WorldCon

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!

Well, Nertz

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.

Mythcon, Here I Come

Long time no post, I know. It's been a packed week: I'm the scholarships coordinator for our department and our annual awards ceremony was yesterday, so I was busy getting ready for that, and I also had an article deadline. The scholarships have been awarded and the article's in (although I haven't heard from the editor yet, so I don't know if she's accepted it). I still have one more set of classes on Monday, and a final exam the following Monday, but I feel like I can breathe a little easier.

Sabbatical's almost here.

To celebrate my getting through the week, we went out for pizza last night, to the place in town that serves soy cheese on gluten-free crust. It's surprisingly good: not "real" pizza, of course, but as close as I'm going to get, and tasty in its own right. Over dinner, I mentioned that Mythcon's in Albuquerque this year, and Gary said, "You should go." (The article I just sent in will, I hope, appear in the MLA's volume on Approaches to Teaching Tolkien, which is how we got onto Mythcon.)

I've only been to one Mythcon, back when The Necessary Beggar was nominated for a Mythopoeic Award. I didn't win, but I had a wonderful time anyway. Everyone was very friendly. The papers were both accessible and interesting, which is more than I can say of some conferences I've attended. I felt at home there, not least because I didn't have to worry about being bashed for being Christian (Wiscon can get pretty hostile that way). A conference devoted to the work of the Inklings isn't going to bash anybody for being Christian!

The problem is that even if UNR has any travel money left -- doubtful, in the present climate -- I can't get it unless I'm giving an academic paper, and Mythcon's theme this year hasn't inspired me . "You should go anyway," Gary said. "You'll have a good time. You'll see friends."

So I'm going. I got up this morning and made my hotel reservation and plane reservation, and then bought my membership and meal plan. One of the great things about Mythcon is that everyone eats together, so you really get to meet people, and there's none of that seventh-grade-ish "oh man whom I gonna eat lunch with and will that group over there let me in?" thing that tends to happen at Wiscon and other cons, where small groups congregate in the hotel lobby right before mealtimes and unattached folks wander around trolling for invitations. I didn't enjoy seventh grade the first time, and I still don't. Mythcon's much more restful; you just find an empty seat, sit down and start talking to people.

But, yeah: here I go again, spending money right before sabbatical. We have more left over this month than we expected, though, and it will cover the entire Mythcon package.

So in July I'm going to Mythcon, and in August, Worldcon's coming to Reno, and my old friends are coming to my house for dinner. Bwah-hah-ha!

I can't remember the last time I attended two conventions in two months. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever attended two conventions in two months.

Huh. My geek quotient may be lower than I thought!

Got it, guys! Thanks!

Before anyone else feels the need to e-mail me, yes, I already know about the Mordor's POV midrash of LotR.

I've now been sent this by a former Tolkien student, a current colleague, and Gary, so I thought I'd save the rest of you some time!

I won't have time to read the actual book until this summer, but yes, I'm curious. And I'm glad someone's done this; Tolkien's villains, aside from Saruman, are very two-dimensional, and it's a weakness in the book. My students have started complaining about it; one woman wrote a paper about how much richer the book would have been if the bad guys had been fleshed out more. I'm constantly telling my writing students how important it is to characterize villains fully, and as much as I love Tolkien, he doesn't even come close on that score.

Tolkien and Trauma

So I said (or implied) in my last post that I probably wouldn't be blogging for a bit, but something really neat happened today, and I wanted to write about it.

Background: I've been having some trouble with job satisfaction lately. Partly this is because I've been through a lot these last few years and am simply tired. (That sabbatical can't come soon enough!) Part of it comes with the territory: all teachers have spells when they can't see if anything they're doing is making any difference to a soul. And part of it -- a lot of it -- is because of the hideous state budget situation, especially in terms of education. Our "no new taxes" governor is talking about cutting higher education by twenty-four percent, after a series of cuts that's already been disastrous.

