I get cluster headaches, a particularly nasty breed of migraine. They come every two years, and I thought I was going to miss them, they're so late this time around.

 

Alas, no.

 

Lowlight of 2005 so far: I was in La Crosse over the weekend for an organic farming conference. The Beast came for me in the middle of the night, but not bad enough to use my last and only silver bullet on it (tab of Maxalt). Hotels don't usually stock aspirin anymore, I was told by the snottypants nightclerk, so there I was, staggering through the streets of La Crosse at 2 am like a risen corpse, looking for aspirin.

 

Or brains. Whatever you got, I'll take it if it works on migraines...

 

Anyhoo. Getting my supply of silver-bullets refilled this afternoon. More soon.

 

 

 

 

Brushes with Fame

 

10. Made a martini for Tom "Dukes of Hazard" Wopat 

9. Cut a pineapple for Emilio Estevez, Martin Sheen and Emilio's kid (who looked like someone had photoshopped Martin Sheen's head onto a baby).

8.  Had a convo with Dick Dale about Mexican tequilas, then later learned who Dick Dale was.

7. Chatted up Laura Dern about the health benefits of organic juice.

6. Helped usher Steve Gutenberg out of the store at closing (didn't know he was Steve Gutenberg at the time. Just thought he was some jackass being a jackass because he looked like Steve Gutenberg.)

5. Had my picture taken with Beck (his camera - I don't have the pic).

4. Selected a pound of serrano peppers for Molly Ivins.

3. Gave George McGovern my autograph when he ran for prez in '84 (a 12-year-old running gag - my brother Robin did it first in '72).

2. Stood in line for coffee behind Robert Palmer and told him the area code in Austin, Texas (after he asked me, "Wot's the aria kowd 'ere?").

1. Shook hands with Cesar Chavez.

 

 

 

I've seen more than my share of suicides and attempted suicides, so the angry words I posted about Hunter Thompson (a few entries below) obviously had some personal sting in them. This makes me feel more sympathetic toward the man. Having two family members diagnosed with Parkinson's, I feel for anyone living with chronic pain.

 

On a different note, I completely concur with the writer quoted in this article, printed in the NYT:

"Sometimes I'll be writing and I'll think of a word, and I'll say, 'No, that's Hunter's word,' and I won't use it," Mr. Greenwood said.

"Twisted," for example, Mr. Greenwood said, is a classic Hunter word - combining elements of fatigue, inebriation and a hint of the bizarre - that should be retired like a slugger's old number.

Writers should follow this advice closely where Hunter is concerned. I've noted for years that it's possible to spot fellow devotees of the Good Doctor, simply by their syntax or how they crib HST's signature, Bible-esque vocabulary ("generation of swine;" "decadent"; "depraved"; calling Ralph Nader "a worthless Judas goat with no moral compass"). Take this article from the Washington Post for example. When I first read this review last year, I had to double check who'd written it because the lead read like Hunter to me (could be intentional, of course, but HST's slambam prose does get under one's skin).

~

In other bummer news, I learned that a co-worker died a couple days ago. Heart attack. I didn't know him well - but well enough to feel like I've got a buzzard sitting on my shoulder this week.

 

 

Here's a challenge to all you writer/bloggers who did the 10 Things You've Never Done meme, especially if you get stuck and can't seem to write.

 

Take one or more of the items on your list and stitch them together into a story. Take liberties, of course. Lie and exaggerate as necessary. If you get your Frankestein published, let us know on your blog.

 

I'm already working on mine (and have been for a while....)

 

 

 

 

Great article at the Christian Science Monitor about Jeanette Winter's new children's book "The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq" and how it came about. The story itself is positively Borgesian, not in the sense that it describes a convoluted reality, but that it's a story which presumes the dire importance of libraries to What We Are.

 

When her own government refused to help, Ms. Baker began spiriting the collection to safety herself, book by book. She carried the books to her home and to a neighboring restaurant, managing with the help of friends to preserve 70 percent of the collection before the historic building burned to the ground nine days later.

