with that is an important part of a college education.

At the same time, though, I always try to tell my students that their grades are not the measure of their personal worth. I know many of them don't believe me; if they did, the grades wouldn't upset them so much in the first place, and at that age, I sure didn't believe anybody who told me the same thing. I'm always heartened by students who maybe didn't get perfect grades, but who say that they enjoyed the class, or learned something, or acquired a new skill. In other words, the students who are looking at what they have, and not at what they don't: glass-half-full folk. They're so much healthier than I was in college.

Another way of defining this is process thinking versus product thinking. Both are important, but in different ways and for different purposes, and if you enjoy a process, you've gained something even if no one else appreciates the product. (One of the problems with academic promotion procedures right now is that the range of acceptable products has tightened considerably.)

It needs to be said that some of this stuff is a function of consumer culture, which encourages to focus on what we don't have so we'll go buy it. As an inveterate shopper, I'm very familiar with that pattern.

So, anyway. Today, as previously advertised, I sat down to start revising the latest novel. I did fine; I'm about ten pages in. But the next two sections, the ones scheduled for tomorrow, will require a lot of changes and some major plot rethinking, and I felt my stomach clenching up about it even today. Gotta get it right gotta get it right gotta get it right.

That mantra serves a purpose, but at this stage it's counter-productive. It's classic glass-half-empty thinking, because I'm looking at what's wrong, what isn't there: at lack, rather than possibility.

I played the viola for a while, since that always gets me to loosen up. Playing the viola means giving myself permission to do something badly, just because it's fun.

Then I decided to go shopping for a Magic Revision Pencil (inveterate shopper!). I like soft, dark pencils, and the number two I used this morning wasn't cutting it. Staples didn't have anything softer. After a few other unproductive stops, I wound up buying a drawing pencil at an art-supply store.

And that reminded me how much I like drawing. As a kid, I had a modest amount of artistic talent and drew and painted up a storm, to the lavish praise of the adults around me. I loved it. But as I got older and fell further into glass-half-empty, I became shyer about the visual stuff. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't skilled enough. I wasn't a Real Artist. This is of course either completely true or utter hogwash, depending on your point of view. I'll never be in MOMA or be paid for my artwork, but I have as much right to draw, paint and doodle as anybody else.

Back in 2006, inspired in part by a course I'd taken on art as spiritual practice, I briefly kept a drawing journal. Every day I'd produce a little doodle. Some are quite pretty; some are hideous; all of them were absorbing and fun. But after a while, I became too self-conscious about that project, too, and put the sketchbook away.

Today I took it out again. I sharpened up my colored pencils and doodled for an hour or so. The product will never be in MOMA, but the process made me very happy. As kids know, and as adults too often forget, coloring's a blast! (I can't remember who said, "All five year olds know they can draw. All fifteen year olds know they can't," but it's spot on.)

I hope to do one of these a day. I think the drawing journal -- along with the viola and knitting -- will help me stay relaxed on the writing front. And anything that creates joy should be maximized.

Basking

2011-05-16T09:42:00.001-07:00

We have a bit of sunshine this morning after all!

That's What We Get for Putting Up the Awning

2011-05-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

I reread the draft today; it needs a heckuva lot of work, but I already knew that. Tomorrow I'll start editing by hand, marking up the manuscript in pencil: a combination of line editing and plot revisions. I'm hoping to do seven pages a day, although that may be too ambitious.

Thing is, I was really hoping to do the work while sitting outside on our lovely deck, under our lovely awning. But noooooo, because -- after eighty-five-degree, sunny weather last Friday -- we're back down in the forties and fifties, with rain and snow flurries predicted through the week. It's also been really windy (as in National Weather Service alerts advising people to lash down their lawn furniture).

Sigh. I'm really glad we got a retractable awning this time; it's snug and safe against the house. And I'm sure the sun will return long before I'm done editing. But I want my outside office back!

Neat!

2011-05-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

I just had a long chat with my sister, who told me that she and her husband have booked their first cruise (on my and Gary's beloved Holland America Line). They're doing a Montreal to Boston trip this summer. Liz went to college in Montreal, at McGill, so I think it will be a very rich experience for her.

