A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Busy as bees all weekend.  There’s the zines to get out and Ern (the senior partner in the zines) had his birthday party at our house.  So, with 16 people coming for a BBQ dinner, Hyperion and I really had to clean the house and the yard.  Ern came out a couple of times to help with the yard work.  Remember the tree that fell over.  Well, it really needed the brush cut and then the limbs that we could cut with our chainsaw cut and stacked or piled to be split later. The guys made a great start on it  I’ll try to post a picture tomorrow to add to this post.

The party went off smoothly.  I believe everyone, including the birthday guy, had a great time.  Only 12 of us but it was a congenial group and the company and conversation was varied, interesting, and far ranging with subjects from maps, the Civil War (or war of Northern Aggression), genealogy, science, technology, peak oil, wind generation, fusion reactors, dirigibles,  books, movies, poetry, and family stories.  It was an amazing evening.

To top it off, a big  spider was on the deck and had spun a web from the humming bird feeder stand to the deck rail to a plant stake.  It had just finished the spokes of the web and the inner most circle when we noticed it.  We sort of stood around in a group watching the spider build this amazingly fragile web.  I’d never seen a spider build one before and thought it would take a lot longer.  In just a few minutes the circles extended out to the edges.  Then she began to add more spokes.  We gave up watching but after seeing people off, Hyperion and I stopped to check and see if we could photograph it in the dark (no luck, even with a flash).  But the web was finished and had already captured at least three victims.

I’m truly fascinated by nature and its creatures.  I’d never seen a web built from beginning to end and the first capture of food for the builder.  She obviously chose her spot well.  I’m hoping in the morning to again try to get a photo — hoping for better luck in daylight.

It’s been a busy month and we’re quickly approaching the end; and that means getting the publications up and ready to go live on September 1st. “What publications,” you ask?  Why SFRevu and Gumshoe Review.

Time usually seems to compress near the end of the month, but it seems like I had even less time than usual this month.  Well, I did go to the World Science Fiction Convention in Denver.  We drove and that add an extra 5 days to the trip.   We had a heck of a great time and brought the laptops and wireless card.  Then coming home to over a weeks worth of snail mail — that took up a lot of time.  Then there was the server crash that our ISP had.  Followed by a loss of data from our database of reviews and books when we found — or discovered accidentally — a bug in the interface software to the database (not our homegrown interface but another package) .  That meant contacting reviewers and others and checking shelves to make sure we recovered everything that we lost from that three days between the restored backup and the day we got them restored.  Whee — that was so much fun.

But it did make me think that somehow the month shrunk when I wasn’t looking.  Luckily, other than a few days of feeling like a wet noodle (and about as aware of my surrounding) this has been a productive month. Just think what I could have done if I’d really had all the days rather than only about half of them to devote to what I was supposed to do.  We will get the zines up on time and there’s going to be some great content but I can’t help thinking I could have done more.  Three days left and about ten days of work to do in them and one of those three days has been commandeered for another  purpose — which will be lots of fun but will take away from being able to tick items off my To Do list.

I keep wondering how other people budget time.  Do you get stressed out when  life and planning come up against chaos and the unexpected?  Does opting for fun in the face of a towering mountain of work seem like a cop out or a self-destructive impulse to failure?  I mean I could have turned down the fun but you can’t live for work alone now can you?

Life goes on and I had an acupuncture appointment today.  So, you see, I’m all set for stress and the push to the finish line of getting the zines up on the 1st.  And before you ask, I did finish the socks I was working on, I’ll get a picture up next month and I’ve got to start another pair of socks as soon as I figure out the number of stitches to fit on my feet versus the number needed for the pattern I want to use (more on that later too).

I’m intrigued by the communities that women create for themselves, and so I often read books centered around crafts, especially the crafts that I also love. Knitting is one of the ways that I bring meditation and calmness into my life. So, I read a lot of books with knitting as one of the central threads of the books.

Knitting by Anne Bartlett is the story of two women who chance to met and find that they have a lot of textiles, crafts, or the work of women’s hands in common. Sandra is an academic who teaches about women’s work and textiles throughout history. Her husband died of cancer and there are many firsts coming up without him and Sandra is coping by trying to control everything in her life and moving on. She hasn’t even mourned her loss.