My wife Lisa has really turned me on to kid's books like this one - tackling huge issues that almost make you laugh when you first hear that they're kid's books. (Did you laugh when you read the title of this one above?  I did.) But if we the invaders and empire-builders are going to pass on a sense of humanity amid our war-making, and not just tell us some swell war stories, then books like this are essential for our kids and, as I say, What We Are.

I mean. A library. This woman saved a library.

 

(Winter also did a book on Frida Kahlo that Lisa recommends.)

 

 

Ahh, Madison....where even the bible-thumpers might be left-leaning. Today at the Capitol, Christians for Equality will be rallying and lobbying against the proposed change to the state constitution which would ban gay marriage. Go ye into all of the world, you magnificent freaks.

 

Via Democratic Underground.

 

 

10. Got hit on in a tejano gay bar with the line (uttered in a gruff, Spanish accent), "Hey, sissy-boy, want to dance?"

9. Selected cantaloupes for Marylou Henner.

8. Knocked ESPN off the air for 6 seconds during a protest.

7. Had a mama squirrel weave six months worth of my writing into her nest.

6. Interviewed William S. Burroughs about writing, but all he wanted to talk about was Earth shoes.

5. Bought wedding rings in Taxco, Mexico.

4. Had an organic dinner with Daniel Handler (writer of the Lemony Snicket books).

3. Went on a marijuana hunt with a mad Australian, found the field that was reportedly loaded with dewy buds only to discover that that they were nothing but ankle-high plants, then loaded a garbage bag in frustration, went home, made wreaths for our heads and shoved plants in our pockets and pants, and went out dancing and barhopping.

2. Threw tarot for a circus run by a professional dominatrix.

1. Single-handedly turned a calm New Year's Eve party into a Naked Snow Angel and Group Shower Extravaganza.

 

(via Pratt, Shaw, Mamatas, and just about everyone else)

 

 

I changed my mind. I'd rather bury Hunter than praise him. Once upon a time he meant so very much to me. And I can't deny that Curse of Lono, which I read surreptitiously in my dad's Playboy back in 1980, was a magical crowbar for my brain.

 

But all I can think about now are Hunter's people who found him after a gunshot wound to the head - and had to clean up. Violent suicide, as I've said in these pages before, is the biggest fuck you there is.

 

So, so long and fuck you too, Hunter! Thanks for Lono. Thanks for your eulogy to Nixon. Thanks for Rum Diaries. But we're done now. Adios.

 

 

 

I didn't need to wake to this news on CNN.

 

The Doctor is out.

 

 

More later, when I can get my brain around it.

 

 

 

 

And with good reason. Gov. Pawlenty doesn't simply want to streamline. He wants to make it exceedingly difficult for counties and townships to create zoning laws that would prevent corporate agribusiness from expanding their local operations into mega-feedlots. Furthermore, he wants these local governments to report to the state any time they change their zoning laws in the future, making it next to impossible in the current climate to prevent a feedlot from being built wherever a given company wants to build it.

Such changes won't help the independent, local businessman. As the Strib put it in a recent editorial, "Such an attack on local decisionmaking would be unthinkable if proposed in behalf of, say, lumber mills or liquor retailers, trucking terminals or townhome builders. Even in a state where agriculture always gets to play by special rules, this is a breathtaking affront to communities' right to decide their futures -- especially when the problem it purports to solve, among all those facing Minnesota livestock operators, seems quite small indeed."

To say nothing of the of the undemocratic attack on Pawlenty's own base: Conservative, Greater Minnesota. Do these farmers and small businesspeople out near the Dakota or Iowa border, who vote Republican with a reflex that rivals any red state, approve of stripping local governments of their decision-making power? Will Republicans in the state house hold the line if Pawlenty favors corporate America over local democracy? Probably. But getting 5000 people in Greater Minnesaota to sign a petition against their man in St Paul is nothing to sneeze at.

This is bizarre terrain, but it's heady, too: A wedge issue where the old Wellstone coalition of conservationists, Jeffersonian conservatives, and liberal Twin Citizens might still agree.

Whichever candidate whom the DFL decides to run for Sen. Mark Dayton's soon-to-vacated seat should take note.

