The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by handdrummer:

Central PA.

Just back from voting. At 11am I was number 526 to vote. In 2006, I was number 178 at 4 pm. 2004, around 425 at that same time. This is shaping up to be a VERY high turnout.

All going smoothly in my precinct except for the common error of dividing the alphabet evenly at j/k and expecting even length lines. From the personal experience of years of convention registration work I can tell you that American names are weighted very heavily to the first quarter of the alphabet. Dividing registration at E or even D will get you equal length lines in most groups. As a result, the a-j line had 50 people in it while I, being R surnamed, was behind 3 when I entered the building and voted quickly.

Another pleasant surprise, my county has completed the change back to paper scan ballots since last fall. No more Dieboltian vote swallowers here.


GO OBAMA!

I own thousands of books and cds. Not much else. But they all could be replaced. These things could not.

1. A small worn picture of my paternal grandfather. It shows a tall dark PA mtn Scot, grim and foreboding, standing in front of the farmhouse in which I grew up. He was a Wobblie and a union organizer who marched with Mother Jones. It is the only artifact I have of him. He died a month after I was born, but stories from his life shaped my worldview to a large degree. In the early Teens, he famously told the local KKK organizer "Sir, all of us are black down in the mine."

2. A larger framed photo of my maternal grandfather. He is gray haired and in a suit sitting in his factory office. It reminds me of how wonderful his office was for a small child, smelling of pipe tobacco, oiled leather and its hot coal stove.

3. My lp of Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion. Signed "To My Friend and Colleague" by Baba at the end of the two week long drumming workshop I was blessed to take from him. Taking this workshop broke my years long deep clinical depression and showed me the path home through music. I am not being dramatic in the slightest here.

4. A small worn brown fuzzy puppet named Beowulf that Jim Henson once borrowed from me to use to demonstrate something at a convention back in the late 70's. I was properly awestruck.

One of the proudest days of my life was when Lee, in an inscription she wrote in one of her books, pronounced me a "trufan".

Just how many irreplaceable people has it been this past year?

I'm feeling so old...so old...

In conversation during dinner at the last CapClave, Michael Dirda referred to SF as "our genre'. He's one of us, folks.

Does anyone know how to unaspirate a milkshake? A little help here, please.

I for one was relieved to see that there was no Buchanan/Novak slash.

Err, I'll just go put my mind in the dishwasher now, ok?

We raised $800 for the endowment at Capclave. Thanks to all who contributed.

re #24
We will be holding a silent auction at CapClave to benefit the John M. Ford Book Endowment. Donations of course would be welcome. I'll post more of the practicalities as we firm things up.

Thanks to John Scalzi for the idea.

#5 & #6 Can we do something at CapClave?

I'm working at trying to put together something for CapClave. More about this later.

#12 Teresa That's true, Avram. We weren't hoping to get a casus belli for the war we already had planned, and we weren't safely off in Florida reading My Little Goat when the planes struck the towers.

#13 It's growing clearer and clearer that Bush and Rice knew that something big was coming and they let it come -- they needed their Reichstag Fire

Oh thank ghod. I've been having this feeling for a long time. If two people I deeply respect feel the same way, maybe I don't need to hunt for thicker tinfoil afterall.

My favorite memory of Mr. Sheckley is watching Philip Klass/William Tenn convulsed with laughter as the two of them sat in the corner of the hotel lobby at a ParaCon. I felt so envious and filled with wonder that someone could make Phil laugh that hard.

May the Bards bless you, Bob. I hope that ghod likes to laugh.

Anna, you might want to check out what's known here in the west as secular Taoism. Following your appropriate Path through life without needing the supernatural addition.

Check out a book called The Scholar Warrior by Deng Ming Dao. Not entirely secular, but it explains what being a Taoist in everyday life is like better than anything else I've ever read.

I've been following that Path for close to 40 years now. Works for me.

Your mileage may vary of course.

Oh my, I've just been an evangelical Taoist. Now that's an oxymoron if I ever heard one....

This Is Just Decay
by Walter Carlos Williams

Planetary death
caused
by nuclear
explosions

brought by
infernocrusher
monster
trucks of doom

along
galactic roadways
filled
with your fire

The horror of the Schiavo case highlights the need for everyone to discuss their health care choices, choose a decision-maker, and prepare an advance directive. Please, please, if you have not already done so, do so as soon as possible. I would not like to personally know the next family 'Roach Farm' DeLay and his Merry Band decide to save.

This website has forms for most states: http://uslivingwillregistry.com/default.htm

The Oppressively Real Guide to Owning an Independent Bookshop

I could help with that one, 25 years in and the trench is getting deeper....

In the midst of this group exercise in rational paranoia this really disturbing thought occurred to me. When Bush loses the election, he'll still be President for 3 more months. What can he do in that time to insure that his agenda continues? How will Rove, Cheney and the Boys arrange the transfer to make it as hard as possible for Kerry to reverse things?

Do multiple layers of tinfoil help?

My biggest OS fear has been a Dick Cheney 'heart attack' followed by his 'forced' replacement on the ticket by John McCain the next morning.

On the other hand, there's always the riveting cinema of the attempted assassination of a major administration figure, quickly shown to be 'al-Qaida' in origin.

Please pass the tinfoil. It's starting to leak into my head again.

Writing to my rep (Republican worm John Peterson) hoping for decency is like asking a rattlesnake not to bite you the next time you french kiss it. Might happen, but the experience is gonna be ugly either way.

Sent this out on my email scandal sheet.

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