Kate Schaefer

Good things

2009-12-16T22:39:59Z

Here, let me be mildly mysterious. I recently had a phone call that reminded me that even though there are plenty of dreadful things in the world, there are also lots of wonderful things and many people doing good work. Some of that good work is done in secret, and then when the secret is revealed, it's a terrific surprise for other people.

I've been surprised. It's a good day. Thanks, people doing good work in secret.

Hats and velvet scarves for the holidays

2009-12-05T17:26:14Z

For those of you in the Seattle area, here's a bit of overdue shameless self-promotion.

See my work as part of the North End Arts Tour (NEAT), today and tomorrow. I’ll be at Seymour Stained Glass Studio, 5415 Greenwood Avenue North, Seattle. Hours: Saturday, December 5, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; and Sunday, December 6, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

The North End Arts Tour is a free, self-guided tour showcasing the work of about thirty local artists at seven north Seattle locations just minutes apart. This will be my second year of participation. Come see my cocktail hats, silk velvet jackets, wraps, and scarves, along with some lovely ceramics, glassware, jewelry, stained glasswork, photography, and cards made by the other artists. Get your Christmas shopping done this weekend!

More info and a printable map are available at http://www.neatseattle.com/.

Other shows featuring independent artists and craftspeople this weekend include the Phinney Neighborhood Center's Winter Festival, 10-5 on Saturday and Sunday, at 6532 Phinney Ave. North; Seattle Sampling in various locations with hours similar to NEAT (); and my fave hat muse, Ann de Vuono, Saturday noon to 5pm, at her studio, 3711 Carr Place North.

The show actually started last night, but I forgot to post about it ahead of time. I sold two hats last night, a lovely white wedding hat with beadwork and frivolous feathers and hat made of crazy-quilted, embroidered vintage ties. I'd post pictures (taken by the talented Luke McGuff), but LJ seems to be broken in that respect right now,.

If you're not in Seattle and want to support unusual arts, the Interstitial Arts Foundation rolling auction is in its last few days with scheduled auctions stretching out just a little bit and a few last-minute surprises.

Thanks!

Make me spend money!

2009-11-30T17:20:40Z

Today's the last day for my hat in the Interstitial Arts Foundation fundraising auction. As I post, it's at $58. Remember, I'll match the winning bid with a donation to IAF, up to $100. And now that I think of it, since IAF is a 501(c)(3) organization, my spouse's employer will match that donation dollar for dollar as well, so your winning bid will be worth not just double the amount you bid, but triple, and you'll have a smashing cocktail hat to wear to your next literary reception.

Other auctions are up as well, including some stunning jewelry, a skirt made by Pam Noles based on the same story as my cocktail hat, and an outrageous beaded bookmark.

If the whole concept of interstitial arts seems a bit hazy and confusing to you, that's not surprising, because it's a genre-crossing idea. Go here to see what it's all about.

And thanks!

Hat matching

2009-11-24T22:05:43Z

I've posted a few times about the Interstitial Arts Foundation's rolling art auction fundraiser, which started November 1 and will continue through early December, with a new piece going up every day. Embarrassingly, my hat went up for auction yesterday, and I didn't post about it*.

I think it's a pretty cool hat. The story it's based on is as much about the writing process as it is about anything else, which is something I always find interesting. Here it is from above. It's not quite that dark in real life; I didn't have time to have Luke take pictures of it before I sent it to New York, so I don't have good archive pictures of it to show you.

The minimum bid is $39. At the moment, there are no bids. Let me throw in a sweetener: I'll match the winning bid as a donation to IAF, up to $100. Not shown in the picture is the humorous pieced and quilted boxliner I made at the last minute as semi-protective packing material once I realized that I had no way to ship one of my standard hatboxes, which are relatively large, hexagonal, and not very sturdy.

*I could say that I was busy putting together a mailing for Clarion West, and that would be true, but irrelevant.

IAF auctions - look at all this cool art

2009-11-22T06:06:18Z

I posted about the rolling Interstitial Arts Foundation auctions when they started some days back. I think the hat I made for the auction based on Camilla Bruce's story, "Berry Moon," comes up tomorrow or possibly the next day. Another piece based on the same story, "A Binding for the Moon," a bound handmade limited edition book made by Erzebet Yellowboy, is up for auction now.

Edited to add: And a third piece based on "Berry Moon," a skirt made by Pam Noles, will come up for auction in a few more days.

I've been drawn to the bookshaped and booklike objects in the auction; there's another handmade book, "A Binding for Memory," a blank book made by Lise Bernier based on "The Long and Short of Short-term Memory," by Cecil Castellucci. My favorite piece is "Je me souviens," made by Wendy Ellertson, also based on "The Long and Short of Short-term Memory." Go ahead and look at it, but that auction is over; that memory book will live with me. I hope I like that story when I finally read it.