 

 

 

Told in the original, and in translation.

 

 

"Tat!" [That cat Boutros was eating spider plants!]

 

"Tat!" [I yelled, "Tat!"]

 

"da da DA." [Daddio came in to see why I was yelling "Tat!"]

 

Emphatic pointing gesture that denotes a spray gun. [Daddio flipped and sprayed Boutros with the mister.]

 

"Tat!" [Boutros split and I chased her for 30 minutes.]

 

THE END

 

 

 

When you buy this year's collection of Best American Short Stories, you'll find Kelly Link and Tim Pratt in the tabel of contents. This is a big deal, since, according to Matt Cheney, the last time a self-described science fiction or fantasy writer was included in this antho was back in '93 (Harlan Ellison). But two in a year? It just doesn't happen that way. Link and Pratt deserve huge congratulations for this accomplishment and honor.

 

Those of us who've been reading them for years, now, aren't surprised, but we're still stunned.

 

 

The fascists who run this liberal town made me chip ice off my sidewalk today. Sent me a letter and told me to get to work or they'd fine me, the communists. But they do have a point. Babystrollers skitter across my walk like insane zambonis, and old women elect to walk around the park rather than brave my block. So I suppose I should honor my half of the social contract before someone breaks a hip. The 40 degree days we got at the end of January and beginning of February have turned my north walk into a sixth Great Lake, and this week's polar clime turned that lake into a glacier. So what does Mr Organic do? He buys 100 pounds of salt and dumps it on the ice floe, of course. Then he gets the heaviest, baddest ice chopper at Ace and spends the morning cracking ice with it. This weapon is so sturdy and dense that if you smash through the ice and hit concrete with it, which happens quite frequently, you get your whole arm rattled. My hand is messed up now. A disfigured claw. And even after three hot coffees, I can't warm up.

 

All of this is by way of saying that I didn't write much today, though on the week, I've already chopped 2500 words off the MS.

 

(At this rate, by this time next year, I will have a 40 page manuscript.)

 

 

At the NYT: The odd, winding story of a fake reporter named "Jeff" and his relationship to the Bush team's Kafkaesque (or is it Borgesian?) propaganda machine - a system so intricate and evolved that the days of "spin" and "message control" (let alone "journalism") seem downright quaint.

 

When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government. [Reporter] Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.

 

 

 

By your command.

 

 

 

The Ministry of Chinese Fire Drills and Pie Throwing, I mean, the Department of Defense, has the best running gags ever. Iraq. Rumsfeld. Gitmo. But the Star Wars Missile Defense's ongoing failure routine is postively Borscht Belt. The latest proof that Star Wars is an epic waste (a ground system failure this time - nutty!) completes the Rule of Three, plus, it was conducted at the King of Komedy Ronald Reagan Test Site (Kwajalein Atoll). We're talking classic comic timing here. To say nothing of the North Korea bit!

 

"It's certainly embarrassing at a time when the administration has basically decided that its North Korea policy is missile defense," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a nonprofit defense analysis group.

 

Did you hear the rimshot after that dude's quote?

 

You can't teach this, I'm telling you.

 

 

 

 

We're on the roast chicken cycle this week. We roasted the bird on Saturday night (lots of white wine in the Dutch oven, and lots of veggies in the white wine where they belong), made sandwiches and chef salads the last two nights, and even as I type, the lovely Lisa is stewing the carcass for chicken noodle soup. I'm sure there's gotta be a way to make jewelry or weapons or major appliances out of Our Sibling the Chicken, but really I'm just in it for the food.

 

Speaking of appliances, we bought a dishwasher. This is the Great Big Purchase in the wake of the book deal, and, sure, a younger Barth is staring at the dishwasher in slack-jawed disgust (What? No sloe gin? No D&D books? The fuck's that money for?). But that skinny lil bastard can eat me. You'd be stunned at how much time this family spends at the sink. I mean, washing dishes is currently one of Isaiah's favorite pastimes, and that's just pathetic and sad. So Blessed Be the Great God Bantam, for we have freed ourselves from sink-bondage and are trekking through the desert to our Promised Land. 'Course, in anticipation of our domestic Bastille Day, we stopped washing dishes days ago - but we shall overcome.

