Kate Schaefer

Sometimes I'll play a game of tag

2008-04-23T17:27:44Z

neile tagged me, so I'm playing.

Here are your rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences here.
5. Put the meme and answer in your journal, tag five people and the madness continues.

Nearest book, to my left: Beading on Fabric: Encyclopedia of Bead Stitch Techniques, by Larkin Jean Van Horn. Book ends on page 120, the tail end of the index.

Okay, next closest book, to my right: Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress, by Anne Hollander.

"Nobody forthrightly defended the erotic and imaginative virtues of fashion itself except for male authors in France -- Balzac, a great creator of women in the first half of the centruy, was particularly eloguent about the poetic force of feminine finery; and indeed no less so about masculine elegance. So were Stendhal and Baudelaire.

"But early feminist objections in England and America were never made to fashion as a male conspiracy, only to the male restriction of female minds that confined women to such allegedly unwholesome preoccupations. Among reformers, feminine fashion itself was rather seen as feminine folly in material form, female weakness made manifest. Women, after all, were making the hats and dresses as well as wearing them."

I'll tag wild_irises, libertango, pecunium, jinasphinx (if the baby's napping), and webbob. I tell the grandchildren that I only play walk-tag, not running-tag. Online tag with words is a lot more like walk-tag than running-tag.

Several random things make a post

2008-04-15T03:58:43Z

"Gnar" is an English verb, meaning snarl, or growl. The G is silent, as in gnash or gnome or gneiss.

I have finished calculating my taxes and hope you all have done so for your own.

I highly recommend Persepolis, the film made from the graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi. I haven't read the graphic novels yet; I expect I'll like them, too. (Note to Vy: not for you right now; too much violence.)

My daffodils are about done for this year. We have a snakehead fritillary blooming in a spot where we never planted any. That is, we've planted plenty of snakehead fritillaries over the years, but the ones we've planted have vanished, and this one has appeared, far from its parents. The snakehead fritillary is a very satisfyingly silly flower.

The exhibit of Roman art from the Louvre currently at the Seattle Art Museum includes a sculture of Venus and Eros with Mosasaur. The label says it's a sea monster, but anyone who looks at that jawful of teeth can tell right away that it's a very small mosasaur. Thank you, Adrienne Mayor.

Norwescon

2008-03-22T18:13:47Z

If you're at Norwescon in Sea-Tac, Washington, today, stop by the Clarion West info table and say hi. Leslie Howle, Mary Kay Kare, Michael Swanwick, Cat Rambo, Ulrika O'Brien** and I will be there in varying combinations throughout the afternoon.

Donate $2 or more to Clarion West Writers Workshop and receive a raffle egg* as a donation thank-you. Redeem your raffle egg for a fun prize. Choose your own prize from A, B, or C, depending on the letter in your egg. Every egg guaranteed to be a winner!

Prizes include some really good books, interesting art, distinguished T-shirts, and a few bad books. You decide which is which.

If Michael is at the table when you stop by, he will autograph your books for no extra charge. You may have to bribe him to keep him from signing as "Robert A. Heinlein" or "Hugo Gernsback." Congratulate him on his latest Hugo nomination, announced just yesterday.

At 3:00 this afternoon, there will be a panel called "Clarion West: Why has it worked for 25 years?" in Cascade 9, with Leslie Howle, Mary Rosenblum, Michael Swanwick, Cat Rambo, and Dave Williams, followed by Michael Swanwick's reading in the same room at 4:00.

And those of you at Minicon or Eastercon, have a great time as well.

*Raffle eggs not laid by real birds.

**Edited to add Ulrika, whom I unaccountably omitted before. Thanks!

Irresponsible linkage

2008-03-06T02:33:00Z

Eventually I may write something about what a great time I had at Potlatch. In the meantime, let me just point all my friends at this game I want to own:

http://www.phobe.com/sfi/accordion.html

Do check out the other games on the web site, every one of which is awesome in a similar yet different way. I'd love to invest in this game company, frankly, but I suspect it's going to remain privately held.

