Grasshoppers

When I was in 7th grade we had to bring in grasshoppers to dissect. Until that time, I'd never seen one, except in books. The kids who weren't as good in school brought in the grasshoppers.

Now I live in a house where there are lots of grasshoppers in the backyard. They hop out of the way when I mow the lawn.

StorifyHelp replies, I click "Publish" again, and it works

@pargery It looks like your story isn't actually published — did you press the "Publish" button in the editor?
— Storify Help (@Storifyhelp) December 22, 2013

So I returned to my Storify account, found the story at the bottom of the Profile window (Zoe had to show me yesterday that it was down there.) and didn't see a "Publish" button. But I found an Edit button and reasoned that I could Edit and then try Publish again. That worked, though before clicking "Publish" I checked, just in case there were more Jeffrey tweets. I was glad I checked, because there were two more, which leaves the story with two more interesting tweets than had ended it last night.

@Storifyhelp Thanks for your reply. I just tried again & now have working & shortened URL: http://t.co/VS02xf6QYE
— Margery Harrison (@pargery) December 22, 2013

I had added " - 1" after the title, just in case Storify does not permit additions after "Publish", but now it looks like it wasn't needed.
I spent time yesterday trying to find the answer to whether I could edit after Publish. This resulted in Storify tweeting that question to my regular Twitter stream. I had thought I was was just adding the question to the comments section of their support blog, which was the only way I had found to ask a question. I deleted the tweet when I saw it in my regular stream because it looked stupid out of context: "Can I edit a story after I Publish it?"
So, bad automated interface, but how nice that they have Storifyhelp humans working on the weekend to answer questions.

Collecting Philip Pullman's Tweets on Jeffrey the House Fly using Storify

Jeffrey our resident fly is the most polite insect I've ever met. He leaves our food alone but sits on my shoulder to read the Oxford Times.
— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) November 14, 2013

Phillip Pullman was tweeting about a fly in his house. It reminded me of when I was blogging about a spider web I was seeing in the ladies room at work, only I look back at those blog entries as possibly a sick manifestation of the creative desperation of my life at that time, whereas Pullman's tweets about Jeffrey the housefly and all that follows are charming, intriguing, and delightfully written. I set up an account on Storify to collect the Jeffrey Tweets, because it's more pleasant to read the story in chronological order. When you read Tweets directly from Twitter, they are all reverse chronological because it's more natural to read from the top down.

I'm hoping my daughter or husband might draw some pictures to illustrate it.

http://storify.com/pargery/pullman-jeffrey

I had some difficulty with the Storify User Interface, and ended up having to re-insert half the Tweets after they were lost. I finally finished a 2nd time late tonight. I had thought I'd finished it around noon today and had to make pancakes in penance for ignoring children while I was trying to put it together..

And the link is still not working. Not a good GUI for Storify.

Yankee Candle Fundraiser Magazine Subscription Wastes Trees and Time

My daughter's school was having a Yankee Candle Fundraiser. I didn't want any of the Yankee Candles, but the fundraising catalog also included magazine subscriptions. So I ordered a magazine subscription. Weeks later, the order arrives in a box. My daughter is excited: What's in the box?

Inside the box is a piece of paper with a postcard and a website address and an activation code. I need to either send in the postcard or go to the website in order to get the magazine subscription.

Could they have saved 2 or 3 bucks off the subscription price by not sending this information in a box? How about an envelope? Or an email? Or just signing me up for the subscription, as I expected would happen?

Maybe they save enough money from people losing the coupons to make it worth it.

Not wanting to waste my $15, I log onto the website and fill in the information and the name of what magazine I want, again.

They send me a confirmation email:

Dear Margery,

Thank you for ordering from TheMagazineStoreOnline.com and supporting our fundraiser!
Please review the details for order #12345 below. ...
Please remember it takes between 8 and 10 weeks for your magazine subscription(s) to begin.

8 to 10 weeks. The irony is, my order is for a subscription to Fast Company.

Complaint about a 1953 Philip K Dick story - Imposter

With spoilers, of course:

OK, so it's in this robot anthology: Souls in Metal, published in 1978. It was in the bookcase at home. It reprinted robot stories written between 1938 to 1974.

Imposter, by Philip K Dick, is a very dramatic story. The narrative is in the third person, but the point of view is limited to one character--a man, or so we think, who's working on an important military project. His name in Olham. He seems like just a normal guy, with a wife, a love of the outdoors, and a longing to take a break, a camping trip, in the woods outside of town.