 

~

 

Blind Boys of Alabama. Genius. While covering  a Funkadelic tune ("You And Your Folks, Me and My Folks" - Maggot Brain), they segue into a reading of the 23rd Psalm. They gospelize Bob Marley's "People Get Ready" (not hard to imagine, but beautiful and powerful), and Prince and Stevie, too. And, damn, I had no idea they practically were the opera and Sophocles tragedy The Gospel at Colonnus.

 

I love radio that teaches me.

 

 

It's melty here - February is being a slutty tease. Very wet. Everything glistens, and while making a wine-run tonight, I floated up Chicago Avenue to "Falling in Love Again" as covered by All the Pretty Horses* - full-throated and operatic. A smashing song for driving on a warm, winter night - let alone for Valentine's Day.

 

When I got to the liquor store, I found Ravenswood for cheap, snatched it up, then discovered the Beer Cooler that Time Forgot. It was like I was gazing back into 1985 - Heineken, Guiness, Amstel (not even Amstel Light - but Amstel). Lisa wanted a local flavor, but no luck - no MN microbrews in 1985, after all. I had to get her Anchor Steam.

 

That's when I realized that, logically, I'd been propelled backwards in time by that Goth-Glam, Ziggy-Stardust-sings-Deitrich number. A time-rip through which I alone had traversed. As a result, I am now blogging to you from Valentine's Day 1985, late in the last millennium.

 

 

 

 

*They call themselves All the Pretty Horses in a nod to the Voudoun tradition of gods and goddesses possessing people a la riding "horses" - to gender-bending effect (Hi Nalo!)). Check out zee website...

 

 

 

Swearing is so much a part of my vocabulary that my own cursing is completely transparent to me. Maybe that's obvious to readers of this here blog? I dunno. Like I said, I can't tell.

 

Longtime readers may recall that Isaiah came very close, last summer, to uttering shit as his first word. I may have dodged that bullet (we're pretty sure his first word was "home"), but yesterday at the park I resumed Iko's exploration into the scatological. I was pulling him from a baby-swing, and his big, dorky moon-boots were getting caught in the tiny leg holes of the seat. I tugged, realized he was losing his boot, tried to stop it but couldn't because I was holding the boy, then helplessly watched the boot land in a puddle beneath the swing and fill with a trickle of muddy water.

 

"Shit!" I said.

 

Isaiah joined me and immediately said, "Shit!"

 

Sure, bed is bop, fish is pah, and daddy is da da DA, but the little goblin can say shit clear as day.

 

Later on, he was playing the wham game, and he struck the wooden ball off-center with he hammer. What does my precious little cherub say as he watches the ball roll under the sofa? Yup.

 

He's daddy's boy, I guess.

 

 

 

 

Shit.

 

 

 

In case you missed it, here's a note from Midori Snyder left on my message board (edited for linkage): 

 

The Endicott Studio Benefit Auction just went live tonight on eBay. Angi Sullins of Duirwaigh Gallery put it together and wowie is it spectacular...there's tons of art from the greats (Charles Vess, Terri Windling, Kinuko Craft, the Frouds, Alan Lee and others) and signed and limited books (Neil Gaiman, deLint, Vess, Kushner and others). Have a look! It can be reached through a link on our homepage. The auction will run a week...although some of the items are late in coming and Angi has promised that she will keep those items up for a week as well, regardless of when they finally they arrive. So should be something new almost every day! 

 

Here are four reasons why you might drop a little cash on this benefit auction, if you have it to spare:

 

Terri Windling's story "Red Rock."

 

Greg Frosts essay The Fantasy Life of Salons.

 

Margaret Atwood's poem Girl Without Hands.

 

My story "The Parade of You."

 

 

 

I sold out. Have I told you this? I mean, I've really sold out. No more short stories, man, not one. They've gone-daddy-gone. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

 

Think I'm bragging? Makes me panicky, actually, since it's going to be a bazillion years before the novel comes out and I doubt I'll have time in the next year to bake the stories that are still rising in their bread pans. I'll be busy working on the novel(s) that won't come out for another year or more.

