David @ 28:
Just a point: a fishing cat is not a fisher cat.
My sister and I got whooping cough on a family vacation. I had a mild case (could walk, think I was hallucinating a bit in the hotel), but my sister...thinking you're going to see the desert for the first time and actually seeing the inside of the clinic for four days straight as your sister gets a spinal tap and tries to bite the nurse because she can't even keep down popsicles anymore and can't eat--that was not fun. Then three weeks in the hospital and two weeks of home quarantine for me. Special.
Vaccinate your kids.
My sister coming into the room.
My tenth-grade teacher, not only not punishing me for an outburst in class, but taking the time to ask me if I was ok afterwards. It was the only time anyone asked me that, and really wanted to hear the answer, all that year.
I know what I'm getting my dad for Christmas. Every time he comes to visit me in MA I want to take him somewhere different, but he wants a $2 tuna melt, so we end up compromising for meals.
Is this stuff I own, currently? There are a few nice things in my parents' house that will be mine, though I don't know how I could take a piano in a fire...
1.) My cat.
2.) An antique silver hand mirror.
3.) My set of "My Bookhouse" books, six of them, from when my grandfather was small.
I would also take my writing and drawing archive, if I could.
In highschool, I found friends who encouraged me to write instead of die. After college, I found my fiancee.
I also found great videos of squid.
The internet's kind of great.
Thanks, Lee, Nicole, and Doug.
Doug--thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a shot.
Euphemia: A Fantasia on Invisible Cities
There are two things they do not tell you when they wave you through the lines of camels, of burros laden with beads, strings of dried figs and memories of the latest fireworks display over the canals of Venice: you must lose a memory to get a memory. There are some memories that respectable people do not trade.
You find these out soon enough for yourself.
At first, you trade one memory for another that seems better, and feel rich: the palace intrigues, the memories of stars' births, that you get in exchange for the single memory of blowing the fluff off a dandelion at age five. The merchant weighs your memory in his scales, bites it to test its purity; he is satisfied when it spits a few white puffs into the air. They are carried on the currents through the bazaar where the people swirl in cloaks of red and yellow and blue, and disappear in the dust of a place where dandelions have never grown. What is a dandelion? you wonder, thinking this, and decide that it must be the name of this dark corridor where courtiers plot and whisper, or otherwise the explosion of light at the heart of the nebula.
Eventually, full of memories not your own, you perhaps forget yourself a little, or worse, remember yourself only as your darkest deeds: all you have left. You are desperate to get rid of them; you try to palm them off on passersby. One, taking pity on you, turns you toward a shadowed alleyway where customers and sellers whisper and look over their shoulders as they complete transactions, blackmails of the mind. You are reminded of hallways, a dandelion.
You enter the fray. You sell off the time you screamed at your mother before you left Venice and never returned, you sell off the time you broke your leg, you sell off memories of your black night-thoughts, the ones that prey when you cannot sleep. Someone is always willing to buy, and you leave with memories of quenching strange urges that you are sure you never had, of murder and of making your five-year-old daughter cry. You have no daughter.
*
"Rich" is one of the words you traded early, and because you are a shrewd businessman and canny, you got two memories for your one, both from a native of the town:
The richest man in Euphemia is a messenger who runs the most important memories between the high houses and richest merchants' stalls--all the great memories in the city pass through his head, but do not stay there. The houses and merchants appreciate his trustworthiness, discretion, promptness, and tip him lavishly with gold when he arrives at his destination. Memory is not the only coin the city accepts; he could buy Euphemia if he wished.
The richest man is else a tinker so poor he begs on the streets for bread and fights the rats for rancid meat. He has never traded a memory. Some, bitter, call him the stingiest man in the city, but he smiles more than anyone else.
*
The man with whom you traded looks to you, asks if you might know his name. You shake your head, realize what he can no more: the word "Euphemia" was his last hoard.
Moved now by pity to keep your end of bargains he no longer knows he made, for alms you--generous, rich, young and stupid--give to him memories of dandelions.
I've just hung the suet out for the bids; we'll see if the cats at the window scare them off or not.
I get SAD, too, as my mother does, but it's nothing like Luthe's or Abi's. I can usually make it go away by surrounding myself with full-spectrum lightbulbs, regular exercise, and vegetables.
I'm Moravian, and I've never seen any rum, frosting or sprinkles in or on the Moravian ginger cookies I've eaten; I suspect that's a later addition as sugar probably came dear in the late 1700's. They're paper-thin and delicious when eaten with tea or vanilla ice cream. Or both. Here's a different recipe, which claims to make "about 200 kazillion cookies."
Alternately, if you're strapped for time, you can just get them at this website. Old Salem is an interesting place to visit.
Another Moravian recipe, Moravian Sugarcake. Traditionally served at Lovefeasts. It's a very Christmas-y food for me, and without this thread to remind me, I never would have made it today with the cookies I'm planning on baking. This is a bread; it's yeasty, chewy, sticky, and delicious. This came from someone at church a few years ago. Best with strong coffee or hot chocolate.