I'm jealous, since I've been wanting to do that particular itinerary! Well, someday. I'm also delighted for them, and envy them the experience of cruising for the first time. I just hope they enjoy it even a fraction as much as Gary and I do.

She and her husband had been wanting to try cruising even before Gary and I became addicted to it, but she said, "I knew you'd be happy we're doing this."

Yes, indeed! I can't wait to hear about their trip.

Last Long Shift for a While

2011-05-14T15:31:00.000-07:00

As previously advertised, one of my adjustments during my sabbatical will be to break my four-hours-a-week at the hospital into two two-hour shifts during the workweek, rather than doing it all at once on Saturday (the only time I can manage during the academic year because of teaching and meetings). Shifts can run long anyway; last week I was there for five hours. I usually take a meal break, but visiting patients can be hard on the feet -- I do a lot of standing and walking -- and of course the work's sometimes, although not always, emotionally draining.

Today's shift, the last four-hour one before the new schedule, turned into four-and-a-half because there was a code just as I was about to sign out. (I think the staff chaplain who's usually there on Saturdays must be on vacation, because I was the only spiritual-care person who responded to the code, although it turned out the family didn't really want me there. The nurses were doing a fabulous job taking care of them, as well as the patient.) Then it turned into almost five, because a visually impaired visitor needed help finding a room -- so did I, since I barely know that part of the hospital! -- and then, just as I was leaving through the waiting room, a relative snagged me, angry over not being able to go back and visit a patient.

Sometimes it's hard to get out of the building.

It was a good shift. I had interesting conversations with patients. I helped someone who's feeling very isolated brainstorm about possible support systems. I saw cute kids and visited with fascinating older folks; I love hearing their stories! Quite a few people both asked for prayer and responded positively to it. The patient who coded didn't die. The work was smooth and steady -- busy but not too intense -- until the overtime stretch.

Still, it was really good to get home, take a shower, and curl up with a cat for a few minutes. Now I'm going to go downstairs and make a pot of tea. Then I hope to settle into rereading the rough draft of the novel, which I indeed finished last night, so I can start figuring out the billion and one things I need to fix.

Technical Difficulties

2011-05-13T14:10:00.001-07:00

Blogger was down most of yesterday, and some comments I'd approved and posted before the shutdown appear to have vanished. Claire and Jean, please be assured that I did read and appreciate your comments! I hope Blogger restores them at some point, if that's possible.

Transitions

2011-05-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw my chiropractor and asked if she could recommend a new PCP. She immediately gave me a list of names of doctors her own patients love. One of the people she recommended very highly is a Nurse Practitioner who works with an MD who's also trained in medical acupuncture. I'd already heard good things about him and had been considering checking him out -- here's his bio, which I find both honest and compelling (I especially like his definition of illness as "the human experience of disease," which is a precise and helpful distinction) -- so that was an easy sell, especially since he's on my insurance! I've had good results from acupuncture for my sinusitis, although I'm skeptical about a lot of "energy work," especially Reiki.

When I got home yesterday I called and got an appointment with the NP for 10:30 this morning. How convenient is that? As a plus, she's considerably closer to my house than my old PCP (although the office park where she's located is an absolute maze, and I kept getting lost).

I think she's great: warm, personable, empathetic, a great listener. She looked at me instead of at her computer, although like everyone else these days, the practice uses electronic medical records. She had, for a wonder, heard of Narrative Medicine! She shares my skepticism about the energy stuff and says she's had a hard time wrapping her head around acupuncture, but she keeps seeing patients respond really well to it, so that's convinced her. She adores the doctor. When I said, "I've decided that allopathic medicine is great for acute illness and life-threatening stuff like cancer and heart disease, but holistic medicine is better at treating chronic problems," she nodded vigorously and said, "That's so well put. I'm going to use that."

She recommended a new orthopedist, a knee specialist who's doing her own knee replacement next week. (Ouch!)