 

"That's some catch, that Catch-22."

 

"It's the best there is."

 

 

 

 

 

Mimas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's been a pretty good week of writing. I decided to start addressing some of the glaring needs of Patron Saint of Plagues, even though I haven't received editorial direction yet from my editor. The needs are pretty obvious, though, and you don't have to be Damon Knight to figure out what needs to be done: It's too long and it starts slow. I can actually solve both problems (to a degree) by addressing the slow start, so that's what I've been up to this week.

 

I also got a fortuitous email from a pal (Hi Jeff!) challenging me to write a story about a jpeg he'd sent. I did it in about an hour while Iko slept, only to learn that the writer pal was just kidding - he just wanted me to laugh at the jpeg. C'est la vie. Anyway, I'm happy for the miscommunication, since I wound up recreating a bit of prose about my grandmother that has been lost for eons, so I'm glad to have it back even in hastily written, scattershot form.  

 

What else? I cut Iko's bangs this morning and gave him a bath. Also, I got paid for a bunch of foodie articles I wrote late last year, so the boy and I celebrated by going to May Day Cafe and eating a cherry muffin. Then we swung on swings in the park and came home to find the UPS dude unloading boxes. I haven't spent much money since getting the book advance, but I did drop some coin on Isaiah. A lil chair and table, a toddler computer keyboard, tool chest (which he immediately flipped over, then stood on it and dived into my arms), and kiddy gardening tools all arrived. 

 

It's sunny as hell, so we'll probably take the gardening equipment outside once he un-naps himself and pretend it's May.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has started dropping a few foreign policy planks in place. (From the Christian Science Monitor's opinion pages.)

 

 

 

Isaiah turned 18 months last Friday, which apparently cued the terrible two's to commence in earnest. Suddenly he's become a thrower. Plates, crayons, mail. Whatever he can get his teeny meathooks on? Boom, on the floor it goes.

 

Talking to Isaiah about this kind of thing has actually worked in the past. It's stunning how much a toddler comprehends, but we're trying to pair down our messages to him, because explaining isn't working anymore. Now we have to talk to him in blunt, one- or two-word messages, like he's a little Republican. 

 

["Mr President? Stop. No invading. Put the oil back where you found it. Now."]

 

I'm reminded of my bro Robin and his son Craig. Craig had a little bout of hitting as 4 year old, and Robin told him, "Craig, the men in our family are lovers, not fighters." Which got mocked and mocked in little boy sing-song for weeks, until it eventually became, "I'm a lobster not a spider. I'm a lobster not a spider."

 

Now then. How to convince Iko that's he's a lobster, too....

 

 

 

For the Minneapolitans, St Paulines, and various other Twin Citizens who read this blog:

 

Have you heard The Current? This is Minnesota Public Radio's experiment, and it's a very cool one. MPR bought out the old classic station at this frequency and snared the old DJ's from the Twin Cities' last decent radio station, Rev 105 - notably, Mary Lucia, Mark Wheat, and local scene guru Thorn. It's over there on the leftie end of the FM dial, where I hang out anyway (KMOJ!), but when I heard the Cranberries down there, I almost drove right off thirty-five-dub. This weekend, I actually heard "Pop Life" by Prince. Hearing Prince (or the Mats, or Husker Du, or All The Pretty Horses) on the car radio is far more rare than one would think, if one didn't suffer through MN radio crapcasting and its astonishing ignorance of our very own scene.

 

Radio K (AM 770) excepted, natch.

 

But wait there's more. Is radio too 20th century for ya? Try Misplaced Music Radio, "a musician's co-operative designed to promote music as art." They're uplinking from the Dinkytowner this weekend which makes me incontinent with delight. I'll miss it of course, because I'm an uncool dad. But you should pull it up and tell me how it was.

 

What else have I got for you? Um. D.U. Nation pushes Minneapolis' bubbling hip-hop scene. Minneapolis Happy Hour makes me want a rum and coke. XM Radio (not solely Minneapolis, but an emphasis on unsigned bands across the country). And you're probably already familiar with WELY - the finest in northwoods, Iron Range internet radio (Ely, MN - that hotbed of hipness).