But, no, we find out he's suspected of being a robot--a spy robot--sent by the alien enemy. The robot has landed in a spaceship in the woods outside of town, and murdered the main character after first copying out the man's memories and impersonating him. The robot contains a bomb, that will be set off the moment the man utters a triggering phrase. The danger is that the robot will carry the bomb into the heart of the Secret Military Project and set it off.

The main character knows they must be wrong, and does his best to prove who he really is. After clever plot twists, he escapes and makes his way to the spaceship where the robot landed. He wants to prove the robot failed his mission. Instead, he finds his own dead body. In despair, he says, "But if that's Olham, then I must be---"

Oh no! That was the triggering phase. The story ends with:

The blast was visible all the way to Alpha Centauri.

And I thought, "Wow," and then, "Huh?"

Because the triggering phrase was obviously the result of seeing his own dead body, that is, he was set up to explode exactly where the robot found him in the first place.

Which made me wonder, why would the aliens bother with the whole robot thing, if the blast from exactly where their spaceship landed would be seen all the way to Alpha Centauri? All they needed was to set off the bomb immediately. What happened to the purpose of the robot to take the bomb into the heart of the Project? Did the aliens then fail? That wasn't the implication. The implication was that blast blew up all of Earth, kabloom. So, anyway, it doesn't make sense. Did I miss something? If not, then,

How did Dick get away with it?

Playing with clay at Castle Hill

So, looking back at my wish list from earlier this year, one of the items was "I want to play with clay." I had a week's vacation to take this summer. I did web-searches for short writing and art classes that would meet the week I had off. I found the Castle Hill Art Center in Truro MA, Cape Cod. 

We rented a cottage. The weather was beautiful. We even managed to avoid the bad traffic, somehow, renting Sunday to Sunday. If only Zubie hadn't had a major bad-back episode for the entire time, culminating in a Wednesday afternoon (perfect beach weather) ambulance ride to Cape Cod hospital in Hyannis (thank you Kennedys), it would have been a glorious vacation. 

The sculpture class reminded me how much I like sculpture. I've been working on wire mermaids since then. I've been neglecting story-writing, and that feels bad. The mermaid-sculpting is fun. Maybe I'll have stuff ready for Arisia this year.

Tonight's quick miso soup

Filled & started electric tea kettle.
In the meantime diced up some onions and carrot, about :

• diced quarter of a large red onion
• diced small carrot

Saute'ed in a few tablespoons oil.
Added a chunk of miso. About

• 3 tablespoons? miso

Stirred in the hot water, with about 2 tablespoons of leftover tomato-basil sauce to use it up from the jar.
Added about

• 3/4 cup frozen spinach

Sprinkled in the following spices:

• ginger (very little)
• sage (tiny bit)
• cumin
• coriander 
• garlic powder
• a bit of black pepper

It's not great, but not as terrible as experimentation might warrant. Rather warm and soothing.
Just recording the ingredients for improvement later.
I think the ginger is important, even though in a small quantity.

Last Sunday's Fish Chowder

Ingredients

• About 5 or 6 large red potatoes, peeled and sliced thin (leave some slivers of red peel).
• less than a pound or so of fish chunks (I used the Trader Joe's frozen cod pieces, inexpensive fish)
• 3 large carrots, peeled and sliced into disks
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• red onion diced
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 2 cups milk

• spice to taste:
• dill (optional)
• tarragon (optional)
• basil (optional)
• ground bay leaf (or add a whole bay leaf before adding the carrots)
• parsley
• paprika
• fresh ground pepper
• salt

Directions

Peel and slice potatoes, add to soup pot until they fill about 1/2 way up.
Rinse, discard rinse water, and then fill with enough water to cook the potatoes.
When they are close to cooked, add the carrots.

In a saucepan, saute the diced red onion in olive oil and butter. Add flour, stir it around and let it brown. Gradually add in about 3/4 cup milk until you have a cream sauce.

Add the fish pieces to the potatoes in the soup pot, then stir in the cream sauce. Thin the chowder out with more milk.

Spice to taste.

ALZA ARRIBA!

I don't know Spanish, but my husband is from Chile. From his dad, we learned a great thing to yell at kids when you want to get them out of bed in the morning:

Alza arriba!
Trinca el coy!
Coy a la batayola!

Here's his translation/pronunciation guide:

Alza arriba! - AL-sa  a-RRI-bha (literally loft upwards)
[RR meaning hard R like Rabbit]

Trinca el coy! - TRIN-ca El COy (tie up your hammock, which is otherwise known as "hamaca". "Trincar" in general parlance means to bind up or corner in)
[R meaning soft R like train]

Coy a la batayola! - COy  A LAH   BAH-tah-yoeh-lah (Put the hammock away on the batayola which I think means bulkhead stringer, some sort of shelf structure along the hull or bulkhead)

Ready for a Red Wedding?