I've long argued that our society claims to care about kids and education, but clearly doesn't, based on spending priorities. The current leadership of Nevada couldn't say any more clearly that it doesn't care about education. If you're a teacher, that's bound to make you feel, well, a little . . . undervalued? I think my job is safe -- lots of students major in English, and we're responsible for several courses all students need to graduate, and we're so understaffed right now that we're actually being allowed to make some new hires -- but let's just say that university morale in general isn't terrific at the moment. My personal fatigue, against that community background of despair and paranoia, has been a fairly toxic brew.

Fortunately, I'm teaching my Tolkien course this semester, which is always one of my favorites. (Tolkien's a great antidote to despair and paranoia!) Today my students read, among other things, part of the Foreward of Tom Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Shippey begins by claiming that the fantastic is the dominant literary mode of the twentieth century, and goes on to observe that many fantasists are survivors of combat or other traumas, a fact he calls "strange." Talking to the class, I said that I don't find it strange at all; I gave them a brief overview of my theories about fantasy and trauma (basically, that the "strangeness" of fantasy allows writers to represent the strangeness of trauma more realistically than realism can). I mentioned that there's well-established research about writing and trauma, which I could talk about more later were anyone interested.

I'd thought there wouldn't be time to talk about that material, but it was one of those days when discussion never took off. I wound up with about ten extra minutes at the end of the class. All teachers know that this happens, but it can also make you wonder what you're doing wrong. Today, a bit desperate, I said, "So, is anybody interested in hearing more about writing and trauma?" (All teachers also know that we tend to keep material in reserve for just such moments.) To my relief, a few people nodded.

So I gave them the condensed version of my speech about why writing is the opposite of trauma, even though it wasn't strictly on topic. Most of them looked interested. One student actually seemed teary-eyed, but I assumed that was allergies or a speck in the eye or something.

After class, though, that student came up to me -- openly weeping -- and thanked me for the trauma lecture. This is someone who plans to go into healthcare. "My friends have been asking why in the world I'm taking this Tolkien class, because it has nothing to do with my field, but now I can say, 'Hey, she has some really interesting ideas about trauma!' Now I know that I'm supposed to be here." The student has experienced personal trauma, which made the lecture especially applicable (to use a favorite phrase of Tolkien's!).

During my office hours, another student showed up and thanked me for the trauma lecture. "That was really moving." This student, too, has a personal history with trauma, and has dealt with it partly through writing.

So, hey. Just when you think you aren't getting through and have nothing to contribute, it turns out you're saying something other people need to hear. It's a good feeling, I have to say.

Christmas

This is a photo of the qiviut scarf I knit for Gary's mom for Christmas. Since she's opened the package, I can now post the photo!

I've already started knitting for next Christmas. Thank God for knitting, which carried me through a fairly joyless holiday. Last night we went out for dinner to our favorite restaurant, and it was nice, but somewhat subdued. The two highlights were Gary telling me that he'd always wanted to go on a cruise but never thought he'd get the chance because it's so decadent -- I didn't know it meant that much to him! -- and seeing two friends who were also eating dinner there.

We came home. I hung out and knitted for an hour or so before heading off to church. Somehow, although I can't quite figure out how from the timing, I missed a phone call from the ER in town where I don't volunteer. A bereaved relative had asked for pastoral care and they didn't have anyone there, so they were cold-calling anybody who might be able to help; somehow one of the nurses had gotten my number from an old church friend. I'd have gone if I'd known about this -- although I don't know if they'd still have wanted me once they learned I'm not clergy -- but I only got the voicemail message tonight.

My heart aches for the poor soul begging for pastoral care after a death on Christmas Eve. Horrible. I hope the hospital found someone. (flask, if you're reading this, I thought of you.)

But I didn't get the call -- maybe we got home right after they'd left the message? -- so instead I knitted and headed off to church, where my old deacon wasn't part of the service after all. He starts January 1. I sat with him, his wife, and their daughter, the reporter who did the lovely story on the closing of St. Stephen's. It was a nice service, but it was longer than we're used to, and it wasn't home. Someday it will feel like home. I just have to keep showing up.

