BrooklynWriter

It appears that those yellow-and-black fallout shelter signs aren't the only thing left to us from the McCarthy era. In California, a law put into effect in 1952 -- which said that all public employees must take a loyalty oath to to "defend" the U.S. and California constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic" -- is still in place. However, while the law was originally meant to keep Communists out of state government (which meant it actually just weeded out people of conscience, since anyone who really meant to do harm to the state government would have taken that oath without blinking), it's currently weeding out Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others who don't/can't take the oath for religious reasons.

Apparently, some state institutions are allowing employees to include addendums to the oath -- and some aren't. I heard about it on NPR, and went looking for articles about it; here's one from the Los Angeles Times: Loyalty oath poses ethical dilemmas.
 

Jim and I had been planning to take a long day trip to some park or other, but in the end, we just never got to it. Instead, today we went back to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens -- but this time, we went to the East Pond, which is across Cross Bay Blvd from the main part of the refuge.

After walking around a while and stopping at the lake (where we saw several swans and their cygnets, cormorants, some local ducks, and an osprey on the hunt.

However, the star of the afternoon was a barn owl, who has taken up residence in a box overlooking Big John's Pond, a small pond with a bird blind. We found two birders there who had been waiting for several hours and who said we had just missed the barn owl.

We waited anyway -- we kept seeing tantalizing glimpses of it in our binoculars and just couldn't leave. Finally, the owl decided to have pity on us, and came out onto the edge of the box entrance, and sat there for at least 10 or 15 minutes, giving us a really good luck. It was really gorgeous -- the flat, eerie white face with black eyes set into wide white platters; and surrounded by beautiful auburn features on its head and neck. Really cool.

Unfortunately, I have a really poor camera, and all I was able to get was a far-off white blur. I did find a photo of the owl -- at least, of its face peering out of the box -- on a blog called The City Birder, so thought I'd link to it right here.

On Saturday, I went with my mother to see Port Authority by Conor McPherson at the Atlantic Theatre. McPherson's play The Seafarer is currently up for several Tony awards; if this one were on Broadway, I'd say it should be up there as well.

The play is essentially three intertwining monologues by three Dublin men -- one barely in his 20s, one middle-aged, and one retired, widows, and living in a retirement home. Each has a story to tell of coming close to something or someone that he knew would have made his life complete -- a girl who already had a nice boyfriend, a glamorous job, his neighbor's wife -- and that he knows almost from the beginning is beyond his reach.

The men, played by Brian D'Arcy James, John Gallagher, Jr. and Jim Norton (who is up for one of this year's acting Tony awards), take turns coming forward and telling their stories, and slowly you understand what they have in common, and how they both wish they could have had the unattainable, but are content with the lives they have been given. A really marvelously written, acted, and directed play.

Jim and I went to see the Mark Lamb Dance company at the Metro Baptist Church in Manhattan last night. Mark (who, in the interests of full disclosure, lives three blocks from us and is a close friend of Jim's brother) is a marvelous choreographer and dancer who, along with four dancers (Sarah Pope, NIcole Pouliot, Rebecca Strohl and Megan Ward) offered a program called "Black & White and testifyin' all over."

Mark usually employs a of what is called "structured improvisation" -- the dancers tell stories while they dance, and (as verified by Jim's brother), the program changes each time. I had a marvelous time -- the dancing was very creative and moving, and the two singers who accompanied them (Jodie Manross and Arlene Poggi, who does a mean version of "Someone to Watch Over Me") were great. Much of the recitations from the dancers concerned religion and mothers, which was apt to the time and place.

(I don't want to forget mentioning Vladimir Katz, the pianist, who was nice enough to give me the name of a possible piano tuner, and whom I hope to see perform sometime in NYC when he gets back from his travels.)

Unfortunately, the troupe only performed this weekend....

I'm just having a good time with the Vito Fossella scandal -- yes, I feel for his wife and kids, and yes, drunken driving is no joke. But this is a guy whom I've been wishing out of office for years; he's been my representative since I moved to Bay Ridge, and he's rubberstamped everything that Bush asked for. Last year, I gave money to Stephen Harrison, a Democrat who was running against him and actually came within shouting distance of the post. Wonder if he has a real chance of winning this year?

