The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Anna Feruglio Dal Dan:

In a year or so I expect to apply for my second citizenship. I will have to jump a few hoops for that, but even if I were refused, I would not become in any sense but the legal one less of a Londoner.

Even so, both my citizenships would be equally valid. Reducing your citizenship to what's written on your passport is useful, but it does not take into account all the things that go into being a citizen, from materially living somewhere to contributing your taxes from it (something a lot of true-blue patriots seem to be in a hurry not to do), to voting for its institutions (something I can do here for many offices), to contributing to the cultural and social life of the place you live in, and sometimes the place you have left.

I shall also say, as an aspiring long-distance runner myself, that a triumph in the Marathon is much more a victory for the individual than for the country he or she comes from.

Alas, not being an American citizen, I cannot contribute. Not for any lack of wish, though.

Sorry: I meant to link this

Coincidentally, an exchange of fangirl mail with Elizabeth Pisani, whose book "The Wisdom of Whores" is excellent and full of sense, good writing and good cheer (not easy given the subject matter) brought on this link on the subject of, among other things, staff cutbacks in publishing:

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/10/19/091019sh_shouts_weiner

I feel I have to share.

@38 I know the Gettysburg Address, not by heart but well enough to know how long it is, what it addresses, and why it's silly to say that it ignored Union soldiers. And I'm Italian.
Also, the Gettysburg Address, correct me if I'm wrong, is carved on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial. Now, if you are a historian, and you've ever been in Washington DC, don't tell me that you haven't been to the Lincoln Memorial. And if you are an historian, writing about the Civil War, and you haven't been to Washington DC, what kind of an historian are you?

@27 ajay Stephen Ambrose is a novelist, though. I have never taken his history seriously.

Could it have been ghost-written? Maybe Keegan gave his notes to somebody, or left the fact-finding to others and only wrote the final draft to give his style to it.

It seems rather strange to go from "esteemed historian" to "can't check on a map what states Tennessee shares a border with". Especially since I'm pretty sure there are lots of USians that would need to check on an atlas before they commit the list to paper.

(This is not, of course, to excuse Keegan: quite the opposite. But it would explain things.)

422 lousy words in, and I am already hating this book.
Maybe I'll end up like Douglas Adams.

The sad thing is this happens to me with a fan. He's somebody I know pretty well, but you'd be hard pressed to tell it from his side.

I first met him when we were on a panel together at Noreascon III. It wasn't the best panel of my life but people who have met me know that I am sort of memorable, in a small way.

I met him a week later in a bar in Dublin and were introduced. I said, we've met. He refused to believe me. We've since met often (the UK is a small fannish circle) and he's never made eye contact with me. Last time I saw him I actually wanted to praise him for something he had done, but could not make him acknowledge me.

It's really weird. I was 37 at the time, and I hardly look middle-aged even now.

He doesn't act like this to other women, so I guess it may be something more individual than age and looks, although the other women tend to be SMOFs. I'd ask him what I'd done to him, but it's hard when you're invisible...

Thank you Jim for inspiring me to go back to my roots! Now I have the Clash playing on my computer.

I didn't even know that it wasn't theirs, but you also inspired me to dip into Wikipedia with what threatens to be a morning swallowed up by the Wikisink again.

"I Fought the Law" is a much-covered song originally recorded by Sonny Curtis and The Crickets (post Buddy Holly) in 1959. The song was famously covered by Bobby Fuller Four, who recorded a more successful version of the song in 1965, and by The Clash, who performed and recorded a punk rock version in 1976 and 1977.

Just as the song became a top ten hit, Bobby Fuller was found dead in a parked automobile near his Los Angeles, California home. The police considered the death an apparent suicide; "just about everyone who knew him disagreed",[1] however, believing instead that Fuller was murdered.

The Dead Kennedys, in particular, wrote and recorded a different version as a comment on Dan White's 1978 murder of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, and White's subsequent use of the "Twinkie defense" to influence the court to convict him of the lesser charge of manslaughter. The song, sung from White's perspective, replaced the line "I fought the law and the law won" with "I fought the law and I won".

