vulture, waiting

Saturday we cleaned Lillian’s apartment. It was very bare and empty without her, even though it was full of stuff. We bagged her clothes for the Salvation Army and made sure everything else was ready to be taken away by a guy who does this kind of thing. We took a few pictures and other personal possessions. I felt like a vulture.

Sunday we had more time to ourselves. We walked in Kensington Park, a lovely lake with some very nice nature trails. The day was a bit raw and damp, but pretty nice for Michigan in late November. Then we went to dinner with Neil’s sister and her husband. They took us to Charley’s Crab, which was wonderful. Great nautical atmosphere and really good food. It should have been a better day that it was.

Steven got here late last night. We’re going to pick Kat up later this morning. The sun is out. I feel like it should be dark, and raining, with sleet and ash and maybe a little brimstone.

it’s over

Lillian’s gone. Neil’s sister called us about 3 this morning to let us know. We’re in Detroit for the funeral now — kids joining us as they can. Service (small private family service) next Wednesday. Tomorrow, cleaning her apartment for the next tenant.

I’m going to miss her. A woman couldn’t have had a better mother-in-law.

life goes on

We were in Detroit for the weekend, visiting Neil’s mom. She has advanced Parkinson’s and has been gradually declining for some time. Last week the staff noticed she was limping; an x-ray revealed a broken hip in a place where it couldn’t have a cast. The pain has been bad and it looks like it’s more than her fragile body can take.

While we were there, she wasn’t eating or drinking more than a few swallows, and she didn’t know we were there. Previously, she might not have recognized it, but she enjoyed the visit. By the time we left, she was pretty much unresponsive. She’s in hospice care now. They think 3-5 days, but maybe sooner. We’re flying back out on Sunday.

She’s 92. She has advanced Parkinson’s. There wasn’t a lot for her to recover to, though I know she loved every day she lived. She’s just that kind of woman. *sniffle*

In an attempt to cheer myself up, I posted my pumpkin bread recipe on my food page:
http://bonniers.wordpress.com/the-food-page/bonnies-famous-pumpkin-bread-which-originally-came-from-columbia-gas-in-new-york/ I will be baking two loaves to take with us. Lillian loved it whenever I brought it for her. I’ll think of her whenever I eat it from now on.

October snow

What it looks like here this morning

the valley not so uncanny

New research shows that Macaque monkeys also display “uncanny valley” reactions.

The “uncanny valley,” for those of you who don’t know, is a robotics term that refers to a revulsion reaction many people experience when they study faces that are realistic, but not quite realistic enough. The evidence from this study strongly supports a biological interpretation for this phenomenon.

Besides the obvious implications for the development of human-like robots, and the interesting research paths for understanding human biology and behavior, the study makes me wonder what it means for people like me who *don’t* experience this phenomenon. I can look at animations with no more reaction than, “Wow, that’s really well done.”

I am wondering whether there are certain very subtle indicators of emotion that are missing in the unreal faces. Most people detect those markers and are disturbed by the lack. I’m very poor at reading emotion in real faces. I wonder whether I just don’t see those markers in real faces, and the lack of emotion in the artificial faces doesn’t bother me because I’m simply not perceiving the problem area?

The research is very much up in the air, so that’s pure speculation at this point. But I’m going to be following the research with considerable personal interest.

Obama walks, Obama chews gum! At the same time!

This about covers it

I’m amazed by the pettiness and hysteria some people have been able to work up over the most simple events, like the trip to the Olympics to lobby for the U.S. I’m even more amazed by the way the media has been reporting on these nincompoops, as if they had something worth saying, instead of on the issues themselves.

Sigh.

from the editor chair

When we as writers are working on a story, we tend to focus intensely on only that story. We read it over and over, we post it for crit or send it to a few trusted readers, we dissect every word and phrase to make sure they say exactly what we want them to say. We seldom see it in any other context.

Editors aren’t reading that way. Most of us would like to be able to sit down with one story at a time, read it slowly two or three times, ponder what the writer was trying to say, and offer really insightful critique to make a perfect story. But the reality doesn’t happen that way. The reality is that life, family, work, and our own writing take up most of our time. We let the slush pile up, knowing every day that we should get busy. Finally we set a block of time to tackle it, and we sit down and do it.

That means we’re reading in a bunch. One story after another. Unlike many other editors, I’m not dealing with the really crappy stuff; our slush wrangler has already screened out the stupid, the incompetent, and the hapless. So I’m reading mostly pretty good stories.

One right after the other. In a bunch.

