ephemeral entries

Update: Not books!

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:14:42 GMT

Since my last personal update,

Easter: I finally put up my Christmas decorations, laid out my decorative baskets, eggs, and bunnies, and wore green to my local sister's for a nice family afternoon.
Work: Client decided last week they don't have enough room for us dirty contractors any more and told us only to come in for meetings we were specifically told to come in person for. My hour to hour-and-a-half each way commuting is dropping from 2x/week to maybe once/twice a month!

What a paucity of updates, but I've mostly been working and reading lately, and playing too many games.

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Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: Not Cancelled!

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 18:03:46 GMT

Update: Library Zoom issue fixed, event IS happening.

I'm leading another library discussion April 16. This one is a pleasant middle-aged romance / comedy of manners in a 2010 British village (caveat: some family drama). Must have Zoom account (free is fine) to join (don't have to be local)!

I enjoyed this book over a decade ago and went to hear the author, Helen Simonson, talk about it back then at the Bethesda library. The part I remember most is she wanted to put an elephant in it (the big banquet scene) and her editor said no. Sometimes editors are right. Anyway, I have a hold on the audiobook but it's a 6-week wait. If I have to, I'll get the ebook from Libby, or the print book from the library, to refresh my memory. I may not come up with my own questions this time, since there are two reasonable discussion guides online (I don't agree with the assumptions in all of them, but they're reasonably phrased and can spur discussions either way).

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Glen Echo Park pictures and my February and early March

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 19:29:25 GMT

DC area folks may be interested in lovely Glen Echo Park pictures in several recent entries by austin_dern . His way is to write journal entries (mostly about amusement park visits & history, hence the Glen Echo shots) and then include a batch of photos which may not be about that journal entry at all. But there are some very nice pictures of the Bumper Car Pavillion, the carousel, and more.

Books: I am really glad I read (listened to) Cat Sebastian's After Hours at Dooryard Books (thanks to lcohen 's recommendation). Set in 1968 NYC*, a bookstore manager teaches his secretive new assistant about the business and then the bookstore manager's just-widowed sister and her baby move in. Aside from the slow burn love story (with the assistant), there's a fair bit about folk music, the music industry, anti-war protests of the time, walks through the city, and how to keep going when many things are terrible. Lots of resonance with our time, some love and hope, and a very good read.
* Incidentally, one of three books with garbage strikes I read in February, just happened that way.

Home life

This year my house is 100 years old and I am 60 years old, so maybe I should plan a big backyard party for us both for May or later. After a very cold and snow-laden February, suddenly it's getting very warm, so in theory I could throw a party sooner, but I have too much chores to put on a big party.
Mainly, I need to deal with my taxes (I know, I know), get my car fixed (a small crack on my windshield last weekend has this week meandered over a foot across so I got an appointment for next week), get a passport replacement (stymied b/c I accidentally threw the old one away in a folder of Germany maps, and the forms don't quite cover that and I don't want to lie), and do some de-cluttering.
My basement computer which is the more secure Ethernet-connected one where I like to do my financial stuff wouldn't display to its monitor for a while but it's better now (I took fresh backups as soon as I temporarily fixed it) so I really need to get going on organizing 2024 tax materials.
I have played a lot of Garden Joy and Polytopia this weekend.

Work

The worst federal lead has had us do a lot with metrics and road map for a big presentation he has next week. We finally got things into shape that pleases him Friday. Also, he attended some new-to-him meetings I was in last Thursday, finally realized I do a lot of work and have a lot of expertise he was ignoring, and spoke to me with a little more appreciation Thursday evening. We'll see if that lasts.
The work for the OTHER federal lead went by the wayside for a while and I need to pick it back up and jam on it before our meeting Wednesday afternoon.
Middle and upper management at both my employer and my client are jamming AI down our throats, the worst literally to the point of "But ChatGPT says" to contradict our recommendations.
I now have to drive in to the DC office 2x week. I love my old house but am sometimes a little overwhelmed by it (basement leak, etc.) and the yard, especially since my sister moved out. So I actually looked at 3 town/rowhouses a 20-minute walk from work, and I really like and could afford one of them, but I really shouldn't think about applying for a new mortgage until I file those taxes, plus this may not be the time to go back into debt. The commute is really tiring me out (I know others have it worse), but I am listening to more audiobooks.
I finally made back my hours from the negative leave I was in from the fall shutdown, so maybe I can take a day off later in March.

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In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 18:36:05 GMT

*In the Midst of Winter*: tonal whiplash from middle-aged romance in NYC and upstate NY mixed with the violent last ~50 years of Chile and Guatemala. Is this a *rich* book? Yes. Is it a good reminder of our US-backed brutality? Yes. Did I like the two women protagonists? Kind of. Did I think mixing them with the icky male protagonist and far too many backstories of many other characters worked well? It's a loooong book, or feels that way, anyway. Readers of some other Allende books (like me) may be surprised that unlike her older books, this one doesn't have much surrealism. I don't mind, just noting that her writing has changed in some ways.

Both this book and Cat Sebastian's *After Hours at Dooryard Books* I mentioned recently could have had tonal whiplash, since they both mix romance with grim reality. But I loved Sebastian's book. The Allende will be good discussion fodder, but I'm *really* glad my library group liked the last book so much, and the next one is the relatively lighthearted *Major Pettigrew's Last Stand*.
( Discussion prompts and resources )

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Horse by Pulitzer winner Geraldine Brooks

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 21:02:30 GMT

I'll be leading a library Zoom on this historical fiction on Thursday night. I'm 70% of the way done and have liked it a whole lot so far.

Discussion prompts

This book mixes horse racing, racism of the 1850s and 2022, art history, and Smithsonian backstage life. Did the mixture work for you? Did you have a strong preference for some parts of the story versus others?
What did you think of the different narrative viewpoints (1850s groom/trainer, 1850s artist/writer, 2022 art historian, 2022 lab-runner / bone articulator, 1950s art collector, others)? Were all the voices convincing?
What did you think of the parallels in the relationships between Jarret and Mary, and Theo and Jess?
Have you read anything else by Geraldine Brooks? How did this compare?
What did you think of the endings for the various characters/timelines?