She talked about the fact that normal lab values -- while they can reassure you that you don't have cancer or whatever -- aren't a reason to dismiss complaints that people aren't feeling well. (My old doc's response tends to be, "You're fine. Your bloodwork's splendid.") She said, "You don't need more lab work or pharmaceuticals. You need to be treated as a whole person. We need to monitor your depression to make sure it doesn't become a problem, and we need to help you work through your grief." She asked if I was currently in therapy; I said I've stopped getting good results from talk therapy, although I process a lot through the blog, and that led us into a discussion of writing and healing. She hadn't known about James Pennebaker's research -- here's his writing and health homepage -- and was fascinated.

So her recommendation is that I see the doctor for a consultation; I have an appointment with him for June 9. When I left, she both shook my hand and hugged me. My old doctor's fallen into a pattern of walking away without a backward glance, not even responding to "thank you" or "good bye."

So I'm feeling vastly relieved and cautiously optimistic. A small voice in my head is saying, "You know these folks will burn out in five years, just like everybody else you've seen," but I'm trying to ignore it. And even if it's true, five years is better than nothing. So thank you to all of you who urged me not to settle for a doctor with whom I'd become uncomfortable!

In other news, today's my last fiddle lesson with Charlene. Her husband has a job in Madison, Wisconsin, which of course is one of the coolest places on earth, and has a much better music scene than Reno does. They're moving later this month.

I'm hoping, at some point today, to finish the extraordinarily rough first draft of Mending the Moon, and then to start revising like a maniac. I'd love to have it done by Mythcon, although that may be overly optimistic.

Distorto-Cat!

2011-05-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

Because you also haven't seen the other cat for a while. He hasn't turned into a giraffe, I promise: it's just a weirdness of the lens.

Joanna Russ

2011-05-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

I was sad to learn -- somewhat after the fact -- that renowned science-fiction author and critic Joanna Russ died at the end of April. She was a wonderful and vastly important writer, and it's a huge loss to the field and to her many friends.

I've taught various of Joanna's work over the years, and it never fails to inspire heated class discussion and unusually good work from students. In fact, two of the best papers I've ever read were responses to her novel The Female Man. My somewhat conservative Nevada students, even or especially the women, argued passionately with the book, but it resulted in some terrific writing. (We get a lot of "I'm not a feminist" disclaimers around here from young women who don't quite realize that they owe their voting rights and access to higher education, among other things, to the very hard work of many of their foremothers.)

That was many years ago. I should teach the book again, since I'm constantly looking for ways to slice through student apathy and disengagement. Anything that inspires discussion is a blessing.

I never met Joanna personally, but I absolutely treasure a note she sent me praising my story "Ever After." I was incredibly moved that anything I wrote had meant so much to someone I so admired.

Rest in peace, Joanna. You'll be missed.

Confusion Abounds

2011-05-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

in 2002 or 2003, I went to urgent care with sudden scary knee pain, had x-rays, and was diagnosed with osteoarthritis and a worn meniscus.

Since then, many medical folks have told me that worn meniscus can't be diagnosed with x-rays, but have confirmed that I have arthritis based on pain, popping sounds when I move the joint, and so forth. My rheumatologist agreed with the arthritis dx and gave me Relafen as an NSAID, because ibuprofen chews up my stomach too much.

Then my pharmacist told me that Relafen isn't an NSAID; he says it's a muscle relaxant.

Today, my orthopedist said I don't have arthritis but do have patellar tracking disorder: my kneecaps in both knees are off-kilter and don't move where they're supposed to, causing wear and tear and pain, although my right knee is much worse than my left. (He also says Relafen is an NSAID, and the All-Knowing Internet seems to agree; I'll tell my pharmacist this when I see him, since he was treating me a little like a drug addict for taking the stuff.) Orthodoc claims the condition's strictly structural and due to genetics, and says the only effective treatment of the cause -- rather than the symptoms -- is arthoscopic knee surgery to release the lateral ligaments.

First he said that surgery was a last resort, to be used only when the steroid shots don't work anymore. (He gave me shot #2 today, although shot #1 was nine months ago, which doesn't seem like a bad record.) Then, when I asked more questions, he said it was actually better to have the surgery sooner rather than later, because the longer you wait, the more damage is caused by the kneecap moving the wrong way. He said there's no downside to the surgery and that recovery time is quick. He had his nurse give me my diagnosis code and the surgical procedure code, so I could call my insurance company to find out what it would cost.