Mother’s Day Scandal - New York Times:

By now we voters are well-versed in how to respond when, say, your law-and-order governor turns out to be a primo patron of the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. Escort Service. But the bar moves ever upward, and this week, New Yorkers are trying to figure out the proper reaction to news that a veteran local congressman, Vito Fossella, is the proud paterfamilias of both a household in Staten Island (wife, three children) and a love nest with mistress and child in Virginia.

My story Signs of Life was recently reprinted in issue #3 of Escape Velocity, a new science fiction/fact magazine. A PDF version of the magazine is now free and available for download.

Signs of Life is not only my first story published, but, I think the closest thing I've ever written that comes close to a straight science fiction story. It was the result of the several years that I (unsuccessfully) studied to become a sign language interpreter. In the end, I was told my technique was excellent but my command of the language wasn't good enough -- and since I wasn't able/willing to enroll in Gallaudet University, which was nearly the only place I could go to really hone my ASL skills, I ended up finding a job at a tech magazine.

But at last I got a halfway decent story out of it....

I'm very pleased to announce that Doorways has accepted my story "In the Silence of the Subway" for publication.

Doorways describes itself as "a journal of horror and the paranormal," and has featured some very good writers in past issues, so I'm happy to become one of that company. Especially since "In the Silence of the Subway" is one of those stories that has been tweaked, rewritten, tweaked again, submitted to a writer's group, tweaked again, etc. for a couple of years now -- so it's good to know that all that work actually resulted in something worthwhile.

So to go along with the French recording from 1860 that was recently discovered (older than anything Edison made), there may be a photograph of a leaf that dates back to the 1790s, way older than any other photograph. I think that is incredibly neat; the idea that we may be looking at a reproduction of a leaf that existed about the time that our country was being founded is ... well, way cool. It allows us to touch history, in a sense. Also, just think of the insight it must have taken in both cases -- to come up with idea of recording sound or images years before the concepts became remotely practical.

So I wake up around 6:30 a.m. and hear a distant beeping. I get up to see if any of my electronic devices are going haywire and Jim, who's already been up a half hour or so, says that the smoke alarm has been going off next door (we live in an attached house). Our first floor and basement stink of smoke; Jim has already pounded on the door of the garage in back and the front door and hasn't gotten a response.

The house next door is occupied by a young 20-something whose mother bought the house for her. She is a nice enough young woman (although we had a bit of a tiff a few weeks ago when she woke us up at 5 in the morning because our car was parked in such as way that she couldn't maneuver her SUV out of her garage -- what she needs with an SUV in the first place, I don't know, but we won't go there). She and her friends partied most of Friday into the wee hours, and I know she had some people over last night, but the music didn't go on too long.

Anyway, I got dressed, Jim put his robe on, and we went and pounded on her door again. No answer -- and Jim saw through the smoky glass in the front door that the TV was on, which meant somebody was probably home. So we finally called 911.

The fire department was there in four minutes or so. (I gotta say, the NYC fire department must be staffed by a casting director -- those are a bunch of really good-looking guys.* But I digress.) A fireman pounded on her door; no answer. Tried the window; couldn't get it open without breaking it. So he told us he'd have to force the door, and did; and just as he got it open, the 20-something showed up.

White smoke poured out of the front door; the whole place was filled with it. She probably had something in the oven or something; it smelled like burnt popcorn. The firemen checked the place out and then left. I asked if she needed any help and asked if she wanted to come to our place while hers aired out; she said no. (I'm wondering if she's pissed at us for calling the fire department and destroying her front door by proxy.) She closed the door; the smoke was still pouring out of the top floor window.

So that was our excitement for the weekend....

*When I was three months old, the back of our old TV caught fire, and my mother had to grab me, alert all the other tenants in the small apartment house, and run outside. When I told her about what happened, she told me that the firemen who came to that fire were also exceptionally good-looking. Must be a tradition.

Just got word that my story "Signs of Life" will be reprinted in the April issue of Escape Velocity, which will be available April 10th. "Signs of Life" originally appeared in Amazing Stories v65 #3 back in September, 1990, and also in a small-press anthology called Memories and Visions: Women's Fantasy and Science Fiction, published by Crossing Press (which has been out of print for a while).

It's nice to have a story resurrected like this.

Jim and I spent the afternoon at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, which is a major birding haven on the border of Queens. The ambiance is rather weird; as you walk its graveled paths, it feels as though you're in some well-designed nature trail in, say, Massachusetts; but you look up, and in the distance on one side are the towers of Manhattan, and on the other, jets are landing at JFK.