I watched the first season of Game of Thrones this weekend. Unlike those who watched it before June 7 of this year, I think I may have benefited from the protection of all of those Red Wedding Tweets and news stories. As I watched the story unfold, I thought:

"What a nice family. They're all going to DIE." 

I didn't fall in love, though I have to admit I particularly like the younger daughter. She's fun.

I was even annoyed at the dad's honorable stubbornness. Didn't he know what story he's in?

Of course, do any of us?

What kind of story are you in?

Yes, I did finish

Not to leave my non-existent readers hanging, I thought I should post that I did indeed finish The Casual Vacancy. I also finished building the garden and moving in the tomatoes and cucumber plants. I'll post a photo of the garden if I'm ever home when the sun is out.

I did like the book. It did make me wonder if J. K. Rowling will always be bursting full of characters. I liked that all the characters were understandable--none were entirely good or bad. Unlike in the Potter volumes, there was no obvious main character. At the end of the book, I realized there probably had been a main character, and it wasn't whom I would have expected it to be from the beginning. That was fitting, because the novel illustrated the error in judging and dismissing a person. 

You could derive this moral from the novel:  

Pay attention to your kids, and pay attention to other people's kids too. 

 Spoiler alert: Very sad things happen.

four tomato plants, forty dollars and four hours later

    You see, the best luck I ever had growing tomatoes was when I was living in the middle floor of a triple-decker in Medford MA. I bought some cherry tomato plants on impulse outside at the local Rite Aid, (the one we could walk to, on the corner of Rt 60 & Rt 28, on the border with Malden).
    I put the tomato plants in giant plastic flower pots on the back porch and they produced wonderful tomatoes. The only plant that didn't produce tomatoes was in the smallest of the big pots, so I reasoned that you need big pots to produce tomatoes.
    Fast forward thirteen years and on impulse I buy a 4-pack of cherry tomato plants from the Farm and Flower Market in Manchester NH. I planted them in the only surviving pot on the back porch but I knew it was just a temporary tomato home. Weeks have gone by. The tomatoes are too big and one is toppling over. My husband has suggested the idea that he might build a "raised bed" garden for them at the end of the driveway, but that has not happened.
    Today I take one of the kids and we go to Devrient Farm to get a bag of potting soil. They're out, but I leave with a flower pot containing a 'pickling' cucumber plant, and some fresh off-the-truck strawberries to just eat. They suggest Goffstown Hardware for the potting soil.
    I look in Big Lots for big pots but don't want to pay $14 for an ugly one. I try Goffstown Hardware store and the hardware guy sells me a 'kit' for building a raised garden bed ("These were on sale last week, but today I'll still give you the sale rate of $29.99." "Will it fit all four tomato plants?" "Oh, yes.") and a bag of garden soil that the guy says will be big enough but I don't think so. It remains to be seen.
    I spend an hour searching the house for a screwdriver with the right bit and my electric drill ("Before I married, I had an electric drill with all the bits in the package. Where is it? And where's the case for my profile sander? Why is it out of its case? And how do I know the missing drill bits aren't buried in this sawdust? Can't you clean the sawdust.." most of which was said downstairs while my husband the target of all this was upstairs. Probably a good thing.) and then trying to figure out the relatively simple directions for putting together the 4x4 raised bed kit: four posts, eight boards, 20 screws, and 4 square caps for the posts.
    I dig out the section near the front door where we've decided to put it. Not as sunny as it ought to be, but the underlying soil is good there, unlike near the driveway where it's not. It's also a pretty spot to add a 4x4 mini-corral, so we could always plant shade-loving flowers if the tomatoes don't work out. For this season, it's also a good spot because we'll see the tomatoes as we walk in and out and remember to take care of them.
    I cut up the grass by stepping on the shovel. I find lots of small rocks and four very large flat-ish rocks, three of which I pull out of the square. With all those rocks out, it is now a sunken garden bed. After pulling out the third rock and standing it up against the 'raised bed' fence I was just too tired to do any more.
    Shower and supper. To be continued tomorrow.
    Tomatoes and their new cuke pal are still on the back porch.

I just started reading The Casual Vacancy

It's great to read JK Rowling freed from Potter: her wicked observations of character allowed to be from a grown-up point of view, and her characters with access to modern technology such as mobile phones and websites.

I've got a library-booksale tape cassette version of the first Harry Potter book playing in my '97 Corolla. In a recent crisis, "there wasn't enough time to get an owl to Charlie" to modify a plan to collect an illicit dragon. Too bad Charlie and the kids didn't have access to telephones. What magic.