By the time I get done reading through that pile, they all start to sound this same. “Oh, dear God, not another amoral female sellsword who left her home under suspicion and…” For example. Even stories that are quite different in story and character wind up sounding like all the others. Daikaijuzine always gives personalized comments. When I go to write them, it’s extremely difficult to find something to say. Because really there’s nothing wrong with the story. If I had read it by itself in a crit group, I probably would have said it was excellent.

But one right after the other, in a bunch? It’s just like all the rest.

This, I think, is what most editors mean when they say, “It just didn’t grab me.” There’s just not enough right about it. Not enough special, not enough strong and insightful, not enough deep and moving, not enough wild and crazy, not enough warm and inspiring. I turn it over, go on to the next one, and when I try to write the rejection, I feel bad but have nothing more to say than a wordy version of, “it just didn’t grab me.”

turn on the heat!

One of many strange things about New Englanders: they won’t turn on the heat when it starts to get cold in the fall.

Where I’m from, you tell when to turn on the heat by rubbing your arms, looking at the goose bumps, and saying, “Damn, it’s cold this evening. I’m going to turn on the heat.” It doesn’t matter if it’s the Fourth of July or the middle of February. But not here. Here, most people set some arbitrary date for turning on the heat — mid-October, Halloween, Thanksgiving. It doesn’t matter how cold it gets before that, the heat doesn’t go on.

Usually the date is later the farther north you go. I remember having lunch with a New Hampshire friend on Veteran’s day. With six inches of snow already on the ground and a midday high of 34F, he deigned to light a fire in the woodstove because he had company, but he had not even lit furnace’s pilot light yet.

It’s partly cheapness and partly necessity. Most people use heating oil, which has to be delivered in bulk a couple of times a year. Many budget plans have arbitrary start dates — 15 October is common. Before that, you might not have any oil unless there was some left over from last year, or not want to use what you have because it costs more. There’s also the “I’m tougher than you are” mentality.

But mainly, I think it’s denial. If the heat isn’t on, it can’t be winter yet. Even if it’s a howling blizzard outside and you’re huddled under three quilts trying to keep warm.

Now excuse me while I go turn the heat up.

the Polanski thing

I’m old enough to remember when Polanski skipped the country. How disgusted I was that if you were rich and famous, you could get away with something like this. That the nobody he raped was going to have to live with this for the rest of her life while he was off living the high life in Europe. That he kept winning awards and honors as if nothing had happened. Yeah, the man’s a genius, but geez. What part of “he raped a 13-year-old girl” don’t they understand?

Campbell Brown says it better than I could.

mailbox tale

One of the joys of living in New England is that mailboxes die unnatural deaths.

Such things happened occasionally in Montana. They’d fall victim to a drunken spree of target practice, or break under the force of an out-of-control pickup skidding toward the next bridge abutment. Here, though, the life expectancy of the average mailbox and post is probably about two winters if you live on a street or road that is plowed regularly. Even if the snowplow doesn’t score a direct hit — frequent — it receives the full force of waves of snow moving at 30 mph or more. That’s a lot of force.

After three winters in a row of broken posts and/or broken boxes, I decided to go with a more flexible solution and planted the mailbox and post in a half-barrel* full of bricks and gravel. It has worked quite well for several winters; the waves of snow push the whole unit back instead of snapping the post. Of course it’s wound up in the shrubbery five feet back from the road several times, but hey, every solution has its tradeoffs, and scooting it back into place is free.

But being whacked around by snow and buried in salty ice banks takes its toll, and mine was reaching the end of its lifespan, bound in place with fraying duct tape because the screws had rusted through. It was still hanging in there, though.

Until yesterday.

The crew installing new Verizon FiOS cables in our neighborhood had to remove the sidewalk and cut a three-foot wide channel through the end of our driveway. That meant moving the mailbox. Fine, no problem, they scooted it back into the edge of the shrubs. Same place the snowplow shoves it. No problem. It’s designed to move like that.

Yesterday they finished laying the channel and running the cable. They filled in the ditch. They poured in fresh sand and packed it down nicely. They made sure to replace all the mailbox holes in the sidewalk.

They took my mailbox OUT of the barrel and put it into the posthole that hasn’t been used for at least five years.

It looked like they had to use a shovel or prybar or something to dig the post out of the barrel. It wouldn’t have come easily.

I don’t know what they were thinking. I don’t think I want to know.

——————
*imitation whiskey barrel of molded plastic. the carpenter ants ate the wooden one.