Mi Tierra

Before we start talking about this book, it's worth noting I am incredibly biased. Doesn't make me wrong. But still. 

I first met Adria Quinones on Twitter, we talked writing and plotting. We met in person when she came down to DC for a book event.

At some point she invited me to join the create night she held. It has originally been held in person, but schedules and various other things had moved it virtual. This was very helpful when the pandemic hit, because it was one thing that felt normal. 

So when she announced she had written an early reader in verse, it seemed right. The story, also beautifully illustrated by Mrinali Alvarez, is a love letter to cities, to neighborhoods where you see your neighbors, and to the idea that we all have different things that feel like home to us. 

I confess, I don't read a lot of early readers these days, but this one I loved, and not just because it was written by my friend. 

I was able to travel up for her launch party in New York this past weekend, and celebrate with her. 

Bookshop link for the book here.

Three Interesting Things

1. It's been a while since I've been to the Maryland Renaissance Faire, but this peek into life there, was nice. 

2. This sculpture put up by the Choctaw nation is lovely, and the story behind it is too.

3. I have been watching the US Open, so this peek into doubles teams was fascinating. 

How to Frame Things

I had to get a new phone.  Before I had the new phone, I tried to log into my phone account and figure out what my options were.  My phone carrier wanted me to verify myself by typing in the number they just texted me.  Except, the whole reason I needed a new phone was because I did not have the old phone. 

I called, from a different number obviously.  And I was told that I would need to go to a store.  Now, I get why having the phone was one part of the verification, I was just a little surprised that they didn't have another option.  Even on the website, if you clicked the option to report a lost or stolen phone, it asked you to type in the number they texted to your device. 

My phone carrier has my email and my address, but none of those were options.  When I went to the store, they verified my ID.  So, yes, it makes sense to me that that would require an in person interaction.  Certainly I do not want them to shut off my phone just because any old person calls in and reports the number.  But being told, nope, you'll need to go to a store, sounded odd, and almost like they had no plan B.

Anyway, that's how I spent part of my long weekend.  Fortunately I had been meaning to upgrade my phone soon. 

Three Interesting Things

1. Project 2025 has some specific plans that affect those of us who are fans of books and reading.  This post sums them up.

2. I confess I am mildly obsessed with this story of an office mountain climbing retreat where they left one coworker behind and search and rescue had to be called in. 

3. Jason Reynolds walked a reporter through his bookshelves.  

Also, the wonderful L. D. Lewis is sponsoring a grant to emerging Palestinian Creators in the Speculative Arts, and there is also an option to contribute to a second grant, as well as info on applying here. 

Writing is not Publishing and Vice Versa

Regardless of the manner or ways in which you publish (assuming that you do, or intend to), writing and publishing are different. Not just because they are different steps. But also many parts of publishing are outside your control. Sorry, my control freak friends, but it is true. 

And so the things that you can do to separate the processes in your head will help. You may never want to write anything that doesn't get published. You may never write anything that doesn't get published. But various things from weather, to reader taste shifts, to wild world events, will impact sales in ways you cannot prepare for. 

So you need to know why you write. The answer can change over your writing career. It can be the joy of storytelling. It can be the burning need to get these impatient characters out of your head. It can be the love of setting up and revealing a puzzle. It can be many things. 

But if it's to be a bestseller, or to make oodles of money, you might or might not. And if a story doesn't perform the way you had hoped, and you plan to keep writing, you need to know how to be a writer. 

Three Interesting Things

1. This article looks at the latest ebb and flow of folks of color, particularly Black folks, in publishing. 

2. This article looks at the ways that fandom has gotten a little weird.

3. This article about dumped orange peels is from quite a few years ago, but I found it fascinating because I hadn't really thought about what happens to all those orange peels when they make all that juice, and because sometimes manufacturing dumps do kind cool things. 

"Soft Power" at Signature Theater

Content notes: onstage stabbing, use of prop guns, discussion of race based violence and racial micro-aggressions. 

In a play where the main character has the same name as the playwright, and that character has a fever dream, well it's hard not to describe the show as something of a fever dream. 