Martha is more of an enigma. She lives alone and is about Sandra’s age. She lost her husband years ago; several months after their marriage. She’s moved on but not without cost. She carries her mistakes about with her literally and figuratively. And, she’s a bit of an obsessive-compulsive with errors throwing her into strong stress reactions.

Once they met, Sandra is inspired to put on an exhibition of knitting from 1900 to 2000 and wants Martha to knit all the pieces historically correctly and from period knitting patterns. Martha is overwhelmed but can’t seem to say no. Sandra doesn’t even recognize that she’s never asked, she’s only assumed.

The story threads from one viewpoint to the other so that the reader gets a feel for each of the characters. Kitting is the theme that hold the story together and the only thread that makes a connection between these two women. The real theme is one of communication and acceptance. How do we communicate with each other? How do we listen? Or, do we listen to each other? What is the nature of friendship? What causes a bond to exist between some people and not others. How do we look at ourselves and how do others look at us.

None of these questions really get answered but they are at the heart of the story. There’s a lot of knitting terminology and some nice insights into the psychology of knitting and its place in many people’s lives but the story is not about knitting — it’s about women and their relationships to each other.

It takes place in Adelaide, Australia and that also lends a nice air to the story. It’s a slow story that drifts in and out of the lives of these two women. It’s a thoughtful story and depends as much on what the reader brings to it as what the writer puts into it. Not a stay up all night page turner; but it is a thoughtful look at women, their work, and their lives.

Warning: This is going to be a political rant. If you’re Republican, come back tomorrow when I’ve gotten over my snit a bit.

I’ve been a Democrat since I could vote. There was a while when I changed my party to Republican; but that was to vote for the least bad one in the primary, and then still vote Democrat in the elections. At that time I figured that if you could at least get the least evil in a field of evil candidates on the opposition side then if my Democratic candidate lost — things wouldn’t be so bad for four years.

I favored Clinton over Obama, but when he won the race to become the only candidate left — well, okay he wasn’t a bad choice, even though his science and technology votes were definitely not well informed. I’d hoped that when he chose a running mate that he’d pick Clinton and it would be my dream ticket. Yesterday, he announced that he’d picked Biden as a running mate. I spent most of yesterday so upset and angry I couldn’t deal with his pick. I was close to tears most of the day because of the loss I felt — I’d lost hope. I’d lost the dream of my country restored to dignity and justice for all (not just those with money and power).

I’d have been okay if he’d at least picked a Veep who loved America and Americans. I’m not talking about saying the right thing, I’m talking about doing the right things. In the doing department, Biden has proven over and over that he cares more about business and greed, than in America or its people. Check out this article on CNet News about his technology voting over his career.

Biden has consistently voted and supported RIAA’s assault on American’s right to Fair Use of music they lawfully buy and own. He also voted for the Patriot Act (which, in truth, based on what it does is more accurately called the unPatriot Act — I doubt you could find a less patriotic bill if you looked for years). He voted for the war in Iraq (which makes one wonder if Obama truly means to get our soldiers out of there). On the other hand, he did vote against the FISA Bill (which Obama voted for), this bill allows the FBI to spy on American for no other reason that that they want to — no warrants, no oversight, no probable cause. They’ve been caught time and time again abusing powers like this, which is why it was stripped from them in the first place. So why, oh why, would anyone think it was a good idea to authorize them to do it again? But one good does not negate the all the bad, anti-American votes especially when these changes came at a time when Biden planned to run for the Presidency (there’s a reason he dropped out so early — no one wanted him).

I don’t want this man as Vice President. Heck, I don’t want him in the Senate either but I’m not in his state and had no say in that one. To be perfectly frank, Obama’s voting record isn’t stellar either but he didn’t change his tune to run for the office either — at least he’s consistent.

So, now the problem is: do I vote with my heart for the best of my country and go for a third party candidate? There are a couple of really, really good people running — people who seem, based on their lives, actions, and words to be pro-American people. The down side is that with our current system, none of them can win. Or do I vote Democrat again knowing that I’m really voting for “Republican Lite” and a continuation of the dissolution of everything that I have loved and cherished in my country, just because the alternative is even worse? Over the last eight years, I’ve seen America lose its standing as a moral force for good in the world. I’ve seen security theater become more important than actual security. I’ve seen/read/heard about Americans and others disappeared off the streets of America to be imprisoned (if the person is lucky) and to be outsourced for torture if they’re not. I’ve listen to the current President and his head of Justice actually defend torture — a method that will get you information, in fact it will get you any information you want; just tell them what you want said and the victim will say anything to make it stop. This is so unbelievable as behavior in a leader of this country that it often leaves me speechless that we’ve come to such a low point. It still shocks me to my core that the democrats in congress haven’t got the barest sliver of a spine necessary to impeach this man for his crimes against this country.