Remembering Sue

2008-02-29T18:09:03Z

Today would have been my friend Sue's 14th birthday; she would have been 56. In years when her birthday didn't occur, she celebrated it anyway, starting on February 28 and going on through March 1st (or sometimes March 2nd, 3rd, or 4th). She said that having this rare birthday meant that, in practice, she got to have more birthdays than other people.

Help me do my homework for Potlatch

2008-02-04T18:57:56Z

Are you coming to Potlatch? Have you read the Book of Honor, Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower? What did it make you think about?

I'm looking for short, snappy answers I can string together in a coherent way for an article in the program book. Longer, more thoughtful answers are good, too. Proper credit will be given, and you're welcome to participate even if you aren't coming to Potlatch.

I'll go first: it made me think about how much post-apocalyptic fiction, even including Parable of the Sower, is more hopeful than the definition of the genre would suggest. There's that convention of sweeping away all the mistakes of the past, allowing the survivors to build a new, better society in the ruins, avoiding said mistakes. There is a magnifient, tragic optimism that somehow human beings will be able to find a way to live without enslaving and killing each other. Parable of the Sower doesn't show a future without slavery and murder; it shows a horrific future, with appalling slavery, violence, and injustice, while still holding out hope that it doesn't have to be that way.

Black History Month Reading Recommendations

2008-02-04T17:23:05Z

I'm a member of the Carl Brandon Society, which is dedicated to addressing the representation of people of color in the fantastical genres such as science fiction, fantasy and horror. I got involved with the Carl Brandon Society because it administers the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund. One of the benefits of belonging to the CBS is that I get reading recommendations I wouldn't run into otherwise. Sometimes I like the stuff I find this way; sometimes I don't.

I've only read two of the following books, and they are the two you'd expect, by the two most famous black science fiction writers to date. Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren is not just one of my favorite books; it's the book I've read more often than any other, to the point that I can no longer really read it again, since I know the words so well. It's about a group of people scrabbling for survival in an odd urban landscape after some unspecified disaster in the near future; it's about sex, social organization, the artistic process, drugs, death, religion, psychiatry, and personal adornment.

I read Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower much later in life, so it didn't have the opportunity to whack me upside the head the way Dhalgren did. It, too, is a post-apocalyptic novel, moving from a crumbling, deadly urban landscape to a beautiful, idyllic pastoral setting that's just as deadly; it's about religion, social organization, the artistic process, death, and messianic movements.

The books I'm going to read from the list this month are Mindscape, by Andrea Hairston, and The Coyote Kinds of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, by Minister Faust.

The Carl Brandon Society recommends the following books for Black History Month:

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan
Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler
Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany
My Soul to Keep, by Tananarive Due
The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, by Minister Faust
Mindscape, by Andrea Hairston
Wind Follower, by Carole McDonnell
Futureland, by Walter Mosley
The Shadow Speaker, by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Zahrah the Windseeker, by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

And the 2005 Carl Brandon Society Award winners:

• PARALLAX AWARD given to works of speculative fiction created by a person of color: 47, by Walter Mosley

• KINDRED AWARD given to any work of speculative fiction dealing with issues of race and ethnicity; nominees may be of any racial or ethnic group: Stormwitch by Susan Vaught

Potlatch hotel redux

2008-01-28T02:04:34Z

If you plan to attend Potlatch 17 and you still haven't made your hotel reservations, you have a little bit of a grace period, but it will expire very soon, on January 29. The hotel is very close to full on Friday night, with somewhat more room on Saturday and Sunday nights.

If you are unable to get a reservation at the convention rate either through the web site or by calling the hotel directly, please send email to Suzle (hotel @ potlatch-sf . org) or me (chair @ potlatch-sf . org) (un-munge the addresses, naturally).

(Potlatch 17, February 29 through March 2, 2008, Hotel Deca, 4507 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Seattle, Washington; more Potlatch info here.)