I am going to confess that despite being a musical lover, I have never seen "The King and I". I have seen "The Book of Mormon" which is a similar white person goes somewhere to teach some non-white people that they are wrong and eventually they both learn from each other plot. 

So a flipped version where a person of color, an Asian person comes to teach the Queen of the US sounds cool. Except our leaders are elected and in 2016 we did not elect a queen. 

So when the playwright character gets stabbed and passes out, he dreams of a version of himself meeting the producer who hires him to write the show, and they then meet a Hillary Clinton who is running for President. 

The show is a fever dream and yet, like some dreams where you wake up and go, yep, I know where that came from, it's not wrong. It's weird, but interesting. It gets at the exhausting way we handle our democracy. There's a song about the electoral college that has a supreme court justice dancing with a sparkly gavel. Every gun used is painted a bright red, white, or blue. It also finds time to talk about assimilation, heart vs duty, and the things we learn from our parents. 

The cast was wonderful. Daniel May captured the optimism and duty of Xue Xing. And Grace Yoo sang and danced her butt off as Hillary Clinton. 

There's an interesting choice during two numbers that involved tapping, to have instrumental tapping, which I would love to know the story behind. The answer may well be, it was a dream. Dreams are weird. 

Note: I attended a masks required show. 

Three Interesting Things

1. We just had a tornado warning here last week, so disaster prep is on my mind.  While tornadoes and hurricanes are different, some of the things it can be useful to consider ahead of time are similar.  So, I appreciated this story about hurricane prep.  It's pretty US focused as far as the links, but the steps are similar for everyone.

2. For the olympics and paralympics, Paris has - for now - become easier to traverse for the disabled. 

3. And I've been enjoying the reveals around Banksy's latest series. 

Goals

The olympics wrapped and one of the things I loved about the track portion of things, was that they listed things like who had a season best time, a personal record, a national record, and so on. There was one race where almost everyone on the track hit a season's best. 

There are so many goals you can set for yourself, and it can be useful. I tend to be a lost in the trees person who forgets about the big picture forest, so setting goals can give me something to aim for.

But goals are helpful if they are maybe a bit of a reach and also achievable. There is one gold medal, but there are season's bests possible for everyone. 

And then, let's hope these athletes also have both celebration and rest in their plans.

It can be so easy to hit a goal and then go set a new one and forget to pause an celebrate that goal. 

To borrow from an old ad campaign, when people ask what's next after you hit a big goal, you should say you're going to an amusement park. Or the beach. Or the library. Whatever cool amazing thing that you do to celebrate that step. 

Because after all that work, you deserve a treat.  

Three Interesting Things

1. If you noticed that US women gymnasts seem to be lasting longer as gymnasts, this article talks about some of the reasons for that. 

2. I was intrigued at this idea of a national tenant's union.

3. And with the caveat that I am friendly with the author of this piece, an abbreviated look a dragons and romances, and some dragon romances.  Note: title, while starred, alludes to an NSFW word. 

Your Pace is Yours

I talk a lot in writing about figuring out your best pace. That writing communally can be fun, because having people around you doing the thing is fun, not because matching their pace is always the best idea for you. 

The sports coverage may be better where you are, but USian Olympic coverage always refers to being a silver medalist like it is a massive disappointment. And when it comes to writing, done is done. First draft, edited draft, polished draft, they mostly just need to get done. Sure, sometimes there are deadlines. But no one who reads a book they picked up in a bookstore thinks, hmm, I hope this was written more speedily than the book over there. 

Are there limits? Sure. I've met people who have been changing the commas in their draft for about two years, and that doesn't feel productive to me. Sometimes you have to quit a story, or say your going to quit a story. And sometimes a story has a fundamental flaw and you have to decide to rewrite it from the ground up or just write something else. 

But that first draft, that first attempt to tell the story, it just needs to get done. And done can honestly be in the eye often beholder. Done can mean having "insert fight scene here" in part. 

Speed to the end of the draft is only one measure of it, and I enjoy watching my little graph line go up as I draft.