In 1989 during Operation Just Cause, when the U.S. Army had Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega confined to the Papal Nunciature, the Vatican's Embassy, and were attempting to flush him out. U.S. Army PSYOPS Units surrounded the compound and used several psychological tactics including flood lights and loud speakers. They played music like "I Fought the Law" loudly and repeatedly from the loudspeakers. The Bobby Fuller Four version of this song is ranked #175 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

abi, I didn't take a look at his previous history (having, alas, spent the whole morning sucked in by Teresa's link, bad Teresa, bad!). On the grounds of his interactions in this thread alone, it seemed a quick ban, but I had no idea that it represented a pattern.

Sadly, I also think that my bar for civility has been set very low by the fact that no matter how much I know I shouldn't, I read Comment is Free under too many Guardian articles and by comparison to your average CiFer even obnoxious people sound reasonable and civil. This afternoon I was musing glumly on how much more I would enjoy my life if I either managed to stop reading CiF or it was moderated even a tiny little bit.

Barabara Ehrenreich was on The Daily Show yesterday talking about her book that is, yes, exactly about this kind of stuff. Much of what she said had already been covered in Bait and Switch: the selling of the power of positive thinking to become Rich and Happy. Jon Stewart introduced her with a "What's up, grump?" And no, B&S is not a happy book. In fact, no reading experience re Ehrenreich has been followed by joy and relief.

She's right, of course. But I wish she was a bit more cheerful about it. I read B&S while I was looking for work and it was instrumental in making me effectively give up. She made the excellent point that all these seminars, motivationals workshops, gurus and so on hammer on the fact that it's your fault, the individual fault, if you are broke/poor/unemployed. And this chimes in with a strong and dark undercurrent in American contemporary outlook: the same that is fed by the Ayn Rand fans at all levels, the same that Charlie Stross was talking about when he wrote about the lack of compassion in American society. (One that is emerging strong and lively in the Daily Mail section of our own voting public, alas).

Ehrenreich also points out that this has another effect, obviously political: if you manage to convince en mass the disenfranchised, umemployed, underemployed, alienated, corporate slaves, that it's all their fault and only their fault and by unleashing the power within they can save themselves, you stop them from uniting and organizing.

And after reading all the links that Teresa provided, one thing keeps resounding in my mind: that all Native Americans who are so mad about the misappropriation of their culture and tradition keep repeating that their rituals are rituals of their community, and that it is damn strange that the same people who seem so fascinated with the Native Indian culture are so indifferent to actual Native Indian people and the plight of their community.

Of course they are: one thing is the flip side of the other. They can't understand why appropriating NA rituals has no sense because the whole philosophy they are investing lots of money and effort and emotional involvement in preaches the exact same opposite of the importance of community.

abi, with all due respect, your banning of dave really bothers me. I share his position; that there is no supernatural. I am aware that just stating this position offends people who do believe in some sort of supernatural or other. I have exactly two choices: keep quiet about it out of respect for them, or speak, and offend them. Of course I can try to cushion my speech in disclaimers and verbal acts of peacemaking, and I usually do so. But the fact still remains that I do consider their deeply held and most intimate and genuine beliefs woo. And that is offensive no matter what terms it is couched in.

For the record - I don't think believers are deluded fools. They have good reasons to be believers. I just happen to think they are wrong. But I do feel like I had to append this appeasement, because I am afraid that otherwise my position would be taken as offensive. Is that fair?

Thank you.

Sarah @15: self-esteem and objective evaluation of one's ability are not incompatible. In fact, it is only when you decouple self-esteem from the need to receive external validation that you can get both confident people and people who can evaluate sensibly their abilities.

I think.

I had to go and spend mountains of money I don't have today to get over the thought of all you horrible bastards hanging out with PAUL KRUGMAN while I am here stuck in London. Bwaaaaaah. Yes, there's a WorldCon every year, but PAUL KRUGMAN.

BAWL.