If you have questions about any other aspect of Potlatch, sling 'em my way.

Thanks!

(Cross-posted to my own LJ and to potlatchcon, so several of you will see this twice.)

Thank you, Michael R. Weholt

2008-01-24T18:21:38Z

When you reach the middle of your life's journey, you don't generally find yourself in a dark wood where the straight way is lost. More often, you find yourself going to a lot of funerals, because the middle turns out to be a different place than you thought it was, and some of the people you thought would be with you all the way through are done now. They didn't intend to be done just yet, but they are.

A few years ago, Michael R. Weholt wrote How to Live with Dead People. I find it darkly amusing at all times and very helpful at the moment, when there is such a large supply of memorials available for me to attend.

Creative process

2008-01-21T06:26:19Z

I'm making a quilt for my two-year-old great-niece (I made a quilt for my great-nephew before he was a month old, but he lives in the same state as I do, so my incentive to finish it quickly was greater).

I picked out a bunch of purple fabrics with roses and butterflies and pansies and stars and abstract patterns. The combination looked too girly, so I tossed in some fish and bugs and alligators and carrots. Some of the abstract patterns looked too muddy, so I took them out. It needed something a little more lively, so I threw in some orange and yellow for contrast. The alligators looked foolish without any zeebas, so I took them out. The butterflies really weren't doing it for me, so I cut them up into tiny abstract bits; there may be some whole butterflies on the back of the quilt when I'm done, but maybe not.

At this point, the most interesting part of the quilt was the fish, so I recentered the composition on the fish, framed with orange harlequin fabric with carrots at the corners. The whole center panel of the quilt will be five fish panels forming a ladder, with randomly pieced panels on either side.

I'm happy with it. I hope the little girl likes fish.

Pix

2008-01-19T03:03:00Z

My friend Luke has posted pictures he took of Glenn and me last week. I like them.

Potlatch 17 hotel news

2008-01-15T00:45:20Z

If you plan to attend Potlatch 17 and you have not yet made your hotel reservations, please do so right away. The hotel is very close to full on Friday night, with somewhat more room on Saturday and Sunday nights.

Here are directions on making your reservation. We've been saying that you might encounter difficulty in making your reservation; let me say that although I love our hotel, I'd be surprised if you didn't encounter difficulty in making your reservation, so be prepared to be patient in getting through.

If you are unable to get a reservation at the convention rate either through the web site or by calling the hotel directly, please send email to Suzle (hotel @ potlatch-sf . org) or me (chair @ potlatch-sf . org) (yes, I've munged the addresses; I know you can un-munge them).

We want to see you at Potlatch 17, and we want you to have places to sleep. Suzle is working on an overflow hotel within walking distance, about 4 or 5 blocks away. We haven't needed an overflow hotel for a Seattle Potlatch before.

(Potlatch 17, February 29 through March 2, 2008, Hotel Deca, 4507 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Seattle, Washington; more Potlatch info here.)

Active dying

2008-01-09T05:23:23Z

I've just had word that my friend Q is now in what the hospice staff call the process of active dying.

We've said goodbye. Closer friends are with her in this vigil. I probably won't go see her again. I don't think I could be in the room with another dying person right now without crying pretty hard, and it's hard on the dying to have crying people around them. This is a practical consideration, not an emotional one: crying can be contagious, like yawning or laughing, and it could make the dying person choke.

I always send to see for whom the bell tolls. Involved though I am with mankind, it matters to me which part of it I am losing at the moment. She always did, too.

Seasonal music

2007-12-24T06:48:15Z

A little over a year ago, my friend akirlu put together a CD she called "Gaudete 'Til You Drop". It contains some large number of performances of "Gaudete" along with a bunch of other Christmas-related songs that don't sound like anything you'll ever hear on a store's sound system.

It is one of the most useful and durable seasonal gifts I've ever received. It comes in particularly handy after accidental radio exposure to something noxious like "Mambo Santa".