And if it bums you out to see other's finishing faster, perhaps it helps to think of yourself as one of the other gymnasts. Imagine being the gymnast who is not Simone Biles or sub in your fave athlete here. All these other gymnasts showed up to compete. And they still did their routines after Biles did hers, already knowing that no matter how perfect they were, they could not beat a person who has actual moves named after her. But they still did it. And some of them had their best days ever. 

You don't have to be the Simone Biles of writing. There is only one of those. But there are so many books. And have you met readers? They love books. They are waiting for your story too. Because even the fastest writer doesn't write enough to keep a reader happy for a whole year. 

Three Interesting Things

1. NPR's Code Switch talked about how book bans can mean kids never see some types of characters. 

2. A new book looks at the early twentieth century Olympics, and how one swimming race brought together three very different swimmers, including a Hawaiian swimmer more known for another Olympic sport.  

3. Speaking of other Olympic sports, the story behind this surfing picture is amazing. 

When to Pause

There is a lot of sports happening right now, you may have heard. One of the things that fascinates me about sports is about how it ties into our hustle culture. How, you get injured, but are praised for working through it. How we don't just reward going fast or high or far, but going beyond what your body says.

Studies show that taking a break actually helps you work better. There are days when you cannot push through, cannot go farther. 

And creative pursuits can be like that to. Showing up counts for a lot. There are days I thought I didn't really want to write, but I did. There are days when I thought I wanted to write and yet got very little. But showing up helped because the focus on the story let me figure out why I was stuck. Or at least figure out that mt characters were stuck so I could work on figuring out why.

But there are also days I just can't. Whether I have a headache, or a lack of energy, or something else. And the trick is learning when to push, and when to go get cookies and come back another day. 

Three Interesting Things

1. The summer olympics are on, and you may have heard it's very hot on the northern hemisphere.  This article looks at how athletes are strategizing heat. 

2.  People are taking their cats out on leashes.  (My cat has said, absolutely not.  But yay for other cats.)

3. Apparently out of office messages are getting some new style. 

Too Much of a Good Thing

I listened to a podcast about hydration, and one of the guests mentioned that over-hydration has similar symptoms as under or dehydration. I take several medications that cause dehydration, so try to hydrate, but of course just like watering plants, it's a delicate balance.

I should note, I once killed a cactus. 

It does seem silly of the human body to reuse the same symptoms. After all, how can you troubleshoot if the results aren't same?

In some ways, hydration becomes like other things, something you need to be aware of. But spending too much time worrying over it, is likely to stress you out.

But if someone would invent those little soil moisture monitors for humans, that would be very helpful.

Three Interesting Things

1. So, climate change is making days ever so slightly longer. 

2. A friend pointed me to this story from earlier this year, about a generation of woman named Connie. 

3. And someone pointed me to this artist who makes incredibly realistic embroidery.

Backup Skills

Some of the newer metro trains in DC, have a digital map, that updates to show the next station, and the next few after that. They are positioned in the middle of the train, so are visible from much of the train. The trains, even the older ones, have an automated voice announcement, so there are other ways to figure out where the train is, short of memorizing stops. 

Now, I started using this system as a tween. There were announcements, but they were not reliably loud or clear enough in the train car you were on. So I got used to looking out the window at stops and finding the helpfully large signs in the station so I could make sure I hadn't missed my stop. Didn't always work - sometimes I was at a really good part of the book and missed a few stops - but at least meant I usually noticed soon.  

One day, I was on one of the newer trains, and I heard an announcement for a stop that I thought we had already been too. And I had that did I go the wrong way panic moment. I looked up at the automated display. And then I looked out the window. And I realized the automated display was three stops behind. So then I just kept reading the signs at each stop.

A few stops later I heard someone behind me say, "Oh the announcement is saying the wrong stop." And the person next to me bolted up and went, "Crap, I missed my stop!" and raced off the train. 

Now this is not a don't rely on automated systems rant. This is not even an I am smarter rant. The point I am going for is that this was easy for me to solve, because I didn't grow up with the automated option. I had a backup already. 

Whereas people who grew up able to google things, able to rely on the automated announcement, then have to build a backup on the fly when that option fails them. 