Cold Potato-Dill Soup : Instant

I threw this together the other night and it came out pretty good, considering the level of effort. Decent comfort food. Fat-free, if made with skim milk.

Ingredient list with approximate amounts:

• 1/4 C Potato Flakes (We use "Idaho" brand)
• 1/4 C Hot Water
• 1/2 C Milk
• 2 or 3 ice cubes

Spices shaken in from their bottles. Very rough guess as to amount. Add "to taste":

• 1 teaspoon dried dill
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika

Directions (Serves 1):

Fill the electric tea kettle to its minimum amount and turn it on.

Pour the instant mashed potato flakes into the bottom of a deep soup bowl.

Stir in the dill flakes so that it's a nice-looking mixture with the green mixed into the white.

Also stir in the garlic and salt, so that it can all dissolve when you

Add the hot water and stir it until it dissolves and is smoothly mixed in.

Stir in milk until smooth.

At this point, it's not cold enough, so add the 2 or 3 ice cubes and keep stirring until they melt.

Sprinkle some paprika on top.

Nice cold summer soup, with minimum effort. I hope you like it.

Oz the Great And Powerful - Comments, with Spoilers

There was a lot that was good in the movie but it had two major flaws.

The biggest flaw is that if you're going to set up the story at the beginning with a lot of real-life issues that need to be resolved, then he needs to go back to Kansas at the end to resolve them. I'm all in favor of Oz being a real place, so he has to stay in Oz because Dorothy has to meet him there later, but if that's the ending you're going to have then you need a beginning that allows for that. The ending set up was one where he apologizes to his friend and proposes to the woman he loves. Smooching her avatar at the end does not provide the necessary closure.

There was a marvelous moral closure from the setup where Oscar tells the woman he loves that he doesn't want to be a good man like his father, he wants to be great. Then at the end of the film Glinda points out that through his experience he has learned that goodness is better than greatness. Lesson learned, but we needed to see it acted upon.

The other flaw was the actor playing the future Wicked Witch of the West (Mila Kunis as "Theodora"). Yes, it was a cartoon role with simple lines, but a better actor would have given it the range it needed, and the range that would have made it enjoyable to watch.

Her sister "Evanora" was better, but she kind of suffered from lack of plot. She didn't have enough backstory or motivation. Something missing.
There are parts of the story that just seem inadequate, like it was created without enough love.

Nothing was missing in the opening sequences. The movie was great and moved wonderfully for the entire in-Kansas part. Although you had to question whether the magician's audience really were so unsophisticated that he couldn't have just said said to the little girl something along the lines of "I'm an illusionist, sweetie. I don't perform miracles. I'm sorry." People nowadays don't expect magicians to be actually performing magic, but we love to watch them anyway. Was the 1890's audience that much different? But, OK, the action flowed through the Kansas sequences, so questions like that really weren't a problem.

The tornado scene was a lot of fun.

I liked the mechanical creation of magic as a solution to what seemed to be an impossible task. That was a great piece of the plot. The fog and mechanical robots to trap the evil flying baboons was a great idea. The projection of Oz in the cloud of smoke was a wonderful effect and fairly set up.

I loved the beginning with Kansas being both black and white and also a smaller square screen. Then Oz opens out as wide and colorful.

I did find the colors kind of not quite right. The look worked for the Alice in Wonderland movie, but it didn't please me as Oz. Of course, that's the set designer's prerogative. I did like the dramatic landscape, cliffs and trees.

The people traveling in bubbles was from one of the books. It was fun to recognize that.

When the movie came out I was afraid it would be Gregory Maguire's blood-soaked Oz. It was a relief that it wasn't.

The opening credits were great. The closing credits dragged, and the song changed before the credits were over from the waltz that fit the grand-retro mood into a contemporary sort of thing that didn't go with the mood at all.

Another thing that felt unresolved was that the Wizard had an entire bottle of glue. Why not look through the china town and see if there's anyone else they could glue together? I kept expecting them to get around to it and they didn't. They seemed to be setting it up with the china girl asking for him to grant the wish of restoring her family. But then they didn't do it. It seemed wrong.

the key to happiness

My boss said that the key to happiness is having reasonable expectations. People are often unhappy because they want too much--they want what they can't have. 

I agreed with him. Sincerely. I thought, I have great kids, a loving husband. We're healthy. We live within our means and don't try to own more. I'm happy. 

Though of course, not wanting is not a complete philosophy. If we're all content with only what is reasonable to expect, the society would stagnate. Businesses would fail. We need to want what we maybe can't have in order to write novels or invent things. Creativity requires a certain amount of desperation.