References and other discussion guides (dozens more discussion prompts)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexington_(horse) -- the real deal
BookBrowse
Books That Slay
Libromaniacs
Book Girls Guide (YA)

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Apart from books ...

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 14:49:23 GMT

My life hasn't been ALL books since the last time I posted here about my personal life. That was back in November, after I was affected by the shutdown for 30+ days. Since then,

I saw local family for Thanksgiving and Christmas (and also dear friends in the evening each time).
I visited loved ones in Philadelphia a couple of times.
I got the sickest I've been since 2020 (nose cold that ran and ran and settled in my lungs for a while, lots of coughing and weariness) after my annual physical, though I took Astepro first (https://www.sciencealert.com/over-the-counter-nasal-spray-cuts-covid-cases-by-two-thirds-in-trial) and of course wore a mask all but the stick-out-your-tongue-and-say-AH part (I like the Gata masks, mentioned long ago by vvalkyri , thanks! and I have several in different colors).
I got a Novavax booster a couple of weeks ago. I had big pain in my arm for few minutes afterwards, but I rotated my arms a lot and was able to sleep that night.
A friend came over and we caught up and played board games.
Work: That awful federal lead mellowed out a little over the shutdown. Maybe he was able to de-stress a little, maybe he got some perspective. Also, my "team size" doubled: I now manage two people instead of one, though it's not an integrated team (very different duties and skills). This guy is a developer, is staying a developer for products I haven't touched, and my other subordinate and I will keep doing our DevSecOps and change management work. Admittedly, they gave me this guy to take some of the management load (timesheets, reviews) off another manager. I'm not sure how much this really helps the other manager, but I didn't say no and it seems fine so far. I'll need to become more conversant with his work but he's pretty self-sufficient so far (he's been at this job longer than I have at mine, with no complaints I've ever heard and good words from his former manager, though she did put some room-for-growth comments in his annual review).

This new partial shutdown doesn't affect my job, but I will have Monday off anyway.

I'm going to a play Sunday afternoon, for the first time since 2020: Lope de Vega's comedy *Romeo and Juliet*, directed by a friend, and I'm seeing it with a friend. This matinee showing requires masks! If I want there to be plays with masks required, I need to support them occasionally (and of course, this one sounds like a lot of fun). Astepro + masking protocol for me. Maybe I will see folks I haven't seen in person for years in the audience, and get to interact with them in addition to my friend (whom I've seen occasionally the past few years, and is welcome to name himself in comments).
A decade ago this weekend, I saw Hamilton in NYC with my twin for our 50th birthday, also at a Sunday matinee. She's in Minnesota now and there's a lot of snow and ice between us, but I'm happy to be seeing a new-to-me twist on an old play with an old friend for this occasion!
Between driving into DC to pick up the friend, driving together out to Greenbelt for the play (hoping to find parking despite the compacted snow and ice), sitting in a room with a lot of people for a couple of hours, and then reversing both parts of the trip, I'll probably be very tired and will not want to face work on Monday (although I will dial in to one 1/2 hour meeting in the afternoon).
Also Monday, it's going to be above freezing for the first time since Jan 23? And I want to have plenty of daylight time to shovel a path through the frozen waste in my backyard to get to my garbage and recycling bins (I keep them by the back gate) and put them out Monday night, at last (skipped last week).

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Notes on The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories, a collection from the Library of America

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 02:21:16 GMT

( Intro and first 16 stories )

Last batch:

Spyder Threads by Craig Laurance Gidney
The Orb by Tara Campbell
We Travel the Spaceways by Victor La Valle
Ruler of the Rear Guard by Maurice Broaddus

( mini-reviews )

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Artists In Crime by Ngaio Marsh

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 20:36:41 GMT

I'll lead a DIFFERENT library Zoom discussion this week on this Golden Age mystery, the first with Inspector Alleyn's serious love interest, successful artist Agatha Troy.

Discussion prompts:

How does Inspector Alleyn's professional eye for detail assist in his first meeting with Troy Alleyn?
Inspector Alleyn's interrogation/interview techniques vary from suspect to suspect. What did this achieve for him? Do you think he was good at his job?
This book has a large set of artistic suspects from varying backgrounds. Did the author convey the individuals well enough, or were they mostly a jumble for readers? Was there an artist you would have liked to hear more about?
Has anyone tried sketching or posing for figure drawings? Did the author convey well enough what was going on with the artist model's poses and behavior and how that may have contributed to potential motives?
Does the book make the solution to the complicated mystery clear? Did you think you knew the murderer before the end?
Did the romance get in the way of the mystery or enhance it?
One of the people from the boat trip at the beginning of the book is very vocally attracted to Alleyn's British-ness and hounds him, which contributes to Alleyn and Troy's initial issues. Have you ever known anyone who aggressively pursued anyone because of being so into British people? Do you think Marsh was parodying/criticizing someone in particular, or just an American "type" she'd noticed?
What did you think of the use of epistolary writings (letters/diary entries from the first part that re-surface later in the book)?
How do Inspector Alleyn's encounters with Troy in this book compare to Lord Peter Wimsey's encounters with Harriet Vane in Dorothy Sayers' *Strong Poison*?
What are other similarities between those protagonists' romances and families? Do you think Marsh was consciously imitating or trying to improve on / contrast with Dorothy Sayers' characters, or were her characters' characteristics/arcs an inevitable part of Golden Age mysteries?
Would this 1938 book still hold up as a mystery if the problematic aspects were modernized out? Did they spoil the book for you, or were they not so bad as that?
Would you recommend this book to other mystery fans?

Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artists_in_Crime
https://newbookrecommendation.com/summary-of-artists-in-crime-by-ngaio-marsh-a-detailed-synopsis/ (includes more detailed major characters explanation)
https://www.shedunnitshow.com/ngaiomarshgoeshometranscript/ (or listen to the podcast episode from that page)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Poison

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Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 13:37:24 GMT

I'm leading a library Zoom discussion on this 2005 Newbery Medal (YA) winner next week. Discussion prompts:

The two sisters each think of the other as having saved them from the dog. Are they both right? How does this relationship hold up during the book?
Humor is mixed in with the grief of the story. How did the balance work for you?
What's the longest road trip you've taken? How did it compare to the Takeshima family's trip?
How did the family deal with the move from Iowa to Georgia?
While finishing up the trip to Georgia, Katie notices that every Georgia town declares some claim to fame. Have you noticed towns in Maryland that do this? Do you remember any other town-identity signs from your travels? (e.g., Webster, NY "Where Life is Worth Living").
Who else laughed when Katie's dad told her what the "B" word meant ("Bad Lady", referring to the mean woman at the hotel), and told her not to tell her her mom he'd told her?
What did you think of the chess in this story compared to *The Queen's Gambit* that some of us read earlier?
What did you think of the way the story portrayed the main adults?
Did you have a favorite character? (mom, dad, Katie, Lynn, Sammy, Uncle Katsuhisa, Silly, others)?
Lynn keeps a diary. Have you ever maintained a diary for long? Have you read any diaries?
What did you think of the portrayals of racism in the story? Were they age-appropriate? Should the story have gone farther?
The chicken processing plant has long and hard hours, but also emphasizes hygiene. How does this compare to other food-related jobs you've read about in books?
What are examples of kindness of strangers shown in this book?
How did Katie's dad and Katie's stress/grief coping mechanisms compare?
Is there a scene or quote you'd like to share and discuss?
Would you recommend this book to others?

Notes on As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 02:02:14 GMT

As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories edited by Terese Mason Pierre
Notes per story as reminder for book discussion with others. My faves after reading them all are in bold.

Intro: ok
Ravenous, Called Iffy by Chimedum Ohaegbu: Bursting with details & world-building. Why the resurrections? A Is for Alibi style artificial separation from family.
The Hole in the Middle of the World by Chinelu Onwualu: Memory holes, we've seen these stories before. But well told, and the child-theft the memory selling supports. SdJ: indigenous children taken away.
A Fair Assessment by Terese Mason Pierre: Antique stores. Also about recovering lost memories.

----------------------------

Peak Day by Suyi Davies Okungbowa: Hell in Amazon warehouse or some similar place. Awful AI driving sales, better not tell them it's a mistake. Good luck person who left, and we see the manager was kicked out.
Hallelujah Here and Elsewhere by francesca ekwuyasi: Here again, we have the use of "ravenous" (first paragraph). Name preferences / "gifted" nicknames. [Multiverse] & communications. Smelling that someone's different. Memory of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Her uncle's abuse.
Playing Dead by Trynne Delaney: Being a nanny / phlebotomist. Soil needs cleansing.
Mother, Father, Baby by Lue Palmer: Father's abuse, mother makes "liars" wash their mouths out with soap. Smash that urn!

----------------------------------------------------

Deh ah Market by Whitney French: Another [multiverse] story with some timey-wimey delays/loops thrown in. What's available in the market today? I liked it.
Paroxysm by Zalika Reid-Benta: Great opening. Hits very close to home. A passing reference to parallel universes -- it seemed like this concept was in almost every short story in this anthology, but looking back, I guess I'm remembering wrong. Friends trying to be supportive of each other, pushing boundaries, disappointing each other, not being fully honest. I understand folks getting to run their own safety calculators, but it's frustrating to me to see someone making very risky or illogical choices, and it's difficult to talk much about that without worrying about potentially making others in the conversation feel attacked. How can it be more risky (of triggering the short story's Paroxysm condition) to talk with your parents on a call more than 15 minutes at the end of the month, than to watch the news every day? Is her family that much worse than mine (substituting my siblings for her parents, since my parents are dead), or is the news in her world, apart from the contagion, that much better?
Just Say Garuka by Aline-Mwezi Niyonsega: Magic carpet ride! A time and place (Alberta, nostalgia for [Supernatural and] Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (and snarky Salem the cat). Why the secrecy on the protagonist's part about leaving? Anything beyond denial? But I liked the teenage friendship.

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Analytic Idealism In A Nutshell

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 23:24:25 GMT

Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics was kind of a warmup to Bernardo Kastrup's Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell, which my lovely library system also offers in audiobook form, so I'm again listening as I walk/drive. I'll be updating this entry as I work through the book. One of my co-hosts already says he's found it "more aggravating", LOL. It helps to have a sense of humor when reading philosophy, and to take the whole thing (an argument / writing by a philosopher) as a thought experiment. Even if one sees flaws in the experiment, it may provide a new perspective. It could all be gobbledegook, and some philosophers are definitely worse reads than others; some are even pernicious.