Thank you, Ulrika.

Anita Rowland, 1956-2007

2007-12-20T18:58:59Z

My friend Anita died a little over a week ago. I miss her.

I'd known her since 1991. Over the past 16 years, we did the things friends do, first as casual acquaintances, then as friends: parties, dinner groups, movies, concerts, watching meteors fall all night long.

She liked science fiction, Regency romances, opera, dancing, sparkly hair ornaments, happy endings, and abundance in all things. She was like me in being a bit of a border collie, wanting people to get organized and do things; unlike me, because she was fairly relaxed about how quickly they got around to doing whatever it was. She couldn't drink, because alcohol sent her into fits of uncontrolled sneezing.

She was about the best grandmother I've ever seen, and I say this from the standpoint of being a pretty good grandmother myself. She and I had each married men with two daughters from previous marriages, so our relations with our grandchildren are defined by experience, by time, by love, not by blood. During her illness, I often took care of her grandson. He was always happy to see me (I'm a reasonably fun adult for most small children). He wasn't always happy to see Anita when it was time for him to go home. Time with me was time spent playing with K'nex or trains or Legos, time at the zoo, at McDonald's, at the park. Time with Anita was normal life, which had plenty of K'nex, trains, Legos, zoo, McDonald's, park, swimming pool, crayons, cartoons, Matchbox cars, songs, snacks, games; it was normal, and he could take it, and her, for granted, like air, like the earth. It is a very great measure of success when a happy child takes an adult for granted.

I'll miss her. I do miss her. There was an article about a Russian opera singer in the New York Times recently; I thought, Anita would be interested in this. Glenn ran into a group of Santas smoking and swearing and generally being badly-behaved (for Santa, anyway), and we thought about Anita dressed up as Santa, shaking jingle bells on a stick, and asking, "Naughty or nice?" with all the other Santas in the Cacophony Society's Santa Rampage, which of course made us think about the year the Cacophony Society went out caroling in the voice of Bob Dylan. Anita's Bob Dylan impression was about as bad as mine, but you could tell who she was supposed to be.

There is no way to sum up the whole of a person in writing. She was good. She was kind. She was quietly witty. She was a music major who took up the trombone when she was young, and had to give it up once it became clear that her arms weren't ever going to get as long as they needed to be for that instrument. She wasn't a saint, and she didn't ascend to heaven in a cloud of singing angels. She did feed hungry people, whether they were members of a convention where she ran the hospitality suite or homeless men at her church. I was never clear about whether she believed in anything related to church except for the music and feeding the hungry; those seemed like enough.

I miss her. I say goodbye.

International Small Emergency Month

2007-12-05T05:50:17Z

A month ago, we were observing International Small Emergency Week at my house, with crises involving the washing machine, the dryer, the downstairs toilet, and the car gearshift. All of these crises were resolved through the magic of throwing more money at them than seemed reasonable, except for the toilet, which was resolved through the magic of having hired a plumber some time back who was willing to keep fixing it until it stayed fixed, dammit, without charging more. That is, he said it was fixed months ago, and when it turned out not to be fixed after all, he came back and worked on it until it really was fixed. Our plumber is a hero of the revolution and a jewel among tradesman.

It turns out that we were mistaken about the nature of this fine international festival. It's such a popular event that it lasts at least a full month, maybe more. We will not go into the nature of the plumbing crisis that requires us to keep a drip pan under the kitchen sink. It is nothing that would not be fixed in a major kitchen remodel, and it would not even be a problem were it not for the unfortunate circumstance of our house's previous owners having bought oddly-threaded plumbing parts back in the era of Make Your House Unique With Off-Brand Stuff, some time in the fifties. We will not talk about how the car mechanic could not duplicate the gearshift problem, while we could duplicate it at will and against our will, any time of the day or night as long as it was a bad time.