I went back to my desk. And found myself thinking:

I want chocolate.
I want music.
I want to draw pictures.
I want sleep. Now.
I want to go outside.
I want sex way more often.
I want a Coke Zero. I don't want to pay vending machine prices.
I want to play with clay.

Driving home tonight, I kept thinking:  I want a new car, but I know it won't make my commute any less long.

When I got home, my husband had set up the new TV I'd bought last week. He'd finally decided we should keep it, even thought it didn't have the VGA connection that the salesman at Best Buy had told me it did have. It was still a good price. Not too large. Reasonable. It doesn't squeak like the old one. It will make us happy. For a reasonable length of time.

I hate the submission process

I totally hate it.

I love writing. I love my stories, writing, in my own little world. My own world.

I'm even OK with people in my writing group reading and not liking or understanding my stuff. I'm used to that. I've had lots of experience with a range of reactions from people I know who've read things I've written.

But this sending the story off to a total stranger to be rejected, it's really hard. It makes me very nervous.
I hate the rejection. I hate being lumped with all the weirdos sending in their stuff, and not knowing how to phrase a cover letter correctly. Being just plain nervous.

Yeah, the trick I suppose is to get so used to the sending them off and being rejected that it's like the regular people reading my stuff experience.

Yeah. Fine.

I hate this.
I hate it.

Best story from the slush pile: When I was reading slush for Aboriginal years ago. I read one of the best sf stories I've ever read. I think of it now and then. The editor rejected it. I always remember. I always relate this anecdote to remind hopeful authors: a rejection means that one person didn't like your story.

And I always think of that writer of that story, wish I remembered his name. And hope so bad that being rejected by Aboriginal, not the top of the science fiction market at the time, hoping so much that rejection didn't discourage him. Because he was really good. At least his story was.

And don't tell me there's a difference. We don't feel it, though we tell ourselves we should. We should say "rejected the story I sent in" not "they rejected me." I try to. I don't feel it.

That's just how it goes.

Goodnight.

I saw violets last weekend

Roses are red.
Violets are purple.
Nothing rhymes with purple,
So poets call them blue.

I heard a new song today, by someone I never heard of before

"Two fingers" by Jake Bugg. Here's the YouTube link to the video.

Thank you radio station 92.5, the River. You played the song on my drive to work and then again on my drive home. In the morning you told me his last name used to be Kennedy. At night, you told me that 2 fingers in Britain is a gesture that is rude or one of defiance. Thank you for the educational liner notes.

(And, by the way, River, you don't have to bracket every new song you introduce with two very old ones. It's true, I do call you "the station for people who listened to WFNX in the 1980's", but that was when WFNX was "Your new music source", and we still like new music. But that's OK, I like your selection of old music. Could you play Supertramp? How about Sting's Lute music?)

Anyway, Jake Bugg is so young, I think we can look forward to lots of good music from him in the future.

What a pleasure for a Tuesday.

your Warriors name

So my daughter is really into this feral-cat book series called Warriors. Today she dragged me over to the computer so I could generate my Warriors name from an app on their website. You enter your first name and your hometown, and it will generate your cat Warrior name.

"What's my hometown?" I asked. "Where I live? Where I grew up?"

My other daughter showed up at that point.

"We used where we were born, so it would be different," they answered.

We started playing with it and found that it is a very simple mapping. It only looks at the first letter of name and hometown.

a->Hawk
a->fire

b->Tangle
b->claw

c->Wild
c->talon

d->Swift
d->eyes

Thus Amelia from Dover would be called Hawkeyes

e->Rain
e->fur

f->Thorn
f->tail

g->Fuzzy
g->mask

h->Mud
h->face

i->Loud
i->storm

j->Bramble
j->foot

k->Moss
k->ears

l->Leopard
l->pelt

m->Scar
m->nose

Max from Hudson would be "Scarface".

n->Bright
n->heart

o->Running
o->belly

p->Sand
p->shadow

q->Dawn
q->flower

r->Ice
r->breath

s->Spotted
s->path

t->Rock
t->legs

This isn't a good way to do it. Sisters often share first initials. Tammy and Tracy from Newton would both be "Rockheart".

u->Red
u->sky

v->Mouse
v->pool

w->Tiger
w->head

x->Flower
x->wish

y->Claw
y->stalker

z->Blue
z->sayer

I mean, they have a computer. Why not assign a number to each letter of the name and map from the totals divided-remaindered (%) to the number of choices?

Anyway, use the chart above to find your Warrior name. Is that fun?