Ch.1 What Is This Book About: Intro, and view that Enlightenment philosophers (e.g., René Descartes, Bishop Berkeley) did what they could to separate material/physical world from Psyche so that the Church wouldn't come down on them like a hammer; we're not messing with soul stuff, just the natural world!
Ch.2 What You See Is What You Get: Pilot cockpit analogy: All we see are the representations of the world; we don't directly perceive reality. Subjective experience. Claim that physicalists mistake the map for the territory.
Ch.3 How Physicalism Gets It Wrong: View that Quantum entanglement Nobel winning experiment (Alice's observation of one property of a particle affects another property of a different, far away particle Bob is watching) disproves physicalism; it's different views of the same entangled stuff that cannot be reduced to quantifiable definite objects. Also on to modern cognitive science and then to information theory (Claude Shannon) as counter to physicalism. Information (Shannon sense; capital I, data?) v. information (Colloquial sense -- has meaning, but little Information in Shannon's sense), claim that physicalists mix these up.
Ch.4 How Does Physicalism Survive: Unnecessarily nasty toward physicalists (commonly called materialists), but he's frustrated at biased science / reporting studies, e.g., LSD lighting up (CNN) or not lighting up (Kastrup etc., Scientific American) the brain. Science communications. GenAI only makes all this worse. Headless planarian memory experiment.
Ch. 5: The Remedy Is Worse Than the Disease: Sooo much time on Pan-Psychism, which does sound like bad metaphysics. But the part about Quantum Field Theory and how particles aren't real, they're field excitations, was good.
Ch. 6: Analytic Idealism: The most fundamental knowledge we have is that we have subjective experience. Phenomenal consciousness is what it's like to be (a la Nagel). The universe is all mental (as opposed to physical, or information), and everything we experience is as "alters" of the universal mind: excitations of quantum fields. We develop senses etc. because of a driving will to know more. Ripples aren't a thing in themselves; they are things (water) doing.
Ch. 7: Circumambulation: Holding our hand as he walks through examples to illustrate analytic idealism. This is Jungian circumambulation as opposed to Hindu/Buddhist circumambulation -- did Karl Jung appropriate the term? Neuroscience, importance of congruence with empirical results. What changes if I think of myself as a mental being, rather than a physical being? Ego v. superego. Ego is a tool of nature -- the disassociation is necessary for certain insights/investigations.
Ch. 8: Time, Space, Identity, and Structure:
Ch. 9: Wrap-Up and Outlook:

I had thought there would be some reference to Platonic Idealism as a root idea, but he's not interested in that.

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Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 21:48:33 GMT

I'm going to start taking notes here for my podcast & book group discussion preparations instead of in Google Docs, because I'm trying to de-Google myself to a degree; I've also set myself up a Pixelfed.org account for pictures rather than keep putting more into Google Photos (actually, I pretty much stopped the latter when I started posting them on Mastodon (not under this ID; DM me if you want to know), but Pixelfed will let me make photo albums. The drawback to Pixelfed photo albums is that my alt-text will only show up on individual photo posts, not for photos in albums. Not that I was bothering with alt-text in Google photos, but the Fediverse makes me more conscious of inclusivity.

Anyway, coming up in December, I'll be guesting on a podcast about Bernardo Kastrup's Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics and a couple more books. In college, I double-majored in computer science AND philosophy, including a Philosophy of Mind course and a course on 19th-century German philosophy (Schopenhauer!), though I haven't kept up with modern academic philosophy. One of the hosts of a podcast I've been on (Frankenstein, feminist science fiction, other books) before mentioned being interested in this Kastrup and I saw K had a book on S, so I reached out and the podcaster said he'd love to discuss. My library, bless them, had an audiobook of the Schopenhauer book on Hoopla, so I was able to take it for beautiful autumn walks and the drive for Thanksgiving dinner and back. That may not be the best way to consume heady philosophy, but it was the way that would work for my schedule. I enjoyed it a lot; enough that I wouldn't be opposed to re-reading it in text form and taking notes, though not while I have so much other TBR glaring at me. I didn't agree with all of it, but I don't know that I *dis*agree with it; it's a very different approach to thinking about the world.

My memory of Schopenhauer was a lot about what the world is and perception and that a lot of people thought he was very dark and grim but I didn't think so in college, but then, I was raised Presbyterian (predestination) and I knew existentialism wasn't as negative as some people take it (I have a whole journal entry from 2015 or so about all that) and Schopenhauer just didn't seem that dark to me. Also, I remembered that he had said, or someone summing him up had said, the more someone knows about themself, the better they understand how connected they are within the universe, which I liked. I'm still holding onto both of those (they seem consistent with the Decoding book).
I was expecting Decoding to be a sort of Cliff Notes of Schopenhauer's work, but Kastrup goes well beyond that, partly because he found a way to read S that aligned very well with Kastrup's own analytic idealism. David Hume and Bishop Berkeley, Quantum physics, Claude Shannon's Information Theory, Thomas Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Not in the original text! K. has his reasons for bringing them all up, illustrating how more current ideas reflect S's ideas.
Literally, I laughed out loud at one part having to do with how a particular weird-to-us quantum behavior/perception is fine because we're ~each in our ~own ~universe (the wiggly lines denote my handwaving; it's hard to boil down from the book).
I did NOT laugh out loud during the Dissassociative Identity Disorder discussion. I understand why K. went there (Alters of the Will), but he really didn't have to get into the abusive nightmare. That nightmare was only delved into in one chapter, though.
Per Kastrup, Schopenhauer's magnum opus The World as Will and Representation is best taken as a colloquial discussion and some of S's terms were inconsistent like they might be in a conversation in a bar. I can see why Schopenhauer didn't have a lot of fans early on with a lack of rigor and precision in his writing (trying to get across deep and counter-intuitive ideas), but K. did a good job of coming up with a coherent-enough explanation of how S. was using terms in different ways in different parts of his book.
There is no snark in the world like academic snark. Kastrup cracked me up in a couple of places, describing other philosophers' misunderstandings and misstatements of S., as he saw them, and oh-so-kindly offering his help to set them straight. E.g., Schopenhauer: not a dualist.

I'm reading the Wikipedia entry on Schopenhauer (I don't take their write-up of his philosophy seriously, but it's a popular view of him) and he was not a great guy. So few guys in history were!