 

So there ya go. Writing music. Work music. Or the soundtrack for my brother Mark's Minnesota nostalgia montage (his face goes warbly - the scene dissolves - suddenly he's playing Donkey Kong Uptown to "Delirious"!).

 

 

 

Great reading at Strange Horizons this week. Many of you who read my blog already check out SH dutifully, I'm sure. For the rest of my friends and family, if you want a flavor of why I write the weird crap that I write, please check out Matt Cheney's article, and also Doug Lain's story. I don't simply like their work, I feel a real affinity with both of them, especially when Cheney writes,

 

"Though I never returned with much fervor to Pink Floyd, I did return to science fiction, but not in the way I had when I was younger. My interest was less in traditional science fiction than in writing that hovered over borders between different genre definitions. I am attracted to surrealist imagery, to language that revels in its own artifice, to imagination. I didn't want to keep looking at the same old walls."

 

This is probably true for a lot of us "coming of age" as writers in the late nineties and, er, the "zilchies" (for lack of a better word for this decade). I'd guess it's probably true of Mr. Lain, too, who writes such a heady blend of bittersweet realism and X-files flavored sf. For me it was digging Varley and Vonnegut, Herbert and Tolkein, only to get to college to discover the Moderns, the Beats, Barthelme, Coover, and Carver. Writer Jeff VanderMeer, the Patron Saint of Freaks, has claimed he feels lucky to be alive at this time, with so many interesting writers writing such intoxicatingly odd fiction (my words, not VanderMeer's). I couldn't agree more.

 

And I feel lucky that we readers who like the weird shit have venues like Strange Horizons.

 

Stupor Bowl VIII, sponsored by the Minneapolis Bicycle Messenger Association, is under way in Minneapolis. I know this because the mighty Red Dragon, the dive bar across the street from my co-op, was regularly getting surrounded by bicycles all day long. The goal of Stupor Bowl? To hit all the bars listed on the Stupor Bowl link above, have a drink in each one, and beat the competition to the finish line.

 

Here's a look at last year's Stupor Bowl VII.

 

 

Here's a luscious little bile-fiesta for you: The Beast's Fifty Most Loathsome People in America. A taste:

 

 

I especially agreed with #41, #28, #14, #11, and #3.

 

Via Wicklund.

 

 

 

I had the reoccurring zombie dream last night. I adore the reoccurring zombie dream!

 

It's right out of Romero. I'm trapped in a building of some sort, the zombies are coming for me, and I have a shotgun. Or a baseball bat. Either way, the whole scene is cheerfully violent. The zombies come for me and I blast or bash em. I'm sort of delighted by these dreams not because I'm a video game guy but because they're right out of my love for movies like The Last Man on Earth and Dawn of the Dead.  Anyway, the reoccurring zombie dream always winds up being sort of an abstract parody of my life (again, very Romero). In this case, hippie guys with no shirts on were the zombies (ok, not that abstract). They were tearing at my door, pulling it off the hinges, and I was shooting at anything that came through the exposed doorway. Such fun! And I was doing pretty well, until, all at once, I had two toddlers, Isaiah and his 2-year-old buddy Hank, trying to worm past me to get to the door. And I'm going, "No, no, no! Never ever! Back away from the door!" And they keep trying to wheedle by me, and I keep herding them back, and then the hippie zombies are back at the door, and then I'm unloading hot lead at them, and then Iko's breaking for the door again. God, it was hysterical.

 

Anyway, I had the zombie dream, I'm sure, because a friend of a friend of mine is making a zombie movie this summer, and they told me I could be a zombie in it.

 

Then I can schmooze at cocktail parties in the warehouse district, and say, "I believe you've seen my work as Zombie Number Three..."