Here's the full schedule of auctions, with thumbnail images of all the pieces in the auction.

This is what I wrote about the hat:

This cocktail hat is based on Camilla Bruce's short story, "Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse." In some ways, it's a straightforward illustration of the story, which is about the interplay between inspiration and fiction, or more precisely an illustration of the words of the story, which are dense with image and texture and color. The hat is divided, with a clutter of objects – a rose, an origami frog (a crumpled candy wrapper in the story), pebbles – beneath a bent dark red moon caught in a net along with words, mostly pronouns, words devoid of specificity but full of implication in their relation to each other.

All the materials used in making the hat were either recycled or repurposed, just as the muse's inspiration is repurposed in making fiction. Much of the fabric is recycled from Anita Rowland's wedding dress, with the rest recycled from a shirt I made a few years ago. The fabric beads wrapped in gold thread and the semi-precious stone beads are from Anna Vargo's stash; the small semi-precious stones used as cabochons were Elise Matthesen's ("Here, do something with this," she said). The origami frog is made from holographic wrapping paper.

The extremely soft-sided fabric box holding the hat is an improvised liner for the utilitarian box, intended to make shipping the hat easier. Sometimes improvisations spin out of control, and that one certainly did. It will serve to protect the hat, as long as the buyer keeps the acid-free paper as padding.

The hat has two toupee clips to hold it on the wearer's head. They snap open like little snap barrettes, and as long as they are able to grab a few hairs in the combs, they'll hold the hat on most securely.

This is at least the fourth piece I've made based on a work of fiction. The first two were pieced vests made for Ursula K. Le Guin and Mary Doria Russell as part of the prizes for the 1996 Tiptree awards; the third was a carrier bag based on the phrase, "Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction." Usually, when I work with fabric, it's the fabric itself that moves me, the way it looks, the way it feels, how it drapes, the techniques suitable for working with it. For these pieces, I had other people's words and images in mind, and that's an odd experience for me when making art. I expect I'll try it again.

My hair hurts

2009-11-16T03:44:14Z

I have a talent for growing hair. This is not a skill, mind you; no amount of practice at growing hair makes me get any better at it. If I neglect my hair growing exercises, my hair will not grow more slowly. It grows. I wash and brush it. Times goes by. It gets longer.

When I was a small child, I wasn't allowed to indulge this talent, because I was the middlest of five children. Long hair on a small child isn't something the child takes care of; it's something a parent takes care of, usually the mom, and our mom was way too busy to let us grow our hair long. I thought this was a great injustice, especially when I looked at Susan Miller, whose hair was waist-length and who was rumored never to have had a haircur when we started first grade (in retrospect, this was obviously untrue, because she had bangs, and bangs don't form themselves without assistance from some cutting instrument, but it was close enough to true for six-year-olds).

By the time I was a medium-sized kid, I was inured to the perpetual pixie cuts and the appalling Toni perms that came around just before school pictures. My beautiful older sister grew her hair long once she became a teenager and was free from parental hair care; I kept mine short for a few more years just because I didn't want to be like her, or because it was less trouble, or something. Whatever my reason was, by my senior year in high school it was clearly no longer because it was less trouble, because that year, I set my hair with pincurls every single night to give myself tight little curls, to the point that when I stopped, one of my friends with naturally curly hair asked me enviously how I'd managed to straighten my hair. What a loon I was in those days.

I went to college and grew my hair long, because I could, because my mother wasn't telling me not to, because no one was comparing me to my sister any more. It looked pretty good.

Three times so far, I've cut it all off and donated it. I have really enjoyed the period immediately after cutting it really short, when I went from about two feet of hair to three-quarters of an inch of hair. The difference in weight, heat, and upkeep was substantial. Each of those times, I had been having some back problems, and getting rid of the hair alleviated a bit of the pressure. Long hair gets caught between the back of a chair and my back, and that sudden tug when it's caught can be very unpleasant if my back already hurts.

Every time I grow it really long, I think, this time, I'm going to keep going. This time, my back won't hurt because I'm doing lots of yoga and taking walks and lifting weights. This time, I'm going to grow my hair into Crystal Gayle territory.

And this time, in fact, my back doesn't hurt.

My rotator cuffs do.

Jesus, does it ever hurt to brush that damn hair for half an hour. I shouldn't have to brush it for such a long time, since it's straight, but now that I'm post-menopausal, it tangles more than it used to. I've been late for yoga a few times because it took so long to braid my hair. Doing yoga with the hair down is not an option; it covers my face in triangle pose, it gets caught under my back in bridge pose, it flops around and generally acts like a limp nuisance with bad manners. Sometimes I put it into just one braid, which doesn't take as long as the whole Pippi Longstocking thing, but that's less convenient for yoga than two braids, because then there's the lump right at the back of the neck.