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Shutdown Distractions

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 17:42:04 GMT

My agency gave Stop Work Orders to pretty much everyone including contractors like me at the same time as so many others were hit (we had weathered the previous one due to a different funding stream, which in theory should have protected us this time, too, but law and precedent seem to be out the window). I used up my remaining vacation hours and am currently on Leave Without Pay, to be furloughed next week (I think I will still be able to look internally at my company and have email for a while, but I'll have to start paying the health insurance premiums etc.). I have savings, but it's getting to me and I sometimes feel blue or squirrelly. Highlights since then:

My sister's wedding in Minnesota!
The sister who had been living with me for a few years moved to Minnesota this summer and then in October, married her formerly long-distance boyfriend. She invited most of her siblings and we and one of the nieces flew there (I masked and used Astepro antihistamine, which reduces COVID infections -- JAMA article) to celebrate, and we had a great time. I arranged a VRBO rental so we sibs & niece could enjoy time together in a house setting instead of hotels (we split the costs), and it was great to be able to wander out from our rooms in the mornings and have relaxed coffee/breakfast whenever we wanted (e.g., some at 7, some at 9) and to use groceries or get take-out/delivery instead of trying to find any MN restaurants with outdoor seating in October. We were lucky with the weather, relatively warm and clear, though the groom was disappointed the MN colors weren't out yet (some of his friends came from out of state, in addition to his local friends -- one of whom I knew from a book discussion Zoom and was glad to meet in person). The wedding itself was lovely, in a park, with a Justice of the Peace who gave an excellent and appropriate homily. Some of us had gone to the Minneapolis Institute of Art the day before, which had some GREAT exhibitions and was right by a lovely park. We also walked around a lovely park (boardwalks and marsh!) near the VRBO the afternoon after the morning wedding.

Halloween!
My friends in Philadelphia have a neighborhood reputation for going all-out for Halloween, but they really exceeded themselves this year. They bought the row house next to theirs, intending to rent it -- it's already set up with a lower and upper unit, but they're going to have some work done inside first. So we decorated the entire lower unit (I brought up my decorations, too; other friends also came from NJ and helped) and let trick or treaters progress through it from front door to back yard (the really little kids just got the least-scary front room). The day after, one of the NJ friends taught us the board games Forest Shuffle (which I'd tried online but hadn't gotten the hang of, before) and Cascadia, both of which I liked. They had also brought real bagels from NJ (not just bread in the shape of bagels, which is all I've found in this state). We also had some backyard fire pit time.

Tree demolition and carving!
This summer, a neighbor had asked me about a couple of trees in my front yard and then the city came by (I suspect the neighbor had called them when I said I wasn't sure if they were mine or the city's to deal with) and we discussed who was going to pay to remove the dead tree and trim back the live tree that was threatening some wires. The city reps used tape measures from the porch to the trees and said they thought at least the dead tree might be the city's (the live tree was 50/50), but the city would probably send a surveyor to confirm. Months passed, and then Monday, with no notice, a landscaping firm showed up and took down the dead tree (large logs to be removed later; I think I'll be on my own to deal with the stump). They said the city sent them, and they were going to trim the live tree, too, but they left without doing that, and today showed up with a crane (it's a very tall tree) and carved back a lot of the branches, not only the ones near the street and wires, but the other side's branches that were coming very close to my roof. There's still a lot of the live tree left, but its shape is much more vertical than it used to be. I hope it lives, but since the city was paying for it all (!) and I knew it needed to be trimmed back SOME (and trimming only the street side would have made it lopsided and might have encouraged it to fall onto my house), I didn't argue. Anyway, since I'm not working, I was able to hang out and watch much of the process (I was careful to keep well back, out of their way) both days. It was very dramatic!

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Queens Obsession

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 12:56:14 GMT

I had a lot of fun leading the library discussion on Walter Tevis' *The Queen's Gambit* last week. I've started reading (listening to an audiobook of) Rebecca for our October 16 Zoom discussion. I'd only seen a clip or two from the movie and had no idea the narrator, wife # 2, was so obsessive (she's memorized the owner of every moor in England, AND every tenant! Chapter 2) or given to flights of fantasy (e.g., nursing her crush object back from imagined illness, but still). I expect Daphne du Maurier knew what she was doing, but was expecting the Big Drama to be all about the very regal and dead Rebecca, wife # 1. I'm side-eyeing the main character A Lot, and wondering if the whole thing will be more like Deborah Kerr in *The Innocents* (based on "The Turn of the Screw"), where the sweet governess is rather questionable in her outlook and interactions, and may be partly to blame for how badly things go. Probably it's just part of the author's commentary on society, and Wife#2 is not that bad.

Also, my brother laughed a lot at my saying "Last night, I dreamed of Pemberley" and wants someone to write the mash-up with Pride and Prejudice. Though Rebecca may be more like Jane Eyre.

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Fact and fiction

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 16:08:31 GMT

I listened this week to a non-fiction podcast episode about modern slavery in the big at-sea fish factories (2022). It has one happy ending but makes the point that this isn't just a few bad actors, but the way the business works right now, hence a $2 can of tuna. I was already aware of this, partly from novels that had opened my eyes a bit:

Ray Nayler's novel *The Mountain In the Sea* was great (it had my top Hugo vote that year). It had some tough stretches in it with a computer geek who gets enslaved.
Colin Cotterill's mystery *Granddad, There's a Head on the Beach* has a seaside Thai village and some police that are actively against investigation of part of a body that washes up. Overall more light-hearted, but a lot of dark undertones.

I'm slowly reading Sara Dykman's Bicycling with Butterflies (2021, non-fiction), which starts in Mexico and follows the migratory path of monarch butterflies (the only monarchs I'm for). I came across it when I was looking for a library copy of Barbara Kingsolver's *Flight Behavior* (2012 novel), which my book club was reading (I'd read it ~10 years ago for my library group). Both are absorbing, at least for the first half.

It Could Happen Here podcast's episodes The Cult of Policing, Part 1 (and 2) from 2021 go into how cult-like the training and indoctrination is, in the US. Part 1 reminded me of the terrible start-up I worked at 2008-2013, with "we're your family now", mandatory fun (Ask a Manager column on that), etc. Part 2 talked about how police funding keeps taking more and more resources from community safety.