I’ve watched my country, that stood for years as a haven and supporter of freedom for all, become a country afraid of its own shadow and willing to destroy its Constitution and its Bill of Rights for the illusion of security. I’ve seen the government change from helping and supporting its people, to spying on anyone they please (pretty much anybody that doesn’t believe like they do) just because they can. Worse yet, I’ve seen the people of this country willing to give up freedoms for this same illusion of security. As Benjamin Franklin once said:

“People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.”

He’s right you know, we currently have neither but most of us haven’t bothered to pay attention.

Our country could get back on track. It will take years, maybe decades, to recover from the damage done to her and her people over the last eight years, but it can be done. But to do it we need strong leadership and a leadership that is committed to making the hard decisions and choices that must be made to restore the basic rights guaranteed to the citizens of this country in our founding documents. We need somebody that understands that if you demolish your own foundations, you have nothing left to stand on. I believe that Obama has at least read the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Based on his voting record, I’m not so sure about Biden. And, based on its leadership, I know that the current administration either hasn’t or, if they have, they didn’t understand a word of it.

So, how do you turn a staunch Democrat away from the party? You pick a running mate that has proven time and time again that he has no consideration for the people of the country, and would rather give his support over to the businesses who give money to his campaign.

Welcome to America. We have the best government money can buy. Don’t worry about the people, we’ll bring them under control, and then you can do anything you want as long as it’s profitable and puts money into my campaign coffers. Maybe Obama should have checked the voting records of his potential running mates rather than going with someone who was simply reported to have some foreign policy experience. (Hint: Biden voted for the war in Iraq. He doesn’t have any credibility in the foreign policy arena.)

Obama, you not only made a bad choice, you’ve now proven to this voter that I can’t trust you to turn this country around since you’ve chosen as a running mate someone who helped get us in this position in the first place, and whose voting record proves that he has no interest in the citizens of this country.

What really fries my cookies, is that I still have to vote for you because the alternative is even worse. I want a country and a leadership I can be proud. I thought this time I just might get it. Now, I just hope that in four more years, I get my wish. I only hope America hasn’t been completely dismantled by then. When will the Democrats give me a candidate I can vote for? I’m sick of only being allowed to vote against the greater evil, and then having to live with the lesser.

The last week has been a bit of a strain.  Not that anything really awful has happened.  There’s been the usual stress of gearing up for the publication of all the zines on September 1st.  Just the usual stuff of pinging all the reviewers and seeing where we stand.  Not to bad except I realized that the questions for the author interview for one of the zines never got sent — will do that tomorrow but it may be too late.

Then there was  a major code update.  Somehow, it shouldn’t have happened, but the update lost us a chunk of data from the database. Then the host servers crashed the next morning so it took longer than usual for the restore.  Then when the restore was in place, well all the work of at least two days was gone and had to be redone.  I think, as of today, that most of that has been recovered and put back in place.

Don’t you just love how computers make our lives so much more organized, in touch with others, and streamlined and then if there’s a glitch… Well, nothing can even come close to screwing up like a computer and its bits and bytes.  But now that we’re back to where we were several days ago — things are looking pretty good.

Meanwhile, while all the computer problems and stressors were going on there was the usual household stuff to do.  I’m trying to get things a bit more organized — boxed, labeled, gathered for tossing or giving away, or storing.  I’ve been pulling out the books that we don’t want to keep in our personal library and making a pile to put on Amazon for sale.  I need the bookshelf space for the book we have acquired lately and want to keep or haven’t read yet.  You’d think with all the books I review, Hyperion reviews, and that we read (from the library), that we’d never buy books.  You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.  We buy lots of books — mostly for research, reference, or just because they look like fun and the library doesn’t have it.