Okay, Kate, if you're so all-fired whiny about your hair, why not just cut it off? What a great suggestion, Ms. or Mr. Interlocutor. Yes, that's just what I'll do. I made an appointment to cut about half the hair off and donate that chunk while still having longish hair left on my head. I counted the hours till the appointment. It was scheduled for 3:30 today. By 4:30 this afternoon, I'd have shoulder-length hair and a tidy hank of hair to send to Cleveland.

Instead, I've had a weekend of cancelled engagements, gallons of hot tea, and languid naps in the middle of the day. I blame society; if I didn't socialize, I wouldn't have encountered this energy-sapping virus.

And I still have over two feet of hair.

Interstitial Arts Foundation auctions live

2009-11-07T06:53:18Z

The Interstitial Arts Foundation's online auctions are live now, with a new auction item going up every day. It's a rolling set of auctions, with the first item up on November 1 and closing on November 8, the second up on November 2 and closing on November 9, and so forth. My hat isn't up yet, but go take a look at the other cool things.

Google fu, dammit

2009-10-31T18:06:44Z

Any day on which I have to Google "washing machine spin cycle horrible screeching aaagh aaagh no no no n---" is a day that could be better.

At least I don't have to Google it in French.

Minor public service commercial announcement for beaders

2009-10-29T20:14:19Z

If you live in the Seattle area and if you use beads in some way (I am not a beader myself, but I do use beads on hats), you might be interested in the 20% off everything sale at Fusion Beads, 3830 Stoneway North, now through Sunday. I don't think the sale applies to online or mail order sales.

Interstitial Arts Foundation Salon in NYC

2009-10-27T21:38:09Z

The Interstitial Arts Foundation is a weird, cool little non-profit dedicated to developing and promoting interstitial art, art that slithers between genres and media. I've been charmed by it for years, although (or because) I've never quite able to pin down exactly how it does that.

Well, some of how it does that is by publishing fiction that crosses boundaries, and some of how it does that is by asking artists to make work inspired by that fictionm, and some more of how it does that is to get people together to talk about and look at art while eating and drinking and hanging out together in New York City Wednesday night. My friend Tempest Bradford says:

The second NYC Salon has been announced! Artists and enthusiasts are cordially invited to an evening devoted to the pleasures of conversation among boundary crossing artists, writers, musicians, and creators.

The Time: Wednesday October 28th, 7 - 10 PM

The Place: aroma espresso bar; 161 West 72nd Street (between Amsterdam & Columbus and less than half a block away from the 1/2/3 stop), NYC

All artists, musicians, and writers are invited to attend. Please bring guests. Bring plenty of engraved calling cards (business cards are acceptable, too!). Bring samples of your art, if it’s portable. aroma has free wi-fi, so bring your laptop and show off your portfolio or your tunes. Bring friends, and bring a willingness to mingle with strangers — who might turn out to be colleagues, friends, or even artistic soul-mates!

And finally, please bring an appetite. aroma has great food and drinks and since they’re donating the space to us, we’d like to show our appreciation by buying items to ingest.

And, as a special treat, originals and pictures of the amazing interstitial art sent in for the Interfictions auction will be on display.

Visit the Facebook event page to RSVP or send an email to this GMail address: ktempestbradford+salons

I've contributed a hat to the Interfictions auction. I don't have a good picture of the hat (I was juggling a bunch of deadlines and had to get it in the mail), but I'll link to all the auction items once the IAF auction volunteers have put the pictures up.

Have a good time if you go to the salon.

Happy birthday, Ursula K. Le Guin!

2009-10-21T14:15:13Z

Let me join with many other friends to wish you the happiest birthday possible. What a lot of joy, thought, distraction, inspiration, and perspective your work has added to my life.

Benefits of an eclectic education

2009-10-18T03:38:19Z

The radio in my head is currently playing, "Holiday for Strings."

Not the Lawrence Welk version; the Spike Jones version: Brrrrrruck buck buck buck, buck buck buck buck, buck buck buck buck, buck buck buck buck.... Is that the proper way to punctuate that song? Who the buck knows?

A few weeks ago, apropos of a smarmy song on the radio, Glenn said that the line, "You make my life complete" must logically be followed by the line,"Now smell my stinky feet."

Hatwork

2009-09-11T03:14:32Z

Blood Red Roses Hat #1, photograph by Luke McGuff

I've been making hats for a few years now, with increasing seriousness, insofar as one can be serious about something as frivolous as cocktail hats. In the past year, my forays into seriousness have included:

getting a minimal but elegant website online
getting a business license
attempting to sell hats at a house show last December (I sold no hats at that event, but I did sell quite a few scarves and evening wraps)
committing to show at the same house this coming December
sending the sales tax I collected to the state
being on panels at Potlatch and Wiscon about our art and the science and process behind said art with Laurie Toby Edison and Elise Matthesen
taking orders for two custom hats which I have still to complete but which I have finally begun
attending hat camp
joining the Millinery Artisan Guild
taking an order for one custom hat which I made and delivered within three weeks of the initial query
offering to make a headdress for my niece's upcoming wedding
volunteering to make a hat for the Interstitial Arts Foundation's online auction
getting my hats professionally photographed so I can replace the pictures on the website with more impressive ones (thanks, Luke)

Next up: finishing some more hats and selling them.