When we got there, we looked in the logbook (which is right by the entrance, so people can record what they saw), and things seemed a bit scarce, to the point where one disappointed visitor wrote, "Where are all the birds?"

Waiting for us, it would appear.

Actually, besides the occasional blackbird, robin,and swan, we mainly saw two species today: lesser scaups and snow geese. Lots of them. Lots and lots of them. Couldn't count the scaups; they are the size of small ducks, with bright white sides (the males, anyway) and grey-blue bills, and there were a lot of them bobbing around the West Pond, obviously part of a flock passing through.

Then the snow geese started to arrive. First two circled around, landed, and took off again; then four more arrived and settled into the water right at the shore of the pond, then another four, then six, and then, and then... Jim and I watched for at least an hour as they came in and settled down, until there had to be several hundred. All accompanied by a great squawking; snow geese are not quiet animals, by any means -- I could just imagine the scaups whispering to each other, "Oh, hell, here come the snow geese -- we won't get any sleep tonight!"

I've seen on at least one occasion a flock of snow geese made up of several thousand birds; when they took off, you couldn't see the sky. This, in comparison, was only a small flock, but it was impressive nonetheless. And a lot of fun.

(Incidentally, I do wish that people would pay attention to the rules when they enter a wildlife sanctuary. There were at least two couples whom (at separate points) we saw had left the path and gone down to the sand by the marsh, disturbing not only the wildlife, but the plant life which the staff is trying really hard to revive. Jim yelled down each time, "Excuse me, but that is protected land!" Both couples came up, the first, a young couple, rather sullenly; the second, an older couple, with apologies; they hadn't seen the signs, but had seen footsteps on the beach and so thought it was okay.)

Sybil's Garage looks to be a real up-and-coming small-press publication, and issue #5 -- which includes a short story by yours truly -- is now available. I haven't gotten my copy yet, but from everything I've heard (and from the table of contents), it looks like it's going to be a really good issue (if I do say so myself). Check it out.

Table of Contents

Poetry:
Elizabeth Barrette - “With Every Fine and Subtle Sense Perceive”
Amal El-Mohtar - “Orpheus”
Miranda Gaw - “Last Supper”
Aaron Leis - “Glass”
Pam McNew - “No Word for Goodbye”
Adrienne J. Odasso - “River Girl”
David M. Rheingold - “Macduff’s Lament”
Eilyahoo Talgam - “Look Away”

Fiction:
Samantha Henderson - “The Ballad of Delphinium Blue”
Vylar Kaftan - “The Girl Next Door”
Barbara Krasnoff - “All His Worldly Goods”
Caspian Gray - “Waiting for Spring”
Jason Erik Lundberg - “Wombat Fishbone”
Alex Dally MacFarlane - “Tattoos of the Sky, Tattoos of the Days”
Gary Moshimer - “Salesman”
Hazel Marcus Ong - “Roses”
Daniel A. Rabuzzi - “Last and First”
Veronica Schanoes - “Lost in the Supermarket”

Non-Fiction:
Dinner with Lauren McLaughlin, an Interview by Devin Poore
The Best-Dressed Man on the Court, a memoir by Mercurio D. Rivera

Last night, Jim and I went to see Fight Girl Battle World, a wonderfully arch scifi (and I used that term purposefully) play by the Vampire Cowboys Theater Company. It tells a fun action-packed space tale using the kind of stagecraft that you don't see a lot of: puppetry and well-choreographed fight scenes and the use of puppets and lighting and props that were obviously gathered from peoples' homes.

The plot (such as it is) is about the last human female who is surviving by fighting in the ring on Battle World, and a general who wants to make amends for the destruction of the human race by pairing her with the last human male. They go through a bunch of adventures, including an escape from a zoo for extinct species, an outer-space dogfight, and the requisite desert planet.

It's not a satire as such, although it does reference a whole bunch of science fiction media classics; it's more an homage in the true sense of the world. The actors keep up an amazing pace, and a good time was had by all.

In conversation with Dan Persons:

Jim: On our first date, I broke my arm.

Me: We spent the rest of the evening in the emergency room at St. Vincents.

Dan: Interesting. Is that some kind of Klingon courting ritual?