In retrospect, I wish I had said aloud that the automated announcement was wrong, so that more people on the train would have had more time to correct. It was silly of me to assume everyone else had already solved the problem. And if they had, my announcing still would have hurt nothing. 

But as we watch sites that used to be reliable disappear or get taken over by inaccurate AI posts, we will all need to work on sharing our plans for figuring things out. 

Three Interesting Things

1. Maggie Tokuda-Hall shared the speech she gave at the Minidoka Pilgrimage. 

2. Nicolas Cage, who starred in a movie about a book by Susan Orlean, was interviewed by Susan Orlean, and they had a fascinating conversation. 

3. I really enjoyed this interview with drag queen Pattie Gonia about making being outdoorsy more inclusive. 

One Million Steps

My day job does things like team walking challenges, and I have mixed feelings about them. But they are good about adding alternative options like, read a chapter of a book, or eat lunch without looking at your phone. 

And so they sent out an email saying we had all walked a million steps. And as things like Romancing the Vote wrapped up, they had similarly reminded us that yes, some items went for thousands of dollars. But the bulk of their total was made up of 5 and 10 and 25 items. 

And all of this is a reminder that things that need to be done or changed or fixed happen in small steps, happen often when we team up with others and work to make things happen. 

That the seemingly big changes, are just lots of little changes adding up. 

Oh, it turns out writing is like that too. 

Bid for Voting Rights

Hey all, it's a short week in the US and also Romancing the Vote. I donated a handknit shawl that I think is pretty cool: https://www.32auctions.com/organizations/74830/auctions/164081/auction_items/5470656

There are so many great items. Many are available to non-USians. And there are a ton of things (maybe even a few by me) set to drop during the auction.

If you can bid, please do. If you cannot, please spread the word. 

And after we raise money, lets hope we all get a little rest in this week. 

Three Interesting Things x 2

I've been adjusting to a new schedule and just did not get as far as posting end of last week, so here we are with extra things. 

1. This story about digital collections at the Library of Congress told part in comic form is very cool.

2. Mo Farah talked a little more about his running career and his journey to find more about how he was trafficked.

3. This is an older story, but I had not even heard that some people should get different sized vaccine needles, so, if this is news to you, here you go.

4. This story looks at how a new licensing requirement in Hawai'i is impacting traditional birthing practices. 

5. I found this story about the proposal for warning labels on social media useful. 

6. Oh, and remember when media was full of teens doing fake baby experiments for health class?  Apparently, they actually increased teen pregnancy. 

The Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo Recommendations

The Ripped Bodice released their Summer Bingo Board, and I have some suggestions.  As is often the case, they have a few I think you just have to stumble over, or have an incredible memory for. And a few that are giving me angst because I know I've read something with that,but what was it?  But here we go. And yes, I did include myself as one of the suggestions.  

Love in a bookstore: The Mistletoe Motive by Chloe Liese

Bet/Pact to Find Love: Bet on It by Jodie Slaughter, The Summer Love Strategy by Ray Stoeve

Magical Academy: How to Succeed in Witchcraft by Aislinn Brophy

Title Includes a Name: Sammi Espinoza's Last Review by Tehlor Kay Mejia

Olympics: Aiming High by Tanya Chris

Pen pals: The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest

Time Travel: Throwback by Maurene Goo

Diners, Drive ins, and Dives: Shake It Up Mickey Chambers by Charish Reid

Duel: Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai

Cover has an animal on it: Oh hi, my freebie short Cocker on the Porch fits this. 

Runaway Bride/Groom: Wedding Crasher by Mia Sosa

Lighthouse:

Drag: 

Fish out of water: Wish Out of Water by Holley Trent

Motorcycles: Nowhere but Here by Katie McGarry

Astrology: Summer of Supernovas by Darcy Woods

Protagonist smells like home:

But Daddy I love him!: You Made a Fool Out of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

Dragons: There are so many, but Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison is an option.

Amusement Park/Carnival: Zyla and Kai bu Kristina Forest

Cursed Love: Revelle by Lyssa Mia Smith

Grumpy/Sunshine: Fake it Til You Make It by Siera London. 