I slept in this morning and headed off mid-morning to the ER where I do volunteer. It was a pleasant, low-key shift; I'm glad I was there, and I think at least a couple of patients were, too. No codes, thank goodness. I had a nice chat with One of My Favorite Nurses, who suggested that we and our husbands go out to dinner sometime. That would be great fun, and I hope it happens.

I also had a good conversation with the head staff chaplain, who was working today, and who said that the ER has very high rates of patient satisfaction with spiritual care. So those of us who work there (and several other volunteers, not to mention the staff chaplains, put in significantly more hours than I do) must be doing something right. The medical staff's very aware of spiritual issues, too, if only because there are often chaplains underfoot.

I came home, had a rather disjointed conversation with my sister, who didn't sound much more overjoyed with the holiday than I was, and settled down to knit and listen to my audiobook of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The reader chews the scenery -- why do people who read children's books have to ham up their performances so much? -- but it was still fitting for Christmas. This time around, I was newly struck by the scene where Aslan, walking to the stone table with Susan and Lucy, asks them to put their hands in his mane to comfort him. That's such a poignant detail. Even though I'm now hyper-aware of how Lewis is retelling the Passion, I like how he handles Gethsemane and Easter morning. The two girls stay awake; they stay with Aslan for as long as they can, and they watch what follows even when they can hardly stand to look at it, and -- just as in the Gospels -- the Daughters of Eve are the first witnesses of the resurrection.

So there you have it: a somewhat dull, sad, Christmas, but certainly there were very nice moments and a lot of reminders to be grateful.

And now to bed.

Dawn Treader

So we indeed saw the new Narnia movie today. I enjoyed it more than Gary or our friend Katharine did, just because I'm so fond of the book. No film can capture the magic of Lewis' prose, and special effects by themselves don't do the trick.

Most magical moment for me: When the dragon's eye opens and we see Aslan reflected in it. Following closely on this was the slightly later scene when Caspian and the children are walking across the sand and the lion's shadow joins them.

I liked the treatment of the Eustace subplot the best; the stowaway child -- was she even in the book? -- seemed completely extraneous and unnecessary, and Lucy simpered entirely too much.

I'm glad I went, but I feel no need to see it again. I've downloaded the first three Narnia books from Audible, though, and look forward to listening to them!

Christmas Gift

Last night I got a little weepy, a combination of missing my parents and disappointment that we aren't going to San Francisco. I told Gary that to console myself, I want to see the new Narnia movie sometime this week. (We find 3D merely annoying, but have found theaters where it's playing in good old 2D.) I don't expect the film to be anywhere near as good as the book, but I read a review that said that this one's better than the other two, with more moral weight. I'm listening to an audiotape of Lewis' Surpised by Joy at the moment, so I'm in the mood.

I grew up on, and at least partly in, Narnia. My sister read me The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was pretty small, and I went on to devour the others on my own. I haven't reread the books for many decades now, although the boxed set my mother bought me when I was a child sits loyally on my bookshelves, but a typed copy of Puddleglum's famous quotation from The Silver Chair -- the long speech that concludes, "I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it" -- is taped above my desk.

I was completely smitten with Aslan when I was a kid, partly because he was such a great character and partly because I loved cats, big or small, anyway. I think I've written here before about how my own imaginary world, called "Aleia" (complete with maps, including the annexed territories of Narnia and Oz) was populated with my favorite characters from other stories, as well as a number of my own. Chief among the residents were Aslan and Elsa, the lioness from Born Free, who married, mated, and had litters of rollicking cubs.

My aunt and uncle went to Africa when I was a kid, and I begged my uncle to bring back a picture of a lion for me. I was grievously disappointed when he sent me a postcard of a lion: I'd wanted him to meet a lion, talk to it, and take a snapshot. A few years later, when I learned that the real-life Elsa had died some time before -- and I hadn't even known it -- I sobbed for days. It was my first taste of real grief.