 

 

 

 

Not only have I been getting good writing time due to Jean coming to take care of Isaiah this week (14 hours since Tuesday), but the damn cat has been doing her part too. I swear I never would have finished a novel if it weren't for the feline taskmaster, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. She takes it upon herself to make sure I'm up at the same time that I was up the day before, so this week, my kitty wake-up call has been coming between 5 and 6 am. Boutros doesn't want anything, doesn't expect to be fed till 7am. She just can't stand it that I'm gold-bricking in uncosciousness. So Boutros starts meowing, I fear the boy will wake up, I dart from bed to shut her up, and then she sits on my desk while I write, blinking smugly at me.

 

I'm pretty sure it's all just a ploy to get me to warm up the computer for her to snuggle against. Damn cat.

 

 

 

Well, I'm not happy with the format (this just might be the thing that chases me to Blogger or Livejournal for blogging), but I finally have a message board. You can access it at the link above.

 

 

Here's an ad I did for the co-op. This ad is currently running in the Minneapolis edition of The Onion.

 

 

(This is just the graphic. There's a boilerplate (store name, address, etc) that runs at the bottom. Photograph: Greg Thompson Photography.)

 

 

Oh. And it was another full French press of writing this morning.

 

 

Yesterday was the big day. We left Isaiah alone with Jean, our childcare person (she's a former director of La Leche League, a doula, and all-around amazing person, so words like "nanny" or "babysitter" whither when attached to her). And it went great. She said Isaiah had several moments of sadness, asking for us, going to the windows, crying a little and waving (waving means "bye bye" only). But he also really took to Jean, and got on top of his grief by doing all the things that he loves to do - read, draw, play the with the wham-wham-wham toy. But there were no tantrums or crying jags - I was convinced it wasn't going to work right away, that yeserday would simply be the first, trial run for Isaiah. But Jean didn't have to call me home from work (I was the one who called actually - repeatedly), and Isaiah was able to work through it all on his own.

 

There are definite advantages to putting a kid in daycare as an infant. My brother and his wife did that with their new baby and she really grooves with it. The baby gets socialized and becomes accustomed to other kids and adults so early that it's routine. No tantrums, traumas, or crying jags in that method either. But I feel proud that we did it the way did it, keeping Iko with us for 18 months, and instilling in him a sense of confidence, trust, and strength. By waiting until now, he's able to choose the way he wants to deal with being away from mom and dad, and he chooses to be strong. 

 

That's the goal of attachment parenting after all, and that's what we're trying to do with Isaiah. You can have all the good intentions in the world, of course, but you never know whether or not attachment parenting works until you let the kid be alone, without you, to embrace the world the way he wants.

 

Yadda yadda yadda. Despite the success, it was a grueling day. Neither Lisa or I slept well the night before (she tossed and turned all night - I was up at 5am), so coupled with the frazzlement of abandoning Isaiah, we were pretty trashed by sundown. But we stayed up talking after we put the boy to bed and it seems like this new schedule is really going to work for all of us. I'll get my writing time. Lisa will get bona fide alone time, for meditation, hanging with friends, whatever she wants.

 

So strange. Our lives are really looking different than they looked yesterday morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks like Lisa, Isaiah, and I will be at Wiscon in Madison this year. I wasn't sure if Lisa wanted to work childcare again, but, apparently, she contacted the Powers that Be (Hi, Karen!) and said she'd do it. So it looks like we're in.

 

That, and it's official: I'm in SFWA.

 

Today I am a geek.

 

(To which I hear my wife muttering, "'Today'..?")

 

 

 

I interviewed a poultry farmer recently for an article that I'm writing. You know what the real danger is when a fox or a mink get into a henhouse? It's not the inevitable bloodbath (mink, apparently, really like to leave a horrorshow behind). It's the "piling." Chickens will huddle together in the far corner of the henhouse away from the predator and smother one another. The deaths by piling usually outnumber the predator's kill.

 

Raccoons, apparently, are the master burglars, however. They tend to attack in a gang and leave with their booty. The farmer told me that you won't even know the raccoons have hit you until a day or two later, when you step into the henhouse, and realize that there's a lot more room in there, all of a sudden.

 

~

 

Let's speak of rewriting in terms of coffee consumed, not word count, shall we? For example, today was a great day of rewriting for me: A full French press, down the hatch.