No, we will go straight to the gigando flood and record-breaking rainfall afflicting all of the Pacific Northwest right now and point out that it violates the terms of International Small Emergency Month. That is, yes, it is true that the part of the flood that affects me is relatively small, only a small leak in the basement, easily controlled yesterday by applying every single towel I own to the leak in turn, flinging each towel aside after ten minutes, running the towels through the spin cycle (you will recall that I replaced the washer last month, yes?) and then through a few minutes in the dryer (you recall also that I replaced the dryer last month, no?) before reapplying the towel to the leak, which was getting bigger and faster all the time, and maybe it would become a bigger problem than towels could contain, so we moved all the stuff in the path of the leak from one side of the basement to the other. As I say, small.

And the part of the flood that affects me indirectly is only a little bit bigger, a mere inch of water all over the floors of my granddaughter's high school, closing the school from Monday morning until Wednesday. Well, maybe more than an inch, and the school will stay closed until Thursday. Um, next Monday for sure.

These are minor inconveniences compared to the landslides and closed freeways and railroads and helicopters evacuating people from the rooves of the houses, and I return to my complaint: International Small Emergency Month is supposed to involve only personal inconvenience. It is not supposed to require the intervention of the Red Cross, calling out the National Guard, or governmental declarations of disaster.

Petrey Fund 25th Anniversary

2007-11-09T00:36:54Z

Debbie Cross, Paul Wrigley, and members of Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc., have been raising money to send students to the Clarion and Clarion West Writers Workshops in memory of their friend Susan C. Petrey for 25 years now. Help them celebrate this successful memorial fund!

At Orycon 29, (November 16-18, Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront) attend panels and discussions of Clarion, Clarion West, the impact of writers workshops on people's lives, and how you can go to writers workshops. Go to the Petrey auction and let Jay Lake sell you stuff! Stop by the Petrey booth in the dealers room and buy raffle eggs! Use your Petrey coupon at Pizza Schmizza on Saturday afternoon! Come to the Petrey reception at 8 PM on Saturday evening and drink a toast to the fund, the writers, and the fundraisers.

If you can't go to Orycon but you appreciate the books and stories written by authors like former Petrey scholars Kathe Koja, Barth Anderson, Syne Mitchell, Nisi Shawl, and Heather Lindsley, please make a donation to support the Petrey fund. Donations can be made through PayPal to the email address of susanpetrey@comcast.net., or send checks to:

Susan C Petrey Scholarship Fund
PMB 455
2870 N.E. Hogan Road Suite E
Gresham OR 97030-3175

More background info at the Petrey web site.

International Small Emergency Week

2007-11-05T07:09:51Z

We're observing International Small Emergency Week at my house. The washing machine won't drain voluntarily, although it will drain if one turns the knob to just the right spot. The downstairs toilet won't flush unless one dumps a bucket of water into it. Part of the oven door fell off earlier today. Something came loose in the lint screen slot of the dryer, and now the lint screen won't go back in and the dyer is whistling ominously. The car doesn't want to shift out of park without a great deal of persuasion.

Only a week ago, all of these things worked just fine.

Glenn fixed the oven door. I've scheduled a plumber. I'll schedule the car repair and the washer and dryer repairs. We'll observe International Small Repair Week, and Domestic Let's Move On, Shall We? Week.

I am going to be very, very careful operating machinery of any size for the next few days.

Comet Holmes

2007-10-27T06:38:26Z

It's a bright full moon, and there is high haze in the sky, but Glenn was still able to locate Comet Holmes and point it out to me. Who else out there has seen it so far? It's in Perseus's thigh.

Getting on with it

2007-10-23T05:05:55Z

It's been forever since I posted, and the longer it's been, the greater that internal pressure to write something really good: something witty, brilliant, timely.

This isn't that. This is just a few words because I haven't posted here since July (really July? jeez louise).

Witty, brilliant, and timely will have to go on waiting.