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Extraction Zones and similar lingo

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 23:33:58 GMT

I mentioned Ray Nayler's phrase "extraction zones" in my last post. Here are some podcast episodes I've listened to in the last few months that have alerted me to similar evocative turns of phrase:

*It Could Happen Here*: Neoliberalism Part 3: Where Is Paul Volker (Dec. 2021): In part 3 of our series on Neoliberalism we look at the coup in Chile, the Volker shock, the collapse of the G77, Venezuela's failed industrialization campaign and the conversion of the Third World into debt colonies.
*The Outlaw Ocean*: Waves of Extraction (October 2022): It's the podcast and episode titles that grabbed my attention, but the episode description is A trip to Gambia to learn how fishmeal is meant to slow the depletion of fish from the seas but is actually accelerating the problem.
*A Matter of Degrees*: The Tongass: A Way Forward for the Forest (Mar. 2023): Marina and Richard describe the boom-and-bust extractive economy of the past [in Alaska].

I do listen to some fiction and review podcasts, not only history/analysis. :-)

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Memorial Day and Onward ;-)

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 17:02:58 GMT

Yes, I did post once in June, but I want to circle back to Memorial Day weekend since I went to and volunteered for two SFF conventions (virtually) that weekend, and I want to talk a little more about SFF and reading and the other convention since then.

Balticon: a nearly-local convention with a big virtual track. I attended a few virtual panels/events, and virtual-assisted a little. I loved getting to hear the Baltimore Gamer Symphony perform -- the tech support for it, including streaming, went really well, and they sounded great! I ended up dropping my Patreon support for one author because her comments on a topic she should know about were so head-shakingly wrong and self-contradicting (wrong in opposite ways, within 5 minutes). I wish her well, but there are so many others to support. I'll probably virtual-volunteer again for Balticon, because I want cons to keep having strong virtual elements.
Wiscon: all-virtual, and many great panels, although one was really angering (and yes I left comments: the moderator trashed the panel subject, in which those of us who were attending should have been presumed to have be interested). I zoom-hosted one. The most fun was the exhilarating fanvid watch party, so well curated, with a super lively chat in Discord. Next year will be virtual too, and I expect to volunteer again.
Reading/listening/podcasting: I did a lot of reading this spring and summer to vote for the Hugos. I also guested on one podcast soon after the finalists announcement to talk about the Hugo Awards (overall) and the best novel finalist I'd read at that point (which ended up with my top vote), and on another podcast's later three episodes about the Best Short Story, Novella, and Novel finalists. We all had a lot of fun and were able to speak both enthusiastically and critically without yucking others' yums. Anti-colonialism ran rampant through a lot of what I read and liked. I loved Ray Nayler's phrase "extraction zone" in *The Tusks of Extinction*, describing everywhere but the few rich cities/people that want and extract more and more and more from everyone else. I think the phrase "extractive capitalism" helps a bit when I'm trying to talk about the most harmful end-of-the-spectrum of capitalism without being dismissed as a wild-eyed radical.
WorldCon: I virtual volunteered again, virtual-hosting many events especially in the early hours to allow panelists from around the world, especially Africa, to participate. That was important to me. Virtual attendees came from 43 countries, and 12 countries had 6 or more attendees each! I was really happy that so many countries participated. I tried not to overdo it, but signed up to do an extra hosting session at the last minute for at least one that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't stepped up, and it was a great panel. Many of the panels I hosted/attended were good. I signed up to virtual-volunteer for the next WorldCon. I was pretty happy about the Hugo Award winners. But, I was disappointed at the Hugo award announcement messups, the late apology of Seattle WorldCon, and the inadequate apology of the announcers (see comment).
Capclave next weekend: Nope, even though it's local and short-story oriented, a rare bird. I was thinking "Would it really be much higher risk to attend a few panels masked than to go shopping masked?" and went so far as to look at their website and the programming, but there is nothing at all about safety or accessibility, and one weekend away, their Code of Conduct page is literally "TBD". I can see what they're prioritizing, so I shall prioritize myself instead.

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30 years ago this week

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:59:42 GMT

Sadly, the country didn't wake up and take reactionary / white supremacist terrorism seriously enough in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, similar to how we weren't doing enough to protect health care practitioners and patients from anti-abortion terrorists, because the focus was determinedly on other threats as the "serious pattern" and time and time again, terrorism meant to choke our freedoms and our use of government to protect us was dismissed as "lone gunmen". It's been a long slide down since then, alas.

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Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:27:53 GMT

Health: I'm still feeling wrecked from having to work a lot this weekend on a systems patch that had serious problems. I took some of this afternoon off, and I'll take tomorrow afternoon off, as well. I'm glad that loved ones got to join the protests and got home safely.

History: 20 years ago this week, Eric Rudolph pled guilty to several bombings, including the Atlanta Olympics one. But it was too late for poor Richard Jewell's career and quality of life, the security guard who spotted the backpack containing the bombs and saved many people's lives, but was hounded by the FBI and media. Many people never heard that he wasn't guilty. He was fat. He didn't fit the "hero" profile.

Hugos: The finalist list came out and File 770 shows where to read/watch/sample many of them for free. I'll also note that my library app Libby has Ann Leckie's finalist, and Hoopla has several of the novellettes. I should get the voter's packet when it comes out, but no need to wait to begin reading/ranking. I'm glad that some of my Best Related Work and Fan nominations made it to Finalist status. I had not watched (nor heard of) "The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel", nor am I probably going to watch all 4 hours of it, but I really enjoyed that creator's Last BronyCon vid from a few years ago. A couple of other notes: sad that audio dramas (podcasts) always seem to be ignored (though I keep nominating them), but happy that most of the Best Game/Interactive works were produced by smaller companies.