(Edited on request to add linkage.)

Clarion West seeks interim art director

2009-09-03T21:08:30Z

Clarion West's current art director, Elizabeth Lawhead Bourne, is on leave of absence due to a family medical emergency, so we're looking for an interim art director beginning immediately, and continuing at least through the end of the year. The workload through December will be approximately 20 to 30 hours. The stipend is $500 - which is really only a token payment, of course.

Here's the job description as written by John D. Berry, type guru and the previous art director:

The art director manages the visual identity of Clarion West. Working with the Director of Communications, the Website Manager, and the editor of the Seventh Week newsletter, the art director makes sure that Clarion West presents a consistent, high-quality face to the world and to its own alumni and supporters.

The art director is responsible for designing and producing all printed materials for Clarion West, including flyers and brochures, programs and tickets for the annual reading series, and each issue of the Seventh Week. The one exception is press releases, but even these are printed on stationery the art director has designed. Everything that comes out of Clarion West should look consistent (though not always the same) and should maintain the same level of quality in typography and graphic design that we strive for in writing fiction.

The art director manages the design of the annual summer poster, as long as the Board authorizes one; the actual design and production of the poster, however, is usually done by an outside designer (for the past several years, Jacob McMurray).

The art director acts as a consultant on the appearance of Clarion West’s public website, reviewing design and graphical elements at the discretion of the Director of Communications and the Website Manager.

The amount of time that the job takes varies wildly, but the most time-intensive periods are in the run-up to the summer workshop, in the Fall when ads are due for next year’s workshop in several sf publications, and twice yearly when the newsletter is in production. Obviously, it’s more work and takes more time to create new designs rather than fitting each year’s new content into existing designs. Of course, trying out new design solutions is also part of the creative pleasure of doing this job.

I would estimate that I spend about 40 hours a year on Clarion West design and production – more the first year, when I was re-designing the newsletter format. (Admittedly, I came up with a design for the Seventh Week that takes more work to produce than a simpler, more straightforward design would have taken.) The tools I use for design and production are Adobe InDesign and some of the many professional-quality fonts that I have available. (Using OpenType Pro fonts with extra typographic features, in a program like InDesign that can recognize and make use of those features, is definitely the easiest way to handle production typography.)

Being Clarion West’s art director is an opportunity to create effective communications for a high-profile writers’ workshop. By definition, this is design that respects content. It’s worthwhile, and it’s fun to do.

Clarion West has been fortunate in its art directors; before John, Paulette Rousselle held the post. John and Paulette are both available to answer questions, but neither of them has the time to fill in for Elizabeth right now.

If you're interested, please drop a comment here and I'll get you in touch with Nisi Shawl, our communications director.

Thanks so much.

Mark Bourne update

2009-08-06T01:17:29Z

I spent the afternoon at the hospital hanging out in the visitors' lounge with e_bourne. She knitted, I sewed little silk charmeuse roses. We chatted. Every once in a while, she went to Mark's room to check on how he was doing. Every time, he was sleeping normally. Not heavily sedated, just sleeping. No numbers spiking or dropping; everything holding steady, and Mark asleep.

Eventually, Elizabeth decided that things were calm enough that she went to take a nap, and I came home.

I know that all of you who know Mark understand how far from boring this is.

Clarion West: Amazon.com challenge met three months early

2009-07-31T19:10:54Z

Here's the official word on Amazon.com's challenge grant to Clarion West:

In celebration of Clarion West’s 25th consecutive annual session of one of the world’s premiere writing workshops, Amazon.com offered us a challenge grant of $25,000 last October. They asked us to raise $25,000 by October 31, 2009, but we did better than that—we raised $35,000 by July 31. This amount is amazing, given the current economic climate. The donations and Amazon.com’s matching grant will form a cornerstone of our Founders Fund endowment, and we’re very grateful to all our many supporters for helping us meet and surpass this challenge.

Deborah Fisher, Chair of Clarion West’s Board of Directors, says “I’ve been grateful to Amazon.com since they offered us this generous challenge grant, and now I’m also grateful that our community has come forward to meet the challenge in record time—that’s the sort of support that will keep Clarion West going strong for decades to come.”

“Amazon.com is proud to support Clarion West’s mission to nurture and develop a new generation of talented authors of science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism,” says Jon Fine, Director of Author & Publisher Relations for Amazon.com. “The program’s faculty and alumni have written some of the very best works in the field, and we eagerly await the great new writing that Clarion West’s graduates will create in the years to come.”