Write-a-thon entertainment

2007-07-17T21:45:46Z

Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn are writing at least two collaborative stories as part of the Clarion West Write-a-thon and posting their work on the Write-a-thon forum regularly.

I just looked at the page. As of a few hours ago, they're collaborating on at least three stories. It's hard to count, because some of their badinage might be another story. They are either showing their collaborative process in public without a net, or they're showing an elaborate fiction about their collaborative process in public. In either case, it's hugely entertaining.

It is also a fundraiser, but you all know that. Why is it a fundraiser? It's a fundraiser because it costs more money to put on the Clarion West Writers Workshop than we want to charge the students who attend it, that's why. To support the massively prolific Michael Swanwick, who writes so much and so well that he ends up competing with himself for Hugo awards, go here and use the PayPal button, please. To support the exquisitely refined Eileen Gunn, who writes so little and yet so well that she can whack you over the head with her Nebula any time you need whacking, go here and use that PayPal button, please.

And if you just want to go read that set of stories in progress without making a donation, that's fine, too. You may need to employ Guilt Eaters of Philadelphia (scroll down that page; you'll know when you've found it) to take care of that uneasy feeling, but it will be well worth it.

Post-party happiness

2007-07-08T08:07:41Z

We've just had a party. Everyone has gone home now. I think they all went home happy, but one can never tell. We, at any rate, are quite happy ourselves. All the champagne is gone, as is all the smoked salmon. The empty bottles and glasses will keep until morning, and the BBC world service will tell us quite enough news to get our teeth brushed and us into bed.

We've been married twenty years, just about. We're cheerful about the prospect of another twenty or forty. Thanks for all your friendly support, you all, and so to bed.

Allergy purdah revisited

2007-06-29T23:07:56Z

Back in February, I wrote about the process of cleaning the house before my first low dosage allergy treatment, and then I never posted about the results.

The results were pretty damn good.

I've used Claritin every day for about ten years just to keep my allergies down to a dull roar. One of the oddities of LDA is that one has to stop using nearly all other allergy treatments or it won't work (LDA has a lot of other oddities, too, including the distinct possibility that it functions completely through the placebo effect, but we'll get to that later). I stopped using Claritin a week before that first shot in February and suffered the tortures of the damned, assuming that hell is paved with used Kleenex. A week after the shot, I was no longer suffering, and a week after that, I was in great shape, still without Claritin.

It was the height of tree pollen season. Alders were having sex in every nose for miles around, but I could still breathe. If Kimberley-Clark's stock price depended on my nose, it was in for a dive. Maples put forth their teensy little flowers, and Glenn was miserable, but I was fine. I went to various places full of chemical smells and had no throat-closing; I smelled fresh coffee and didn't gag. People wearing perfume walked by me, and I didn't lose the ability to think or breathe.

I gloried in my ability to walk around in the world without taking Claritin every day, without popping Benadryl every time I encountered a random smell or taste or touch that gave me problems. I didn't look for allergens to try -- it's not magic, after all -- but the ones I ran into just weren't a problem.

And the smell of the world was amazing! I have a fairly good nose, and I had no idea that I was missing so much! I know I miss some notes; there are flowers Glenn sniffs with great enjoyment that do nothing for me (and many more that I enjoy that he can't smell). Going off Claritin and on LDA didn't fill in those notes – their presence or absence is genetic, and if I don't have the receptors, I don't have the receptors – but it strengthened the smells I do perceive, for good and ill.

To get to that point, I have to eat a very restricted diet for a few days before and after the shot, and an only slightly less restricted diet for a week or two after that. I have to stay in as allergen-free an environment as possible for that same period, gradually re-introducing allergens to it (or rather, re-introducing myself to the outside). And I can't use anything to control my allergic responses except LDA and isolation from the allergens: no Claritin, no Benadryl, no vitamin C, no Alka -Seltzer, definitely no pseudofed. Nasalcrom is grudgingly permitted aside from the days right around the shot, but discouraged.