My violet corset + skirt will forever hence be known as "the Paul Krugman Outfit".

The reactions I get when I describe the American system is "That can't be true". For example: "$800 a month? That can't be true. You mean a year."

The reaction I have is: "Why aren't Americans rioting in the street with pitchforks and flaming torches?"

Because that's what would happen here if the Tories were to attempt to privatize the NHS.

BTW, my surgery seriously sucks, but on the other hand my NHS dentist is ten minute's walk away. Then again, I live in London.

Debbie, as a lifelong Catholic atheist, I can tell you there lots of good things about Catholicism. The emphasis on charity, love, forgivness, and so on. The one bad thing, of course, is the Church hierarchy. I don't mean the idea, I mean the top guys themselves, or at least the ones that have been chosen lately. The grassroot-level priests are generally genuinelly good people committed to their community, able to give support and comfort and so on. And a lot of them leave the kids alone, too.

Oh, well, yes, and the sexophobia, but Catholics are hardly alone in that one.

However, if Ratzinger was so keen on social justice, he probably shouldn't have pushed so much to crush the Liberation Theology and substitute it with anti-abortion obsession.

Class issue re writing? Well, there's the assembly line plus exhaustion one, and it comes way before ownership of a computer. I have been a white-collared assembly-line worker for three years - when they said that I was allowed five minutes to rest my eyes every three hours, they meant it. Try working with no pause for eight hours, not like people do in offices, doing creative tasks that allow for interpersonal communication and lunch breaks, but with the clock ticking and no access to the net because otherwise you'd be distracted, and then try going home and writing. Can be done, but requires more stamina than I had. Same problem as "why where there no female Beethovens?" 'Cos if they weren't giving birth to their tenth child they were washing up for the previous nine, that's why.

But talking of class issues re electronic submission - no. Just no.

As for pre-printed labels, unfortunately they come with an expiration date - usually 24 hr. Not good for a SASE.

And as for the meat of the article, yeah, what you said. There is nothing, after all, stopping the workshoppers submitting their stories to F&SF and selling them if they are good enough.

Selling to people you have some sort of relation to also has the unfortunate effect of convincing you that it's not a "real" sale. I sold my first story to one of my Clarion mates (and good friend) who had founded a magazine. I'm sure she bought it because she liked it and she paid me pro rates, and it was a professional sale... but it never felt completely like one. Which is unfair in a number of ways, not least to my friend.

The fact that the number of people who want to write so much exceeds the number of people who want to read is sad. Real, but very sad. My friend, whose magazine eventually folded because it was, well, critically acclaimed but a flop at the box-office, often tells me that if only everybody who sent her stories had bought a copy of the magazine, it would have been a viable concern. That, also, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Publications requiring hard copy aren't my bugbear: that would go to those who require a SASE, because, newsflash, newsflash! THE US POST NO LONGER SELLS STAMPS OVERSEAS.

I am pretty sure most magazines haven't realized this, because it's a new development, but yes: if you are in Hawaii, you can order your stamps on the net and have them delivered. If you are in London, England, nope. Security reasons? Costs? Who knows.

(You can still print out a paid-for envelope, but that has a 24hrs time limit, unfortunately, and is therefore unusuable for this.)

So when I decided to send my story out last time, I found out that my roll of US stamps is MIA, probably packed away in some box (yes, it's been that long), and that I couldn't get any more.

I had two alternatives: either use the dreaded, and possibly mythical, International Reply Coupons, or ask somebody in the US to buy a roll of stamps for me and send them to me.

This second route bothers me a little, because even if I have no lack of USian friends, I'd rather not impose on people for favors. I know I can, but I'd rather not.

I mean, it's not that hard to make a provision for people residing outside the US to opt for email as a response channel, is it? You can have a form rejection in email just as well as you can slip a form rejection into a pre-addressed envelope.

In the event, my first port of call now instead of being IASFM is Interzone (which always turns my stories down with a form, the only one to do so now), and then Strange Horizons, who let me do all of it electronically and....

(roll of drums)

bought my story.

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