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Progress

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 15:01:48 GMT

Books:

I finished China Miéville's Embassytown. It was great, I loved it, though its language geeking and protagonist/narration might not be for everyone. I leveraged my Philosophy of Language class from college and much more recently, Ann Leckie's *Translation State*. :-)
I enjoyed a private book discussion on the first four stories in the anthology *The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories*, "from a visionary team of women and nonbinary creators"
I led a good library Zoom book discussion on Denise Kiernan's non-fiction *The Girls of Atomic City*, about different women who came from different places to work in different capacities at the secret Oak Ridge, Tennessee plutonium-processing base in WWII. Here's a 9-minute NPR review/article. Of particular relevance to me was the discussion of Yankee reaction to grits (so good with butter and pepper!) and assuming Southern accents meant "stupid". The book itself had some very tough parts (discrimination, medical experiments on Black people, etc.), but we had a good time overall discussing it and our mothers' experiences of WWII, and one person brought up a point I hadn't thought of about the land seizures and Appalachian resentment of the federal government. We're doing *The Hound of the Baskervilles* in April; all are welcome!

Work

Two of my teammates stepped up on fulfilling different security documentation requirements instead of shoving them onto me since I'm so good at documentation -- after I managed to restrain myself from volunteering myself in the first place (I have so much work to do that's more my responsibility to do, without adding that).
The aggressive new fed has left me alone for a while, though he's invited me to a one-on-one for 2 Mondays from now (I think he meant it to me Monday the 31st, but I accepted his April 7 invitation as-is). I hope in a 1 on 1, we can have a more productive conversation.

Health: My checkup last week (and blood draw) was slightly better overall than from December. My doctor still doesn't like my numbers, though, and prescribed another drug for me to add to my regimen.

Chores: I finally buckled down and chipped away at the very first part of my long-overdue financial chores, and organized some of the other information I'll need. Still 3 important documents I need to unearth from my basement, and much more to do, but at least I moved a little forward.

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Memorial Day Virtual events

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 23:41:36 GMT

Options I'm considering, in order of increasing excitement, but I'm open to input from anyone who's leaning one way or another. I COULD try to attend more than one, since they'll be virtual, and cherry-pick events from each, but that might just exhaust me.

ArvCon, a Twitch streaming weekend fundraiser for the Damon Runyan Cancer Research foundation -- I've participated and given several years. Lots of well-run RPG games, concerts, and readings (and giveaways). Example schedule from 2024
Wiscon is all-virtual this year. I've only attended once, and that was in person, and there's not much information yet. Still, feminist SF con.
Balticon is going BIG on virtual this year: Balticon Anywhere, with many streaming events and some virtual-only panels and spaces, over Zoom, Discord, and YouTube.

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Grant Reconstruction

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 15:04:24 GMT

I'm afraid I had unknowingly bought into the white supremacist myth of Ulysses S. Grant as a boozy incompetent surrounded by corruption, if not personally corrupt. The Klan and their fans spread this slanted story because Grant had cracked down so hard on them, and they were mostly successful at spreading this myth. White supremacists didn't want people to remember him as a hero preserving democracy for all. Sure, Grant had his prejudices and drank too much, and there was some corruption (no worse than a lot of other administrations; he trusted his friends too much, alas). But HE formed the centralized Justice Department, and HE sent armed forces AND federal prosecutors after the Ku Klux Klan (though Congress wouldn't fund enough of the latter), HE was determined to put them down as far as he could with the resources he could.

I learned about this today while listening to a 2023 episode of the Lawfare podcast, America’s First War On Terror with Fergus Bordewich. I'm still going through their back episodes, which have a lot of illuminating episodes about legal and other history in the US, though I'm skipping a lot of more recently-topical episodes that would only dishearten me (more). I asked my library to notify me if they get a copy of Bordewich's book on this history.

I weep for our Department of Justice today.

While I'm mentioning Lawfare, an unrelated episode from 2023:
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/chatter-the-british-empire's-territorial-peak-100-years-later-with-matthew-parker
I don't weep for the British Empire.

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The Last Days of New Paris

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 15:54:10 GMT

So, a little more about China Miéville's 2016 novella The Last Days of New Paris (publisher's link). I won't link to the Wikipedia article again since I realized it has significant spoilers at the end, as do MANY of the reviews I looked at. I understand the impulse to make it clear to the prospective reader what's going on, but Miéville wrote his story like a flower unfolding (as he describes one of the painting manifestations in the story) and I think it's unfair to the story to spoil the major plot elements. I'll mention some elements instead: alternate history, magic, back and forth between 1941 and 1950 (more divergent than 1941), a 69-footnote epilogue wherein the author comments & alt-texts on individual artworks he referenced in the story, starting with Leonora Carrington's Velocipedes (I've written about her before). What interested me so much about the story is the Surrealists' resistance to Fascism through their art -- which was an aim of many Surrealists of the time. They didn't want to be cogs in the capitalist machine, which was why they also fought some with the "Free French" (who were anti-Nazi like them, but also wanted to go back to everything like it was before the invasion). There were multiple people with competing, and sometimes mixed, agendas in the story, and varying degrees of desperation. The main narrator came young and late to the movement, but has become old/worn by the battles. But he loves Paris in all its self, not a prettified Disneyland Paris. I recommend the story, but not everyone is going to enjoy it.

If I get laid off, maybe I'll post a vid of the 69 different artworks and talk about his comments and my thoughts on the artworks.

Happy Vernal Equinox tomorrow, all!

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Unfiinished ... business

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 16:09:43 GMT

Books
I've decided to not finish a couple of library books/series, even though they have interesting ideas in them and I will read with interest anything that others post about them.