I also picked up some new yarn for socks today.  It’s a stretchy sock yarn in a pretty variegated  purple, yellow, pink, rosy color scheme.  Once I finish the pair I’m making now (just got the toe to do), I’ll start a pair with this yarn and using the circular needle technique to knit two socks at once.  Just need to figure out how I want them to look and find a pattern to use.

I’ve actually managed to spin four of the last eight days.  Not as much as I should but at least I’m keeping my hand (and feet) in.  I’m beginning to feel more comfortable.  I’m trying really hard to over-spin so I don’t lose so much twist when I ply.   I’m still working on using up the green top that I was working on for the Tour de Fleece.  I almost have half a spool full.  Maybe by the end of the month I’ll be plying it and setting the twist for this second skein.  It’s still a lace/sock weight yarn (with 3-ply Navaho plying).

What I have to snap out of is the funk that I seem to be in.  Everyday, it seems like I’m wading waist deep in water.  Everything just seems to take more effort.  I’m not letting it stop me.  I even walked down to the mailbox twice in the last week — I know I should be doing it every day.  But, I’m making a real effort to not give up and that’s got to count for something.  I guess what it counts for is that I keep going and eventually I will find it easier and easier to just keep going.  Maybe I should just buy more spoons, but I’m hoping to “snap out of it”.  So, since I love her work and the puzzle is so bright and cheery — I thought I’d share.  It is available through Amazon (isn’t everything).

Still expect a post only when you see one.  My schedule is a bit uneven just now.

I’m evidently still in a Austen mood. Prior to vacation, I finished reading The Darcy Connection by Elizabeth Aston. This one, I can give my whole-hearted endorsement. Aston definitely has a feel for the original characters and brings that into her follow-on stories even when the original characters are only on the pages for short periods.

In The Darcy Connection, the daughters of Mr. Collins and Charlotte are of marriageable age. Jane the eldest is a beautiful girl with many of the same qualities as her mother except that she is so reserved no one ever knows what she thinks or feels. Eliza, named after Elizabeth Bennet Darcy who is her godmother, is much as Elizabeth was in her youth but not as tempered by her common sense.

Mr. Collins is now the Bishop of Ripon due mostly to the clever manipulations of him by Charlotte. He is as insufferably full of himself as ever. The Collins’s also have a son but he only shows up for a few paragraphs and is, I’m afraid to say, his father’s son in temperment and mental acuteness. Sadly, it’s the girls that take after their mother. I say sadly, because women didn’t have many options in those days except to manipulate those around them to achieve their goals.

Jane is to be taken to London to have a season by a relation of Charlotte’s, Lady Grandpoint. Eliza was not to go until it’s found that she and the son of the local Squire are a bit too fond of each other. Eliza believes she is in love. So, naturally the cure it to remove Eliza to London with Jane and for the young man to learn to run his father’s estate. It’s clear from the start that Eliza is to be included only in events that take place at the Grandpoint’s home. She will not have a season. She will only be included when it would be impolitic not to have her at a social event outside the Grandpoint home. This is fine with Eliza as she is happy for Jane to take center stage.

The relationship between Jane and Eliza is not as close as that between Jane and Elizabeth Bennet or between the Darcy girls in Mr. Darcy’s Daughters. The connection of the title seems to be to the Darcy daughters as Eliza visits the household of Mrs. Camilla Darcy Wytton. It’s here that Eliza meets a number of people and through them begin to be invited out. Eliza turns out to be a young lady of surprising resources and accomplishments some of which are not in keeping with being a bishop’s daughter.

The interplay between what is happening with Jane and her season and Eliza and her non-season, plays wonderfully well as the plot threads weave around each other. Eliza may be the sister that is usually in trouble but Jane with her reserve often made this reader think of the phrase “still waters run deep.” As the story unfolds and the characters come alive with their actions and reactions to each other and changing situations and scenes, we suspect that more is going on behind the scenes than we know. In other words, the reader gets hooked into the story quite quickly and then it’s straight on ’til morning or the end of the book.

The story runs along allowing us to enjoy Eliza and her wit, charm, and observations of everyone and everything she meets and interacts with. There is comedy, drama, pathos, and sparkling conversations, several dastardly men (definitely not gentlemen in spite of their societal level and without mustaches but nevertheless not nice, if not down-right evil), and some interesting twist and turns.