In fifth grade, when my mother moved to a larger apartment and I was terrified over the move (have I mentioned that I was a strange, neurotic little girl?), Mom put a poster in my new room to reconcile me to the space. The poster was a large black-and-white photograph of a male lion with a tiny tabby kitten curled between its paws. I loved it.

I'm more than half-convinced that my immersion in the Narnia books made me a sleeper Christian decades before I ever dreamed of going to church. I'm sure C.S. Lewis would approve.

So, anyway. Last night I babbled about all of this to Gary for a while. An hour or so later, when we settled down to watch our current DVD -- the fourth season of The Tudors -- he came downstairs with a rolled-up poster and said, "Here. This is your Christmas gift." (Hours earlier, when we'd decided not to go to San Francisco, almost his first words were, "This doesn't mean we have to buy each other Christmas presents, does it?" We'd decided that the trip would be our gift to each other, and Gary loathes everything to do with the holiday.)

It's the poster of Aslan shown at the top of this post. Gary had snagged a free copy when he went to another movie, and had forgotten he had it until last night.

How perfect is that?

Words to the Wise

This gem courtesy of YouTube via the Mythsoc listserv.

I'm going to show this to my fiction workshop on Monday. Too unbelievably funny, precisely because it's so true. I've heard would-be writers say all of these things.

Enjoy!

Better

My voice isn't entirely back, but it's mostly back, and I feel somewhat less like a sodden sandbag than I did yesterday.

I learned yesterday that one of my short stories, "Gestella" -- my eco-feminist werewolf story, and one of the two or three darkest things I've written -- is being reprinted in an urban fantasy anthology edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale. The volume, as yet untitled, will be published by Tachyon. I'll post more when I get more info.

In the meantime, the small advance will allow me to buy myself a Christmas gift of, heaven help me, yet another backpack bag. I now own an embarrassing number of these things, but I'm still looking for the perfect one, and for various reasons, I think this one will address a number of problems I've had with others. Namely: I think it will hold what I need it to hold without being too heavy (unlike my otherwise beloved Baggallini Brussels bag, which was doing a number on my back), and it looks like the straps are both thick enough not to cut into my shoulders -- I hate the skinny straps on most women's purse-backpacks -- and adjustable enough to ensure a snug fit.

If it works out, I'll let you know. If not, I'll return it and continue the quest.

Getting Somewhere

I'm now almost finished with my essay on using Tolkien to teach trauma theory (for the MLA's volume on "Approaches to Teaching Tolkien"). It's due Thursday, and at the beginning of the week I had nothing, but now I have a solid piece. Gary actually loves it and would like it to be longer; I'd like it to be longer, too, but the editor imposed a very strict length limit.

This project taught me a) that I really do know a heckuva lot about Tolkien, although I'm certainly not a Foremost Authority, and b) that I'm very good at editing to length. Also, I enjoyed working on it. It was fun.

I just sent the essay out to students I quoted to make sure they're okay with it. (Since they sent their comments specifically for this project, I hope they will be.) My remaining task is to find the edition of LotR I'm required to use and get correct page numbers, but I should be able to find it at a bookstore or in the UNR library.

After that's done, I really need to haul on cleaning and preparations for the party next week. Fran arrives Monday; my sister and nephew, and Dad's Mississippi friends, arrive Tuesday. My study's even more of a disaster than it was a week ago, since it's now strewn with Tolkien material. Yikes!

I reluctantly canceled my hospital shift today to give myself more breathing room. I hope I can make efficient use of the time!

Last night, Chaplain Stephen from Oregon called to tell me that the box had arrived safely and that all the paperwork was in order. I asked tentatively if there might be a chance of getting video or photographs of the ceremony; I expected a flat-out "no," but instead he said, "I'll work on that. What were your Dad's favorite flowers?"