The shots happen at intervals of eight or nine weeks for two years. After that, the timing changes to every two months, three months, once a year, once every five years. Inappropriate allergic responses to pollen and common environmental substances decreases. Maybe anaphylactic response goes away; I doubt that I'll test that with a few bites of shrimp or cashews. Intolerances (not the same as allergies, but perhaps controlled and certainly influenced by the same physical systems) may be reduced as well. I'm unlikely to eat a piece of wheat bread to test this, but maybe next year.

Is it worth doing? So far, my answer is, yes. I normally walk around feeling slightly drugged all the time, between the effects of the allergies themselves and the effects of the things I do to alleviate the allergies. For the most part, I can avoid the very worst allergens just by not eating the things I know could kill me and by having Benadryl and the epi-pen in my pocket for the times when it turns out I've acquired a surprising new scary food allergy. The second worst allergens are certain perfumes, colognes, and after-shaves. Those are harder to avoid, because they're invisible as they approach me, and by the time I know about them, they've already affected me. I don't know for sure what it is about them that I'm allergic to. I don't know for sure if this reaction should be called an allergy or an intolerance, given that I don't think it can kill me, but a) that's a technical distinction of little importance in normal life; b) whatever the mechanism is, the result is difficulty breathing, difficulty thinking, and disrupted short-term memory for a period varying from a few minutes to the next two days; and c) I don't particularly want to find out if it could kill me.

Given all that, a two-year period of spending about a quarter of my time in seclusion with an immediate payoff of greatly increased resistance to allergies for about half the time and a delayed payoff of greatly increased resistance to allergies most of the time seems well worth the effort.

What's in that shot, anyway? The shot contains tiny amounts of many, many different allergens (the literature describing it carefully doesn't say "homeopathic amounts") and beta glucuronidase, an enzyme extracted from garden snails. How does it work in clinical trials? Here's where we get to the point of wondering about the placebo effect: it doesn't work in clinical trials in the US. It does work in clinical trials in Europe, or so I've heard (those clinical trials were on enzyme potentiated desensitization, EPD, which is the original, British version of this treatment; low dose allergy treatment, LDA, uses a slightly different set of allergens leaning heavily on American pollens, since it's used on American patients). It works in therapeutic trials in the US, where there is no control group. It works on me, so far, considerably better than anything else I've tried.

Placebo effect? Faith healing? Maybe the clinical trial participants weren't willing to go through all the anal-retentive cleaning and preparation and restrictive menus necessary to support EPD or LDA. The allergy tech who gives me the shot says she'd like to have the treatment herself, but she just isn't organized enough to succeed. I figure that either her allergies aren't as bad as mine, or she isn't as interested in breathing as I am.

That's my story, so far.

Clarion West 2007 begins

2007-06-17T06:47:33Z

Clarion West, the speculative fiction writers workshop for which I volunteer practically all my spare time and much of the spare time of my friends and relations, starts tomorrow (that's today by now, for most of you) and runs for six weeks. The students will all write until they're exhausted, and some of them far past exhaustion. If you're in the Seattle area, you can go to the easy, fun, free part of the workshop, the Tuesday evening readings, at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

All readings start at 7:30 p.m. and take place in the JBL Theater in the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame at 325 Fifth Avenue North, near Seattle Center.

During the workshop, a number* of Clarion West alumni, past instructors**, and friends have signed up to set and meet their own writing goals and raise money for Clarion West through the fourth annual Write-a-thon. If you'd like to sponsor a writer, go to the Write-a-thon page and follow the appropriate link to the writer who interests you. Each writer has a totally cool personal web page*** with a writing sample and goals for the Write-a-thon.

And thanks!