Spent the weekend at Lunacon up in Westchester, NY. Had a very nice time -- there was a very wide-ranging program of panels, including some during the masquerade (a boon for those of us who don't attend the masquerade). Jim did several panels; although I was going to just be a spectator for this one, I ended up volunteering for one panel, at 9 pm on Saturday: Writing as a Calling, moderated by Marilyn Brahan (whose idea it apparently was). Since the original two participants had bowed but, I sat in together with Ian Randal Strock (editor of SFScope); we sat around and talked about how to cope with the fact that you are a somewhat-published writer who isn't about to put much in the bank.

I had a nice time, hanging out at various panels, staring at the books and jewelry in the dealers' room that I was determined not to buy... Met more friends than I have time to mention just now, including scbutler, Sarah Beth Durst, the aforementioned Ian, and a whole host of others. (My apologies for not mentioning everyone's name...)

Jim and I will be hanging out at Lunacon up in Westchester this weekend. Jim's going to do a few panels (on media topics, which is unusual for him), but I'm going to be in total attendee mode: watching panels, chatting with friends, and wandering around the dealer's room.

If you happen to be attending, stop by and say hi. I'm going to be the one tapping on a pearl-white Asus Eee.

Do you want to help put a geostationary banana over Texas?

There's apparently an artist -- the kind of artist who does "art-interventions in public spaces" (oy) -- who wants to put a giant inflatable banana in the Texas air-space for a month. Why Texas? I'm not sure. (Jim is irritated -- he things something that slippery should be hanging over Albany.)

Anyway, apparently these guys are all ready to go; all they need is the money. They're not gonna get it from me -- but I can't help admiring the concept.

Last night, Jim and I went to see the Chichester Festival Theatre production of Macbeth at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, starring Patrick Stewart. Marvelous production, with a few interesting tweaks that didn't all work, but were all interesting.

Director Rupert Goold sets it in a sort of alternative Stalinist Scotland (emphasized not only by the modern, stark set, and the green military uniforms with bright red tags, but with occasional videos of crowds in what looked like Red Square). There is a bit of playing with the text, as well -- for example, instead of opening with the three witches, it instead opens with the scene where Duncan discovers that the Thane of Cawdor is a traitor.

It plays with time as well -- the intermission came just after the ghost of Banquo (visible to the audience) confronts Macbeth, after afterwards, it picks up back at the beginning of the scene (except this time, the audience only sees MacBeth's reaction rather than the ghost).

The acting, need I say it, was superb. Stewart played Macbeth as an ambitious but weak man who is only too glad to let his wife persuade him to the original murder, and from there adopts murder as the easiest way to get rid of his real and imagined enemies. The rest of the cast was great as well, including Kate Fleetwood as a younger but very determined Lady Macbeth.  I was also very impressed with Michael Feast, whose reaction when he hears his wife and children have been murdered is absolutely heartbreaking.

The run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is sold out, but I understand it will move to Broadway at the end of March.

A California health insurance company apparently felt it was okay to cancel its clients' policies if they actually started using the insurance. According to news reports, Health Net canceled a woman's insurance coverage when she had to be treated for breast cancer -- in the middle of her treatments. She was stuck with over $129K in bills and had to stop chemo until she found a charity that would pay for it.

However, my favorite part of the story is this:

Health Net ordered to pay $9 million after canceling cancer patient's policy - Los Angeles Times:

At the arbitration hearing, internal company documents were disclosed showing that Health Net had paid employee bonuses for meeting a cancellation quota and for the amount of money saved.

"It's difficult to imagine a policy more reprehensible than tying bonuses to encourage the rescission of health insurance that keeps the public well and alive," the judge wrote.

"Hi, there, campers -- find an excuse, any excuse, for canceling people who actually have medical expenses that we are required to pay, and we'll give you a nice big bonus!" <sigh>

In the schools-you-don't-want-your-kids-to-go-to-department:

In This Moment: Kansas religious school bounces basketball official for being (gasp) female:

The game was at St. Mary’s Academy, a private religious school that sits on a sprawling campus about 25 miles northwest of Topeka. Before the game started, a school administrator approached (Michelle) Campbell’s officiating partner, Darin Putthoff of Topeka, and told him a woman could not serve as referee.

That would be putting a woman in a position of authority over boys, he was told — a scenario that was contrary to beliefs at St. Mary’s Academy.