Still the ending is as it should be, and as it usually is with an Austen-like novel, satisfying. So, you end the book with a sigh of completion and satisfaction of a story well told and some lives well settled.

I did a lot of reading while Hyperion was driving on our nearly cross-country road trip. I enjoy light reading that I can take up and put down as the mood takes me. I’ve also been on a big Jane Austen binge including the follow-on novels. Before leaving on our trip I stopped at the library and along with the other books I checked out, I got An Unequal Marriage or Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later by Emma Tennant. I hadn’t read anything by this author before but that’s not unusual as I’m just diving in to my Jane Austen phase.

First I have to say the book is very well written. Tennant has the tone of the times just right. The dialogue rings true and has the same rhythm as a book written about that period. Twenty years after the events of Pride and Prejudice, we find that Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy have had two children. The oldest a daughter is very much like Elizabeth and loves Pemberley, the land, and the people. Their son on the other hand is wild, rebellious, determined to ruin the family. Many of the other characters from Pride and Prejudice make an appearance or are mentioned to fill us in on what has happened during the intervening years.

I didn’t like the book until I cleared my mind of all references to Pride and Prejudice. As I said the writing is clear and the plot is interesting. The problem for me is that during those twenty years, Darcy has devolved to being the man Elizabeth thought he was based on her first impression of him in Pride and Prejudice. In fact, he is now the man Wickham said he was. He’s arrogant, cruel, and cares only for himself and his name. He has no care for his tenants or his servants. As a father, he was and is aloof and cold and gave his son not even the minimal care that he took of Bingley in Pride and Prejudice. But he is not the only person who has changed, Elizabeth has lost all respect for herself and is meek, self-effacing, insecure, and throws herself at another man just to feel better about herself. Aghast at these severe changes in core of these beloved characters — I was shocked.

I just could not conceive of these characters completely changing from who they were. The reason they could get together in the original story was because of their characters, values, and honor. To see all that they were totally twisted and changed just didn’t sit right with me. There was no indication of what could have caused these incredible changes in their character, honor, and values. It went against those hints and glimpses of them from the original novel.

I could only keep reading by convincing myself that these people only had the same names as the beloved characters from Pride and Prejudice and thus, it was an alternate universe version of Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth. With that little mental gymnastics achieved, I was then able to enjoy the writing and the story.

So, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone who loves the original novel. That is, unless, you can completely divorce yourself from the history of the characters and read this novel as related to no other book in existence and see it only as a stand alone novel of a troubled marriage in the post-Napoleonic War era.

The problem with going to a convention or taking a vacation is that life just keeps on going while you’re gone. So, when you get back you don’t start fresh, you start about one thousand feet back from the starting line.

When we got back from Denver, we returned the car and picked up our mail. The mail came in two of those big white US Postal Service bins. That was in addition to the two trash cans filled with packages that UPS and FedEx delivered while we were gone. Then last night our neighbor dropped by with two bags of mail that they had received for us.

So, the upshot is that it’s taken me three days to find the top of my desk (which is the dining room table until the office area is done….not looking like it’s coming anytime soon) so we’ve been eating in the living room off trays. Today, I found the surface of the table. Yes, I achieved success in finding spots of the table. Hyperion can now sit on his side and see me without having to stand up to peer over books, mail, and other paper debris. I’m truly psyched by this.

If I can keep going on this schedule of working ten to eleven hours I day, I may finish off — clearing the full table. However, now that I can actually find some of it. I need to now switch gears to work on a project that I need to get done in the next week since I got the last piece of information that I need (sort of, I still need a few biographical paragraphs but basically the core information is now all available).

What does that mean? It means that I may be sporadic in my posting to this blog over the coming week. But after that I should be back on schedule. There has got to be a way to expand days so that you have extra time when you need it. Coffee does help keep me going and somewhat staves off brain-collapse but what I really need is a full day of work and then some extra time to unwind and just do what I want to refresh the mental circuitry. But I didn’t have that when I worked full time and I certainly don’t seem to have it now that I’m freelance. Why is that when you work for yourself you work even harder than when you worked for someone else — it’s not like I’m going to fire me if I take a break. It’s got to be one of those weird New Englander work ethic things that just crops up when you least expect it (same way I always have to have some project going or I can’t just sit and watch TV or a movie — somehow that feels like I’m a slacker). Hmmmm. I’m going to have to think about this some more.