Kate Schaefer, Clarion West’s Acting Development Director, says “The best part of this is that we met and passed the target figure during our Write-a-thon, when donors give us money based on participants’ writing goals. I love it when we can make a direct connection between writers doing their work and financial support of the workshop.”

Clarion West, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, has presented the Clarion West Writers Workshop annually in Seattle, Washington since 1984. This intensive six-week workshop prepares writers to pursue professional careers in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and magic realism. For more on Clarion West, visit www.clarionwest.org.

The unofficial word on the challenge met? Hooray! And thank you so much!

Clarion West Write-a-thon concluding

2009-07-31T18:42:23Z

Today is the last day of this year's Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, and the Write-a-thon is coming to an end as well*. The 75 writers participating in the Write-a-thon are wrapping up their writing today and kicking back for the weekend. Before you kick back for the weekend, please take a moment to go to the Write-a-thon web page and think about sponsoring one of these writers: A. M. Lau, Ada Milenkovic Brown, Adrian Khactu, Al Robertson, Amy Eastment, April Lott, Ben Burgis, Caren Gussoff, Carol Ryles, Carrie Devall, Cat Rambo, Catherine Girczyc, Chris Furst, Christopher Caldwell, Christopher Reynaga, Claudius Reich, Curtis C. Chen, D. Lynn Smith, Darja Malcolm-Clarke, David Simons, Deb Taber, Doug Sharp, E. C. Myers, Eden Robins, Eileen Gunn, Elizabeth McDowell, Erin Cashier, Glenn Hackney, Greer Woodward, Heather Lindsley, Janet Freeman, Jeff Spock, Julie McGalliard, Justina Robson, K. Tempest Bradford, Karen M. Roberts, Kira Walsh, Louise Marley, Luke McGuff, Lyn C. A. Gardner, Marguerite Croft, Marilyn Holt, Mark Bukovec, Marsha Sisolak, Melinda Thielbar, Michael Blue, Michael Ehart, Michael Swanwick, Mike Underwood, Neile Graham, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Rentz, Paul Park, Phoebe Harris, R. R. Angell, Rachel Swirsky, Rajan Khanna, Rashida (Eddie) Smith, Ron Drummond, Roz Clarke, Ruth Nestvold, S. Hutson Blount, Samantha Henderson, Sarah Brandel, Stacy Sinclair, Stephanie Burgis, Steve Miller, Steven Schwartz, T. F. Davenport, Tanya McDonald, Tinatsu Wallace, Tom Marcinko, Tracy J. Harford, Vylar Kaftan, or Wendy Bradley.

Most of the participants are Clarion West alumni. Others are former Clarion West instructors, Clarion alumni, Viable Paradise alumni, old friends, and new friends; all of them wanted a framework for their summer writing goals. They've logged an impressive amount of words written, chapters completed, sections revised, stories submitted, drafts begun, and just plain butt-in-chair time toward getting the work done. They've put together benefit readings for Clarion West in New York City and San Francisco.

Yep, it's a fundraiser as well as a prod for writers. Non-profits have to raise money pretty much non-stop to keep going.** We think that writers writing to raise money for Clarion West makes more sense than writers running a half-marathon to raise money for Clarion West. Tiny donations from many people add up very nicely.

Some of the participants are raisng money for a second cause closely related to Clarion West. Paul Park is teaching at Clarion, our sister workshop in San Diego, right this minute, and Steven Schwartz is an alumnus of Clarion. Donations made to sponsor either of them will be split between Clarion West and Clarion. Carol Ryles attended Clarion West, but she's an Australian, and has asked that donations made to sponsor her be split between Clarion West and Clarion South, our sister workshop in Australia. K. Tempest Bradford has asked that donations made to sponsor her be split between Clarion West and the Carl Brandon Society's Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund, which sends writers of color to Clarion, Clarion West, and eventually to Clarion South as well.

As I said, the writers wrap it up today. We'll keep their Write-a-thon pages up for a while longer for sponsors' convenience.

Thanks!

*If you're participating in the Write-a-thon and you would have met your writing goals except for some unforeseen big event, I hereby give you an extension. Just as you had to set your goals for yourself, you'll have to decide for yourself what qualifies as an unforeseen big event. If you want to extend the Write-a-thon through the worldcon in Montreal next week because it's at a great big party that's all about writing and reading speculative fiction, that works for me, too.