After thinking a minute, I said, "Probably red carnations. Red was his favorite color, and he loved anything that was cheerful and inexpensive."

"We have a lot of generous merchants in this community," Stephen said, so I imagine he has florist friends.

Again, he's really going above and beyond, and I'm very touched.

On a comical note, I had a small kitchen mishap yesterday. I use soy milk in my coffee, and soy milk comes in one of those rectangular cardboard boxes with a pouring spout. So I reached sleepily into the fridge, grabbed a box from the shelf where the soy milk lives, poured it . . . and realized that I'd just poured chicken broth into my coffee.

Chicken broth also comes in a rectangular cardboard box with a pouring spout. When I told Gary what had happened, he said, "Now we're even. Remember that time I cooked the dumplings in soy milk instead of chicken broth, because I grabbed the wrong box?"

I drank the coffee, although it was a little strange. As I told my sister, "This gives the phrase 'tastes like chicken' entirely new meaning."

This morning I made sure the box I was holding contained soy milk. Today's coffee tastes much better than yesterday's. Fancy that!

Happy Day of the None Ring

March 25, as all my fellow Tolkien geeks are surely aware, is the date of the destruction of the One Ring and the Fall of Sauron.

Huzzah huzzah! Let us eat chocolate. Sam and Frodo would want it that way!

Stuff

Christmas was pleasant; everyone enjoyed their loot, I think, although Mom was having trouble identifying objects and didn't seem sure what to make either of the scarf Liz crocheted for her (at Mom's express request) or of my cat belt. Oh well. I hope that somewhere along the line, she'll understand what they are and what they mean.

I got lots of nice stuff: a great travel mug, a CD of old-time fiddle music, a book of British Isles fiddle tunes, a lovely necklace (from Mom, who made it for herself from turquoise beads several years ago), and a book of artwork from the Peter Jackson LotR adaptations. Oh, and when I got here, my mother had me go through footwear she can no longer use because her feet have gotten bigger, and that netted me three pairs of boots, two pairs of shoes and some sneakers. I'll have to ship a box home; there's no way all this is fitting in my suitcase.

So then, of course, today we shopped. I got yarn for my sister and nephew's socks (and some for myself), several 2010 calendars -- two for the house and one for my purse -- and a belt on sale at the Gap. Liz got some books of crochet sock patterns and assorted calendars, and bought me a nice hat from the Gap. My nephew got a lot of new clothing. We had a fun lunch and went to a pretty (although overcrowded) museum. So it was a great day, despite absolutely pouring rain.

I've been having fun practicing my fiddle here, although my repertoire's become severely limited now that Christmas carols are no longer appropriate. Relatives and cats have all been very patient with the noise. Felicity seems to have handled travel fine, and actually sounds better here, possibly because of the greater humidity.

Okay, I'm done blogging for today, I promise. I have to go upstairs and see if Mom wants to be put to bed.

Plants in Motion

This week, my summer Tolkien class met the Ents. By coincidence -- or not -- last weekend my sister told me about a science exhibit she and her family had seen about Plants in Motion. Plants are alive, after all: they just move much more slowly than we do. But move they do, and these videos prove it.

My sister said that the SlowLife Exhibit she saw included a video illustrating that flowers keep moving after they're cut, and move most violently just before they die.

Oh, dear. When I told Gary about this, he said, "I'll never bring you flowers again."

My class loved these videos, and I hope all of you will, too.

Tread gently on the grass, and thank your salad for feeding you.

Chaplain Sighting!

My friend Arthur just sent me a message about a new BBC series called Being Human, about a twenty-something trio of supernatural beings -- a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost -- sharing a flat in London. Evidently the vampire and the werewolf both work in a hospital (an interesting premise in itself!), and in the first episode of the first season, a chaplain leads a service for a deceased coworker.

Arthur has no idea if the chaplain's a recurring character or not, and I can't tell from the website. Still, a chaplain appearing in a TV hospital, however briefly, is heartening news.