*Last I checked, thirty-six, but the number could be higher by now: Charlie Allery, Lyn Aspey, K. Tempest Bradford, Sarah Brandel, Mark Bukovec, Ben Burgis, Stephanie Burgis, Tristan Davenport, Krista Dietrich, Kelley Eskridge, C.A. Gardner, Rebecca Gold, Neile Graham, Eileen Gunn, James Wallace Harris, Vylar Kaftan, Heather Lindsley, Louise Marley, Maura McHugh, Edo Mor, E.C. Myers, Ruth Nestvold, Paul Park, Cat Rambo, Gord Sellar, Doug Sharp, David Simons, Marsha Sisolak, Debbie Smith, Jeff Spock, Michael Swanwick, Rachel Swirsky, Deb Taber, Tinatsu Wallace, Greer Woodward, Caroline Yoachim

**And one current instructor, Kelley Eskridge, who is an absolute loon of an overachiever. We love her.

***Set up by this year's hard-working and visionary Write-a-thon administrator, Kira Franz

Clarion West is a qualified 501(c)3 organization, and all donations to it are tax-deductible. Clarion West's federal tax I.D. number is 91-1352168.

Wiscon Prep

2007-05-22T21:34:06Z

At Wiscon this year, I'm going to be available for schmoozing and hanging out. I'm not on any formal programming at all, which leaves me free to go to your program item and heckle, or to intend to go to your program item but forget and go to something else altogether.

I do have several personal agendas to pursue at Wiscon:

1) I'm finally starting that clothing business I've talked about for years. I'm aiming for a serious launch in the fall, for the winter party season. I'll have a handful of prototype velvet evening wraps with me at Wiscon, and I'll be happy to show them and sell them to you in my room. They will be priced from $125-175, and most of them should fit most of you. A few of them are too long for me, but would be perfect for a taller person, and some of the the petite ones might be too short for a taller person. These resemble the festive garment Ursula modeled (and eventually bought) at Potlatch.

2) I had volunteered for a program item on fundraising for small non-profits. It was in the schedule initially, but got cut when there were too many things for the time available. I had intended to go ahead and prepare my full presentation with handouts anyway, on the theory that I could schedule lunch and drinks breaks with anyone who wanted to talk about fundraising; this was the hubris of the person who expects time to be more elastic than it actually is. I have the presentation about half-written at this point, but sewing takes priority. Nevertheless, I'll be happy to talk about fundraising with anyone who is interested. My background in fundraising is sixteen years of volunteer work with Clarion West, a lot of reading, an online grantwriting class, and a year of seminars put on by the Northwest Development Officers Association.

3) Applied fundraising, part one: I'll have flyers for the Clarion West Write-a-thon with me. If you attended Clarion West or taught at it or just feel reasonably friendly toward the workshop and the writers associated with it, I'll probably ask you if you want to write like a maniac this summer. If you sign up for the Write-a-thon at Wiscon, I will definitely sponsor you. If you're not up for writing this summer, I'll probably ask you to sponsor one of the maniacs. Eileen Gunn, Michael Swanwick, Paul Park, Louise Marley, Cat Rambo, and Charlie Allery are all writing in the Write-a-thon this summer. Michael Swanwick probably finished one of the stories he's writing for it while I wrote this paragraph, and the Write-a-thon hasn't even started yet. As I write this, the Write-a-thon web page isn't up yet, but it will be up right after Wiscon.

4) Applied fundraising, part two: I'll have limited numbers of pristine Freddie Baer T-shirts from Potlatch 13 and Potlatch 15 for sale. $15 per shirt, proceeds to Clarion West.

5) I'll have flyers for Potlatch 17, which will take place in Seattle over Leap Day weekend in 2008 and which will be the kickoff event for the Clarion West 25th Anniversary Celebration. If you can't find a flyer on the freebie table, I'll be happy to hand you one.

6) If you went to Clarion West and you have a reading scheduled, remind me. I really want to go to your reading; I've enjoyed every one I've been to at Wiscon, and I love the themed approach pioneered by the class of 2004. If your reading is too late at night (which includes too early in the morning), I may not make it, but I do want to be there. The Wiscon readings have a great community feel to me; we want to emulate that community approach in the readings track at Potlatch in 2008.