**See next post for other CW news.

I'll stand with you

2009-07-28T02:09:35Z

From the Carl Brandon Society Blog:

Open Letter to the SF Community re: Ellison/Bradford Incident
To the Speculative Fiction Community:

We at the Carl Brandon Society are writing this open letter to our community regarding the recent incident involving Harlan Ellison and K. Tempest Bradford. Mr. Ellison, mistakenly believing that Ms. Bradford had criticized him on her blog, wrote a post on his discussion board that included the following passage:

She is apparently a Woman of Color (which REALLY makes me want to bee-atch-slap her, being the guy who discovered and encouraged one of the finest writers and Women of Color who ever lived, my friend, the recently-deceased Octavia Estelle Butler). And she plays that card endlessly, which is supposed to exorcise anyone suggesting she is a badmouth ignoramus, or even a NWA. Ooooh, did I say that?

Mr. Ellison has subsequently apologized to Ms. Bradford and she has accepted his apology. We do not wish to address what has now become a private matter between the two. However, since the problematic post was made in public and thus was published in full view of the SF community, the Carl Brandon Society wishes to define some basic principles of discourse which were put into question as a result of this exchange. We hope community members will consider and respect these principles in future debates and disagreements.

These principles are as follows:

1) The use of racial slurs in public discourse is utterly unacceptable, whether as an insult, a provocation, or an attempt at humor. This includes both explicit use of slurs and referencing them via acronyms.

2) Any declaration of a marginalized identity in public is not a fit subject for mockery, contempt, or attack. Stating what, and who, you are is not “card playing.” It is a statement of pride. It is also a statement of fact that often must be made because it has bearing on discussions of race, gender, and social justice.

3) Expressing contempt for ongoing racial and gender discourse is unacceptable. Although particular discussions may become heated or unpleasant, discourse on racism and sexism is an essential part of antiracism and feminist activism and must be respected as such. There is no hard line between discourse and action in activism; contempt of the one too often leads to contempt of the whole.

The Carl Brandon Society assumes in this letter that everyone reading it shares the common goal of racial and gender equity, and general social justice, in all our communities. We hope for a quick end to arguments over whether or not unacceptable forms of debate should be allowable. These arguments obstruct the process of seeking justice for all.

Sincerely,

The Carl Brandon Society

STEERING COMMITTEE
Candra K. Gill
Claire Light
Victor Raymond
Nisi Shawl
Diantha Sprouse

To express your agreement and “sign” this letter yourself, click here to go to the CBS blog.

(Comments are off here on purpose, following Tempest's example. I'm a member of the Carl Brandon Society; you can be one, too. Join at their website, or make a donation to the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund.)

A frivolous political post

2009-06-24T19:03:47Z

Minutes ago, I heard a teaser about coming revelations about South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. I hoped that it would be something more interesting than what it turned out to be, inevitably, seconds later. When he was missing a few days ago and the cover story turned out to be that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, that was entertaining. Then when he turned out to be in Argentina, that was exotic, and I could imagine that he was on a secret mission (governor of South Carolina and secret agent!), although I thought it was more likely that he would turn out to suffer from the standard politician's problem. Political power is clearly a major aphrodisiac.

What would have been a more interesting explanation for the five missing days?

Mark Sanford, hiking on the Appalachian Trail, ran into a pack of wolves. While fighting them off bare-handed, he was abducted by aliens and taken to their spaceship orbiting the earth, where he underwent extensive abdominal surgery and sperm harvesting before losing consciousness. When he came to, he found himself in Argentina, on the alta plana. He wandered aimlessly for hours, a day, a night, and a day, getting colder and colder, until he encountered a flock of mysteriously friendly alpacas. The alpacas would not permit him to ride on them; they hummed ominously whenever he tried to get on their backs. They did allow him to accompany them as they walked and to sleep snuggled up to their warm, wooly backs, so that he did not freeze to death. Finally, he reached Cordoba, where he found an ATM that accepted his bankcard, allowing him to buy a bus ticket to Buenos Aires, where no one believed his story.

Gunn & Swanwick: Xtreme Collab

2009-06-22T15:56:38Z

Eileen Gunn and Michael Swanwick are collaborating in public in support of the Clarion West Write-a-thon, as they've done for the past few years. Watch them plot a novel live at http://www.clarionwest.org/node/633, updates roughly once a day (weekdays only, probably), until July 31.

During last year's Write-a-thon, they wrote a round-robin story on the forum, along with L. Timmel Duchamp, Gord Sellar, Ruth Nestvold, and Marilyn Holt. One of the stories they wrote during the 2007 Write-a-thon, “Shed That Guilt! Double Your Productivity Overnight!” appeared in the September, 2008, issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Support Eileen, Michael, or one of the many other Write-a-thon participants by making a donation to Clarion West at http://www.clarionwest.org/events/writeathon/2009, or just browse through the web pages to get an idea of the effect Clarion West has had on writers at the start of their careers.

"Beer as good as the stuff that God hides from the Angels in Heaven," the dog said.

-- from "Trouble Ensues," by Swanwick, Gunn, Duchamp, Sellar, Nestvold, and Holt.