The Blighted Stars, by Megan O'Keefe: Some very cool stuff about stored memories going into body prints, rebels/saboteurs, colonialism and ecological havok, and people trying to survive after ~crash landing on a planet, some of them somewhat sympathetic. But it's very long, and a lot of lying, and apparently there are two more books after it that that aren't any shorter and perhaps not satisfying from what I've read from one person.
Creation Lake, by Rachel Kushner: Booker prize finalist, author is National Book Award finalist. American corporate spy attempts to infiltrate a French anarchist agricultural group, maybe seduced by their head, who has a lot of ideas about evolution, Neandarthals, and mental health / evo psych. Smart writing (I read a paragraph to my sister), but I'm just not in the mood to read a corporate spy's POV. Interestingly, I just read today an article about how anti-industrial sabotage has been the most organized/effective in France: Why Climate Activists are Turning to Sabotage, from a Mastodon post I read.

I *am* continuing with China Miéville's Embassytown (library audibook), though I don't understand what all is happening with the language and the aliens and the Ambassadors (or the protagonist's broken marriage and career on the downslide, for that matter). However, "not understanding what all is happening" is common with this author and yet I've been able to finish several, excited about a couple of them (*Perdido Street Station* and The Last days of New Paris; I may write about that more later). I may break down and read the Wikipedia article before I finish the book. Certainly AFTER I read the book, if not before.

Also, I picked up Haruki Murikami's sequel? to *The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World* which I had really liked back in the day, though I only cracked The City and Its Uncertain Walls (library hardback) open and then re-read some of an old mystery instead, so far.

Personal chores
There are some big LONG overdue chores in my own life (financials + passport replacement) I keep putting off, sometimes with games and reading, and sometimes with "creative procrastination" "clearing the decks" working on other chores that are not as crucial instead, e.g., this post. I'm having real trouble getting on with the important things that require thinking and grappling. The situational depression (this timeline, and see below), that isn't helping, doesn't look to be clearing up any time soon. Sympathy and encouragement welcome, coaching/GAS probably counter-productive.

At least I got over 8 hours of sleep each of Thursday and last nights (I'd been waking up too early and not getting back to sleep for weeks).

Business
Got a shock Thursday and Friday. My team's new federal lead asked me aggressive questions about my/my team's work style and seems to think we've been covering up being unproductive (we have been very busy with operational work, which we do track) because we weren't able to give him specific metrics in 2 days (that no one had been asking for before, so we hadn't been working in a way to capture information to provide those metrics). He "asked" twice in rapid succession, with raised voice, "Are you telling me that you've never [used a work management tool to track work]?" "Are you telling me that you've never [something else about work management]" and kept cutting me off when I tried to explain this is where we are NOW (DevOps: start from where you ARE) and we can adjust our work style going forward. He then denied I had told him at the start of the meeting we could provide one specific metric he'd asked for. And, he told me and my team how much he hates (not with that word) the tool we administer (it's not the only tool we administer, but so far he hasn't listened to me on that, either), it's ok for tech stuff (pipelines) he guesses, but not for work management he says (it's flexible and different projects use it differently (tell it to the project managers, not us!), so there's no one-size-fits-all report to run; almost every project at my client uses this tool FOR work management), he doesn't understand why we're using this tool (I said it was in place when I arrived in 2019 and pointedly did NOT say "you feds picked it, not us"). I'll discuss all this with my manager Monday (he was out Thursday and Friday). And I'm going to take some time off later this week.

Other teams he's now leading who were in one of the awful meetings with him and my team, told me he's been cutting them off, too.

At the end of the Friday afternoon meeting (4 meetings about metrics in 2 days), he did say something like "Well, this has been a contentious meeting, I hope you all have good weekends and we can (regroup?) next week". Which is not the worst way to end what became a terrible work week.

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Royal Seal

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 01:55:15 GMT

I don't read a lot of fiction that glorifies monarchies these days, but I'm mildly interested in the history and personalities of the Claudians and Ptolemies in the ancient world.

Long ago, I watched the I, Claudius BBC production (on Masterpiece Theater). My sister and I listened together to most of the I, Podius podcast which discussed each episode and sometimes interviewed some of the actors, and I finally finished it off a couple of weekends ago.
I love Jo Graham's books set in the Ancient World, including Hand of Isis (Charmian, servant of Cleopatra; poly-friendly, takes religious devotion seriously)
I've listened to The History of Rome podcast from a little before those times through to the end (I did listen to alllll of Mike Duncan's *Revolutions* podcast, down with tyranny!).

Wednesday night in procrastination, I finally pulled Michelle Moran's Cleopatra's Daughter from my TBR bookshelves, and got pulled in so much that I finished it that night. Cleopatra's daughter Selene really was sent to live in Rome with Octavia, Emperor Augustus' sister, and later became the queen consort of Mauritania. This story imagines what her growing up in that family as their power grew was like. I liked it a lot for the most part -- a different but plausible view on some of the children with whom she grows up and the adults she has to cope with, and a perspective on how slavery corrupts the enslavers. I would have liked it better without the following issues: There was one historical error that didn't greatly affect the plot, although jarring to me (Alexander the Great was not a huge hulking warrior), and a dramatic subplot invented out of whole cloth that seemed implausible to me. Overall, I'd recommend it, if that sounds like things you could deal with as a reader.

...

Charming seal pup rescue story from this week (with cute pix!)

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ephemeral entries

Update: Not books!

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: Not Cancelled!

Glen Echo Park pictures and my February and early March

*In the Midst of Winter* by Isabel Allende

*Horse* by Pulitzer winner Geraldine Brooks

Apart from books ...

Notes on The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories, a collection from the Library of America

*Artists In Crime* by Ngaio Marsh

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Notes on As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories

Analytic Idealism In A Nutshell

Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics

Shutdown Distractions

Queens Obsession

Fact and fiction

Extraction Zones and similar lingo

Memorial Day and Onward ;-)

30 years ago this week

Progress

Memorial Day Virtual events

Grant Reconstruction

*The Last Days of New Paris*

Unfiinished ... business

Royal Seal

In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende

Horse by Pulitzer winner Geraldine Brooks

Artists In Crime by Ngaio Marsh

The Last Days of New Paris