Gary and I, of course, will have to wait for the series to come out on Netflix.

Happy Birthday, Dad

My father would have been eighty-seven today. My sister took this photo on his birthday four years ago, when he was still living in Ocean Springs MS. I don't think I was there then; I'd gone to see him that Christmas, and I don't think I went out during the summer, too. I was there for some of his other birthdays, though.

(Have I posted this photo before? If so, please forgive me.)

Behind Dad, you can see a small portion of his beloved music collection, which was color-coded by genre and alphabetized by artist. Note the birthday candles in the cans of Ensure, a joke Dad would have appreciated, and also the plaid shirts. He loved plaids, the louder the better. Just last night, going through a bag of his things, I found his all-time favorite plaid shirt, which had once been very loud indeed but became more and more faded as the fabric grew thinner. He must have had that shirt for well over twenty years. I folded it and put it carefully in my closet.

Here's my favorite recent picture of him, taken October 18 of last year, the night he arrived in Sacramento. That was the last night of his life he wasn't on oxygen (although, in retrospect, he should have been even then). We stayed at a hotel in Sacramento that evening and drove home to Reno the next morning. As we crossed a particularly scenic section of the Sierras, Dad said happily, "Oh, I'm going to love living in the West!"

But as soon as he got out of the car in my garage, he collapsed, and Gary and I called 911, and Dad went to the hospital. Between then and March 21, when he died, he only spent two months in any space he could call his own: one month in an apartment and one in an assisted-living facility. The rest of the time, he was in hospitals or nursing homes. He always told his nurses and doctors -- in Reno, San Francisco, and Palo Alto -- "I started moving to Reno on October 18, and I'm still moving."

He routinely nagged me about my writing. "Have you finished your book yet?" Almost four months after his death, I still haven't been able to bring myself to write his obituary.

In my Tolkien class this afternoon, we'll be talking about the first two chapters of The Lord of the Rings, including the famous birthday party when Bilbo vanishes. That seems very apt, today (or, as Tolkien would put it, applicable). "I regret to announce that -- though, as I said, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to spend among you -- this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!"

Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you. I'm sorry you never fully arrived here, and I hope that wherever you are now, you're at peace.

A Few of my Favorite Things

Good stuff that's happened today:

* Getting the remaining putty and the stitches out, and having my periodontist compliment me on how well I'm healing. "Whatever you're doing, keep it up." (As I've said before, smoothies rule.)

* Learning that my periodontist volunteers his services at nursing homes, and has also done so on a kibbutz in Israel and on a bus serving migrant farm workers and their kids in California. "We initially thought we'd just be treating the adults so they wouldn't be in pain in the fields, but then they started bringing their kids and asking us to treat them, instead. It's just like with anybody else: your kids always come first. So we wound up retooling to do pediatric dentistry." I love stories like this, which always make me feel better about the world.

* Swimming for forty-five minutes. Yay!

* Treating myself to some new notecards and a copy of John Crowley's Endless Things. I first started reading the Aegypt cycle in 1988; it's been twenty-one years in the finishing, although I'll probably need to reread the first three volumes to make sense of this one.

* Eating fully solid food again, and being able to chew without worrying about dislodging putty. Yay!

* Looking at the huge pinecone sitting on my desk. When we moved into our house, one of the trees in our front yard was an itty bitty pine tree that barely came up to our waists. Eleven years later, it towers over us. Gary handed me the pinecone today and said, "Look what Sven made!" (Sven is the pine tree; Lars is the gigantic, shaggy juniper bush that dominates the yard.) We're very proud parents. The timing is especially fortuitous because this evening, I'm leading a civic reflection group, and we'll be talking about Pablo Neruda's famous essay The Lamb and the Pinecone. I'm going to bring the pinecone with me as a show-and-tell item.

I Seeeee You

Bali was Sauron's body double in the LotR movies. Betcha didn't know that.

Best. Story. Ever.