Moravian Sugarcake
- 1 cake yeast
- 1/2 c warm water
- 1/2 c granulated sugar
- 1/3 c shortening (Crisco is fine)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1/2 c warm mashed potatoes
- 2 c flour, sifted
- small amt. melted butter
- 1 c brown sugar
- 1/3 c butter
- 1/2 c sugar mixed with 1 tsp cinnamon
- Light cream (optional, I don't think I used it the last time I made this)
Sprinkle yeast cake over 1/2 c warm water. Let stand.
Mix granulated sugar with shortening and salt.Add beaten egg and mashed potatoes.
Add yeast mixture and flour (add flour to make dough workable).
Knead for 1 min. on floured board.
Put in greased bowl and grease top of dough.
Cover with towel and put in warm place. Let rise until size has doubled.
Turn out and let rest a few minutes.
Press into greased pie tins no thicker than 3/4 inch. Brush with melted buter and let rise 15 min.
Mix brown sugar and butter together. Make holes with thumb 1 in. apart and fill with brown sugar/butter mixture.
Drizzle with a little light cream.
Sprinkle with sugar/cinnamon mixture.
Bake at 400 deg. F for 20 min. or until brown.
I also have a recipe for fruitcake with brandy sauce if anyone wants it. Nothing like desserts set on fire.
Today's baking:
- almond cinnamon footballs
- gingerbread men
- linzer cookies with various jams
- dough for fruitcake
- Mince tarts with phyllo dough
- Moravian Sugar Cake
- possibly my grandfather's oatmeal cookies, if I have time.
Born in spring of '82.
I have a few memories of my family when I was four, and it would have been around that time that I remember seeing Reagan on TV. I knew he was President but wasn't really sure what that meant. I thought he was cool because he'd been in grammar school classes with my grandfather.
I remember being a little older, maybe 5 or so, and my parents had asked me to read a newspaper article out loud to some of my grandparent's friends, who didn't believe I could read. I remember asking what a bomb was and being told to go and play. I read much better than I understood at that point. Not sure what incident that was from, though.
The first year I was aware of as a year was 1987.
I remember the giant earthquake in California in 1989 because I remember understanding that earthquakes sometimes happened in New York, but not understanding that when they did they weren't going to swallow up freeways. Apparently it was the first earthquake to be broadcast live on national TV. I was scared of earthquakes for years.
I also remember the fall of the Berlin Wall; my mother made my sister and I sit down and watch it. I was a bit antsy at first, as I'd been torn away from my book, but I remember thinking that all of those people were very happy about something, and then I started to see the wall and understand what it had meant. By the end I daresay I was interested.
My cat loves to lick the catnip banana we've tied to her (useless) scratching post; my roommate's cat seems to react better to fresh catnip and likes rolling around in it.
"Cat" in Mongolian is "Murr."
I very much like "Digger" by Ursula Vernon (you can read it for pay online, but you can also get collected volumes). Our heroine is a spunky wombat.
Another favorite is "Vogelein," about a clockwork fairy in New York City. Lovely lush art because all the panels are actually oil paintings.
Also, I really like "Raven's Children" by Layla Lawlor. A kind of post-apocalyptic blend of Inuit and Japanese culture, with hints of high-tech.
My recommendation for "comic that starts out looking ok and then becomes amazing" is "Zebra Girl," by Joe England. (Search for "Zebra Girl comic" on Google, not "zebra girl.") The artwork is stunning and I find the plotting thrilling and humorous by turns. Definitely worth reading through the sometimes uneven first year or so.
Fungi @ 107: Thanks. I wish people would spend more time worrying about the poor, too--Christian or otherwise.
Ethan @ 108: ...and the big kerfluffle against it gets kicked up in large part by those whose true goal is to distract people from other, far more damaging things that are going on. Right?
It can be a distracting kerfluffle being kicked up by people that are trying to distract one from other things going on. I wouldn't always argue those things are 'more' or even 'less' important, though--it's hard to tell what's more or less important in areas like this; there's no 10-point scale you can just drop things into so you can start prioritizing. Unfortunately.
Fungi @ 62: Second (and more importantly, IMO) is the cost of attention. There's a finite amount of news coverage on TV and in the newspaper. Gay marriage, like flag burning before it, is a noisy distraction from issues that impact people's lives.
I think there are definitely larger issues that effect all (the environment, hunger, poverty, etc.)
But right now, for good or ill, gay marriage is the number one issue for me. Postponing individuals' freedoms and rights until we can cure all societal ills doesn't work. In fact, I believe it's through securing the rights of those individuals that larger societal ills may begin to be addressed.
To say that the media coverage of gay marriage is a "distraction from issues that impact people's lives" is implying that the gay marriage issue, and coverage of it, does not. I don't think that's true.