Tell me about your headache

2009-06-08T02:10:40Z

Okay, this isn't about me. This is about you. What was your worst headache ever? Do you know what caused it? Did anything you did to get rid of it have an effect? How long did it take to go away?

There is no downside to being told that whatever made my head hurt, it wasn't going to kill me. That's totally a good thing. There is a downside to having my head still hurt more than a week later. There are no monster explosions inside my head; it doesn't hurt that appallingly intense way still. It does hurt, though, and it makes it hard to think. It's hard to do anything. I cannot possibly have been sympathetic enough to people with headaches in the past. I am so sorry, you all.

Historically, I don't get headaches. I didn't, anyway; I guess I have to change my perspective now. We didn't even have ibuprofen in the house. If I'm going to have this unwelcome addition to my life, I'm going to have to learn how to live with it.

So tell me stories, please. I feel your pain.

Dammit.

Clarion West Write-a-thon sign-up - another reminder

2009-06-05T15:00:31Z

We're done with the early warning phase of Write-a-thon sign-up and have moved on to the timely sign-up phase. As of now, we have 31 people signed up for the 2009 Write-a-thon, enough flavors for an ice cream store. We're hoping for 75 writers this year, an ambitious increase from last year's 58. We're also hoping that most of the rest of you don't wait until the very last minute to sign up. Go ahead! You're planning to write this summer anyway, aren't you? You have some stories you want to work on, a novel to revise, an ending you need to get just right, some editing that's calling your name.

Set your own goals and work at your own pace. Ask people to sponsor you in meeting your goals, or work without sponsors if you prefer. Post your progress in the Write-a-thon forum and get encouragement from other writers throughout the summer. We do want to raise money with the Write-a-thon -- we're pretty much always working on a shoestring -- but the Write-a-thon is about the writing first.

The Write-a-thon runs from June 21 to July 31, just like the workshop. You sign up by sending email to Writeathon@clarionwest.org. There's more info on the Write-a-thon page at http://clarionwest.org/events/writeathon/2009.

Sign up now, in the timely sign-up phase. Don't wait for the last-minute, just-before-it-starts phase. Remember, the volunteers and staff working on the Write-a-thon (Deb Taber, Chris Sumption, Caren Gussoff, Kate Schaefer, Erin Cashier, Andi Shechter, Nisi Shawl) need time to get your web page set up and proofread, and lots of them are doing the Write-a-thon themselves, so give 'em a break and sign up before June 19.

We welcome alumni from Clarion in San Diego or Clarion South as well as Clarion West alumni and friends. If you want to raise money for Clarion, Clarion South, or one of the scholarship funds that send students to the Clarions, we'll cheerfully split the donations we receive on your behalf.

Thanks!

Sometimes heads just hurt

2009-06-04T04:31:46Z

Before I start my dramatic story, I'll tell you the end of it: I'm fine. I have no need for dramatic tension here.

Last Thursday, Glenn and I were on our way home from the Seattle Symphony (perfectly fine performance of Smetana's Bartered Bride overture, world premiere of David Stock's cello concerto which I would rather not have heard even though the Symphony did a fine job and boy wonder Joshua Roman's solo stint was superb, and a Rachmaninoff that even Glenn, fan of Rachmaninoff that he is, concedes is the sort of thing that gives Rachmaninoff a bad name), when allover sudden it felt like three small bombs went off in my head: boom. Ka-boom. Ka-boom!

It was the most amazing head pain I'd ever experienced. It made the old Excedrin jackhammer seem like understatement. It made me yell, "Ow ow ow," and rip off my glasses, as if changing the way I saw the world would make the pain go away.

And then the pain did go away, and I felt mostly okay. There was a dull, residual ache, but it was as nothing compared to the cluster bombs of doom.

Fortunately, Glenn was driving, as I might have driven us into a wall just to make the pain stop. We went home, and I called a triage nurse, who asked a lot of questions and passed me on to a triage doctor, who told me to get the hell over to an emergency room right away, and he would call them to let them know I was coming.

Oh.

As anyone who has ever been to an emergency room knows, the rest of the night was alternately too exciting and very dull. Vital signs, blood samples, and a cat scan, followed by a doctor trying to persuade me to have a spinal tap as well. ("Your cat scan was normal, so you don't have a brain tumor and you're probably fine, but because cat scans miss about 1-2 percent of the subarachnoid hemorrhages, we want to do a lumbar tap just in case.") I turned down the spinal tap, because at that point the doctor was kinda reeling from tiredness, and the phlebotomist kinda scared me by reaching across the room when she had a needle in my arm, and I wasn't actually thinking too well. If you're ever in that position, say yes to the spinal tap, okay?

It was close to five in the morning by then, so we went home and slept for a few hours. I got up and called my doctor, and Googled while I was on hold.

It turns out that about 25 percent of people who have thunderclap headaches have them because they're having sentinel bleeding, and later on -- a few days or a few weeks later -- they have massive aneurysms, and lots of them die.