Today I picked up this week's issue of The New Yorker and was absolutely blown away by this story. The faerie king and queen, Titania and Oberon, adopt a human changeling who comes down with leukemia, and they stay with him in the hospital, trying to make sense of what's happening both to him and to themselves. It's beautifully written, intensely moving, lyrical, and often funny. I can't remember the last time I was so enthralled by a piece of fiction.

I've now ordered two books by the author, Chris Adrian, who's currently a pediatric oncology fellow at UCSF, has studied at Harvard divinity school, and attended the Iowa Writers Workshop. What a resume! No wonder I love this guy's writing: he shares all my preoccupations.

Read it. Then let me know what you think!

Far Green Countries

Dad died on March 21, the day after the spring equinox. The days surrounding the equinox (March 20-25, say) have been difficult for me for years and years now; in fact, the first time we went to Hawai'i over Spring Break, it was because our friend Katharine said, "Bad luck can't travel over water." The March traumas aren't just bad mood on my part, either; they usually take the form of external events I can't have predicted. For instance, a beloved cat died in an especially hideous fashion on March 21 four years ago. When Dad went on hospice, I remember thinking, "Yeah, let's see if he dies on the Equinox." He didn't -- he died the day after -- but it was close enough, especially with the unfortunate cat synchronicity.

When Dad died on March 21, Gary said, "Okay, I believe you about this March thing now."

Today we did more work over at Dad's apartment. Among other things, I cleaned out his file drawers, where I found all kinds of fascinating and useful documents. He had an entire file devoted to Red Jacket, the wooden sailboat he lived on for twelve years. That boat was the love of his life. He was fond of me and my sister, certainly, but nobody could compete with the boat. She was never especially seaworthy, and I don't think he ever actually took her out sailing, once he and Fran managed to get her from Chicago to the Gulf Coast, but she consumed most of his financial and emotional resources. (I'm sure you've all heard the famous definition of a boat: "A hole in the water, surrounded by wood, into which one pours money.") The day in 2002 when Dad sold Red Jacket to his friend AJ, because he could no longer manage the work necessary to keep her floating, was a very sad one for him. AJ didn't have the time or wherewithal to take proper care of the boat either, though, and the last we heard, Red Jacket was basically a pile of scrap in a shipyard somewhere.

Among the documents in the Red Jacket file was the bill of sale. Dad bought Red Jacket on March 21, 1988.

He died twenty-one years to the day after he bought his beloved sailboat. During the days preceding his death, he talked a lot about travel by air and water, but the day he died, he kept saying, "He's working on the boat."

"Who's working on the boat, Dad?"

He couldn't tell me. When I asked if the mysterious "he" was AJ, Dad agreed. But I suspect the worker was someone else.

March 21, 1988 was the first day of the grandest adventure in Dad's life. Knowing that, and having heard what he said before he died, it's now easier for me to see March 21, 2009 as the beginning of another grand adventure. Dad is certainly sailing somewhere, and I have to imagine that wherever he is, he and Red Jacket are both restored to wholeness.

Dad died at dusk, and when Gary and Sherry and I were waiting for the funeral director to come for the body, I told Gary that I kept thinking about the beautiful two paragraphs in The Lord of the Rings when Frodo sails from the Gray Havens, leaving his friends behind. "You should post those two paragraphs on your blog," Gary said, with tears in his voice. So here they are.

Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Havens, and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow on the waters that was soon lost in the West. There still he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart. Beside him stood Merry and Pippin, and they were silent.

When I teach the book, I always point out to my students how carefully Tolkien describes the difference between what Frodo sees and hears and smells and what Sam, Merry and Pippin are able to perceive. Although this passage isn't a description of Frodo's death, and although Tolkien abhorred allegory, I've always read these paragraphs as an affirmation of faith, a meditation on how those we love, when they leave us, indeed go to places we can't now imagine.

I hope you're heading towards a far green country, Dad, with calm seas and good winds.