Important note: Orthodoc's retiring in a month -- he's been driven out of the business by the difficulty of trying to run a solo practice in today's insurance environment -- so he wouldn't be performing the surgery even if I had it. He has no financial incentive to push surgery, in other words (plus I was referred to him by a friend who says he's conservative in terms of surgery).

However, internet research suggests that this surgery a) actually is a last resort, b) often doesn't work (and may actually destabilize the knee), and c) involves lots of agonizing postop pain and weeks or months of PT even when it does work. The sites I've read say that full recovery can take up to a year.

No thanks.

Meanwhile, I think Orthodoc's nurse gave me the wrong codes, because when I Googled them, they were about meniscus tears and surgical repair of same, rather than kneecap issues.

My brain hurts. Thanks to the shot, my knee hurts less than it did, although not as much less as it did after shot #1. We'll see how it does over the next few weeks, though.

Awning

2011-05-11T09:14:00.000-07:00

Big. Nice. Easier to unfurl than to furl, so at some point we may want to invest in a motor, but being able to get it out of wind and weather -- even with significant expenditures of upper-body strength -- is a real plus.

I have my summer office back! Yay!

Feeling Old

2011-05-10T23:57:00.000-07:00

My grades are in, and I'm celebrating with a round of doctor's appointments. Sigh.

Ever since the migraine from the Black Lagoon, which after all was over a month ago, I've had annoying headaches. So today I hied myself to my friendly Primary Care Provider, who called in a script for antibiotics. He agrees with my assessment that it may be a sinus infection.

Meanwhile, my right knee has gotten really crunchy again, and stairs are once again a challenge, so tomorrow I'm returning to my friendly Orthopod for another cortisone shot. I was complaining about this to my PCP -- between my back, my knee, and various other creaky bits, the pain-somewhere-every-day thing makes me feel more like I'm eighty than like I'm fifty -- but he wasn't very interested. Without taking his eyes off his PDA, he said that I just have to keep up my exercise, or I'll feel even worse.

Lovely.

Also, I seem to have gained back the few pounds I'd lost, which is more than a little discouraging. I told the PCP about that, too, but he just grunted (still looking at the PDA). I'm sure he hears such complaints all the time; still, I've started to hate having to see him for anything, since the contact feels so impersonal. I'm not sure any other primary-care folks in town are any better, though. It seems to be the nature of the territory.

The Orthopod is more personable, or was the last time I saw him, anyway. My chiropractor's infinitely more personable; she spends no longer with me per appointment than my PCP does (an average of ten minutes), but I feel like she sees me as a whole person, not just a presenting symptom. Of course, she sees me every week, which makes a difference. She also makes much more eye contact, with makes a huge difference.

Elsewhere in health news, my current CPAP mask has started to ooze blue silicone goo, so I got online to order another and discovered that my favorite mask's being discontinued. Horrors! So I ordered three. The website where I buy them now requires a prescription even for a mask. What in the world? Is there a big black market in CPAP masks? Are people using them to snort illicit substances? I can't imagine why access to these things needs to be controlled.

But it does, evidently. Conveniently, the website offers to contact your doctor for the script, so I entered my pulmonologist's name . . . and up popped her group-practice name, address and phone number. These folks are good!

With any luck, my knee will feel markedly better tomorrow, and my head will feel markedly better within the next ten days, and my back will remain at the not-happy-but-not-screaming level. Then maybe I'll start to feel a few decades younger.

My current decrepitude is so frustrating at least partly because I feel like I do so much right. I don't smoke; I drink hardly anything (an inch of wine every two weeks, at most); I take my vitamins, wear my seatbelt, eat pretty darn well, and exercise religiously. But, like the good doc said, I guess there's no way to know how much worse I'd feel otherwise.

Tomorrow we're getting our new awning, which will make sitting outside much easier than it is now. Sunshine will help.

Since You Haven't Seen a Cat in a While

2011-05-08T18:55:00.001-07:00