For the last few weeks, I'd had to read the paper every morning to see if a group of strangers and lobbyists had decided that I could still marry my girlfriend, or if they'd said that everyone else in the state would have been better able to decide that for me.
I'd say that had a pretty big impact on my life.
Rhubarb: I didn't know you could eat it raw. I've been baking it it pies for years and discovered I liked the taste of the pies better with less refined, "chunkier" sugar (possibly it is absorbed less well by the stalks, retaining more of the sour flavor I love).
It's the leaves that are poisonous, not the stems--although I generally cut off the last inch or so of the stem where it was attached to the ground just because it cooks nicer and looks better. The cookbook I was reading today (America's Test Kitchen's The New Best Recipe) advocates cutting off the outer layer of stem, but I think that's ridiculous, especially as the only rhubarb I can get here in the city is often skimpy enough without cutting more of it away. (I grew up spoiled by huge home-grown stalks of rhubarb, and plenty of it; now I go to the store and buy out the whole basket. It's nearly enough for one pie.)
A word to those of you with a rhubarb jones and an in-sink disposal: don't feed your disposal the ends, no matter how small they are chopped or how robust the disposal. It will clog impressively.
Serge @ 26: I'd hate to find that there was a line beyond which mercy did not apply. [...] Isn't there such a line, in the minds of Falwell's ilk? You can be the most moral and the kindest person on Earth, but, if you were...you know where you'll wind up.
I'm not sure if you meant "these people think 'the sinful,' as they define them, will be going to hell," or "these people think 'the sinful' will be going to hell and that they themselves will be going to heaven," or even "these people think that they are sinful and are going to hell themselves," but I'd like to point out that if you think that God in his/her/its wisdom does that particular bit of deciding, that is probably a moot point. (I, for one, am really glad that I don't have to decide that for others.)
Bruce @ 68: Ever have to stomp a scorpion to keep it from stinging you? The relief at not having to undergo the resultant pain usually comes out in odd ways like "Serves you right, you evil little invertebrate!", when you know very well the scorpion is only doing what it's evolved to do. My reaction to Falwell is a lot like that.
But people didn't evolve to cause pain to each other.
Jonathan @106: So many of his moral peers are still alive and doing such harm that the loss of his life hardly seems something of substance.
Did you mean that that in terms of "his bigoted work will be continued, and I didn't know him personally, so I am personally not mourning the man himself?" Otherwise, it seems a little sad...I'd like to think that everyone's life has a little something of substance.
Lizzy @ 108: That is an excellent sentiment, as well as a nice sentence.
Ethan and Susan--I've been going to Readercon for three years now, usually with friends in tow.
If you are in the halls and see me, say hi.
Here's why I go to Readercon and what I do there:
Why I go:
1.) I like the smallness of Readercon. It's not very large, but it's very intense, in that it's a lot of people talking very excitedly and articulately about books, reading, and writing. I've been to other cons (SF and anime) in the past, and they've been interesting, but not as intimate as a whole.
2.) I like books a lot, both as conceptual objects and as physical objects. This makes the dealers' room at Readercon perfect (or, possibly, the perfect temptation).
3.) It's local to me. I'm in Boston, and so even when it's 1 am and my body has decided that it's finally tired enough to balance out my hyped-up-on-con brain, I can still get back home. This may or may not be the case for you, but it's a part of why I go.
4.) I really like the programming, and if I don't, I can go and people-watch in the hallway or the con suite.
What I do:
1.) Pore over the programming. I do this about a week before the con, and then the evening right before the con (checking any last-minute changes, new panels, etc.) This way I can coordinate with friends, and I can try to see most or at least some of what I want to see, even if I have to miss other interesting things.
2.) I talk to my friends about what programs they are going to. Sometimes their accounts of a panel are more interesting than actually being there. Sometimes they catch me up on that panel I just couldn't squeeze in. Sometimes we sit and chat and write together.
3.) I meet people. Sometimes I meet people whose work I'm interested in and get to talk to them. Sometimes I meet editors and talk to them about what it is that they are looking for for their particular magazine or press. Sometimes I talk to other fans and writers. It's really neat.
4.) I get a chance to learn about SF and SF-related organizations I might be interested in joining.
3.) I go to panels. They are sometimes funny, sometimes enlightening, sometimes brilliant. Mostly all three, at points in time.
4.) I go to readings, sometimes. What are other people writing and thinking, and how do they speak when they say their words? I'm interested in that question.
5.) I go out to eat with a bunch of local friends I know. Sometimes we stay up singing Scottish folk ballads at each other until 3 am.
6.) I buy books, often ones that are a little hard to find elsewhere.
7.) When they have it, I go to the Rhysling reading and awards ceremony for SF poetry.
8.) I go to the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition. (My girlfriend, who is not particularly an SF fan, says that this alone would have been enough to make her go back this year.)
Re: comment 102
I remember waking up to the sound of the bells at college almost every morning my freshman year. Russian class always seemed that much more bearable afterwards.
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| 2009 | 4 |
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