My doctor told me I was probably fine, but she checked in with her neurologist and radiologist friends (she says the main thing she learned in med school was how to reach anybody on the phone at any time; I notice that she learned a bunch of other things, too), and scheduled me for an MRI on Monday. That meant that I got to spend the weekend alternating between cheerful certainty that I was fine and morbid certainty that I'd die horribly and soon.

The MRI was painless and dull but very very loud. I knew immediately that I was fine, because the MRI tech (who had already said that he couldn't discuss the results with me) was cheerful and joking rather than solemn as he showed me pictures of my brain. I asked if he was going to send them to my doctor, and he said she'd just asked for a report, no pictures. I asked if I could have the pictures, and he said, sure. He gave me the CD of pictures from the cat scan, too.

And that's where I got the icon for this post. I don't recommend this technique.

I asked my doctor if all these tests gave her a clue about why I had the appalling headache on Thursday, or if all we had learned was that I wouldn't die from it. She shrugged her shoulders (I could see it even without the picturephone) and said, Sometimes heads just hurt.

Advice for spammers

2009-06-02T14:23:49Z

When trying to tempt random people to open the spam you send out by suggesting that you might be a long-lost friend, use "Mary" or "Jennifer" or "David" as the fake name, not "Potteiger F. Crysta".

Potteiger F. Crysta wouldn't even be a good name for a Groucho Marx character. Dude.

Some stories

2009-06-01T17:22:54Z

Some time in the early nineties, I was unable to get to my doctor's office because its waiting room was completely occupied by protesters from Operation Rescue. I don't remember the details of how this affected me; my need to see my doctor that day was routine and easily rescheduled, whatever it was. I do remember that my doctor and her staff took refuge in the office of my dentist, a few floors below, and that my dentist and her entire staff wore NARAL buttons on their lapels for many months thereafter; that my doctor later told me that among the patients she was unable to see that day was a pregnant woman with preeclampsia who very much wanted to have her baby and who suffered a dangerous delay in getting care because of the sit-in (she and her baby survived; I know nothing else about them); and that one of the protesters arrested and released in her office that day was Shelley Shannon, who a few months later shot Dr. George Tiller, wounding him badly but not killing him.

I remember asking my doctor, some time before, why she did so many abortions. Didn't those patients have regular doctors? Yes, she said, but their regular doctors were afraid to perform abortions because of the harassment. And yes, she had performed abortions on women who regularly protest against legal abortion; she recognized them from walking past them to get to her office, and they knew where they could go when they needed an abortion because they spent so much time standing there. They'd ask her not to tell anyone, and she'd remind them that she could not reveal that information about any of her patients, but she'd appreciate it if they would not picket her office any more. Some of them stopped picketing; some of them didn't.

My doctor retired from practice shortly thereafter. The doctor who bought her practice continued to have a general family practice with an emphasis on reproductive care, which included all aspects of obstetrics and gynecology. A few years later, she decided to cut back her hours and dropped the general practice to concentrate on providing birth control and abortion, because even fewer general practitioners would perform abortions by then and the need was so great.

Let's just look at that sentence, shall we? The need was so great. Why is the need so great? Because people make mistakes. Because birth control doesn't always work, even when used properly. Because some people don't pay attention in sex education classes. Because some people don't think sex education classes should be taught. Because some people believe that women and girls are property that needs to be controlled. Because some women and girls are raped. Because some women and girls make different choices after they get pregnant than they think they would make beforehand. Because some wanted pregnancies turn out to be dangerous for the would-be mother. Because people make mistakes.

In my youth, I at first believed that abortion should be a private choice of the woman involved. Later, I came to believe that abortion was wrong in every circumstance. Later still, I came to believe that it is always a tragedy, always a very sad choice, but that for the woman making that very sad choice, it may be the right choice, right then, and that she is the only one in a position to be able to make that choice. The role of the rest of society -- all of us who happen not to be pregnant with that particular fetus at that particular time -- is to make sure that the woman has all the support she needs to be able to make that choice: to carry to term, or to abort safely, where safely means that only one life is lost.

I do mourn for every aborted child, as I mourn for every dead person in any time (which is to say, this is a somewhat abstracted mourning, folks, but real nevertheless). I do not use the word "tragedy" lightly in this or any other case. I hope for a time when abortion is much more rare than it is now, rare because women are able to choose when and whether to have intercourse as well as when and whether to try to conceive. In the meantime, knowing that the choices women make when they find themselves pregnant are different from the choices they think they would make -- and knowing women who got badly hurt getting illegal abortions in the seventies as well as women who were able to pay a lot of money to have safe illegal abortions in the forties -- I support a woman's right to choose and a doctor's right to perform abortions in a safe, sterile environment.

And I mourn Dr. Tiller.