Lost Treasure: Raiders of the Lost Heart by Jo Segura, After Hours on Milagro Street by Angelina M. Lopez

Art Gallery:

Bias and Privelege

In going back to revisit some of the posts from around RWA's newsmaking, I realized I alluded to something about DEI programs. 

I do want to be clear. There are great DEI and DIBs and other programs. I have been in some. 

But some programs are a little sanded down. And so what can happen goes something like this. The program will talk about things like unconscious bias, how we all have it. It happens to everyone. 

And yes, unconscious bias does happen to everyone. We live in a racist and bigoted society. And so those things seep into everything. Being not racist and not bigoted takes work. 

But if you don't also discuss privilege and power structures, then its easy to walk away thinking oh, we're all a little bit racist, and so people can be racist about me too. And that's not true for everyone. 

I can be personally biased towards doctors who speak French, but that is not something that our whole society is designed to support. If I say I simply am more attracted to blondes, so much of our society is set up to reinforce that. 

And I can be a person of color and still be racist. I can be a woman and still be sexist. Our societal structures are designed to support all that.

So in a DEI training that just teaches we all have biases and should look out for them, well, it's not wrong. But that lesson on it's own does very little to help me unpack those biases. 

Tara Describes the Tony Nominated Plays and Musicals Badly

Technically these are one sentence descriptions, but, yeah, no claims to accuracy here.  This is done with love and appreciation for all the hard work that goes into making theater.  I only counted those nominated for best play, musical, or revival of one of those

. 

Jaja's African Hair Braiding - A day in the life of terrible immigration policies, and hair. 

Mary Jane - Being a mom is super hard. 

The Mother Play - Mothers are a lot. 

Stereophonic - Making art with other people is so great and also so hard and awful.

Hell's Kitchen - Not-quite-Alicia-Keys is coming of age. 

Illinoise - Campfire tales with dance. 

The Outsiders - In the 1960's it was hard being a parentless boy. 

Suffs - What if we let women vote, that would be cool.  I'm sure no one will oppose that.*

Water for Elephants - What if you really did run away to be with the circus.

An Enemy of the People - What if you tried to warn people of a deadly risk, and they got really mad. 

Appropriate - Sorting through a dead relative's things always leads to drama. 

Purlie Victorious:  A Non-Confederate Romp through the Cotton Patch - A preacher has a plan to win back his inheritance from the plantation owner. 

Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club - One needs a good place to relax and sing, when there are Nazis and political upheaval going on outside. 

Gutenberg! The Musical! - Two guys try to pitch a musical about Gutenberg. 

Merrily We Roll Along - Telling a story about friends breaking up backwards, so it seems happy.

The Who's Tommy - PTSD can sometimes result in excellent pinball skills.

*I know.  It's two sentences.  Oops.  My bad.   

Three Interesting Things

1. Some of the survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting are graduating high school, and they talked about that. 

2. While it sounds a little like a sci-fi plot, they are airdropping special mosquitos in an attempt to help preserve some special birds in Hawai'i. 

3. A hotel fire alarm went off in Dublin, Ireland, and one of the hotel guests made a point to meet the fire fighters, a man named Henry Winkler. 

7 Things about Tricked by Love

1. Side characters in books are always fun because they can be like cue balls, bouncing off the other balls, and resetting the table.

2. Making them main characters is always a little tougher, because now they need internal thoughts and feelings. 

3. When I wrote Hot Bartender, and created Lillian (Zane's sister) and Xavier (Zane's friend and eventual co-worker), I had no additional plans for them.

4. But well, Lillian apparently had plans. So when in Troubled by Love, Lillian mentioned a secret relationship, I realized I had to write that.

5. As with my other books, this book stands on it's own. The only thing you will learn from reading Tricked by Love that is that the couples in Hot Bartender and Troubled by Love are still together. Also, timewise, Tricked starts before Troubled but ends after it. 

6. Is there a museum date in here? Yup. And food? Yup. And a reference to DC's dinosaur, aka dinosaur butt?  Also, yep.

7. Lillian doesn't date bartenders. Xavier doesn't do secret relationships. They are both about to break their rules.

Lillian's brother is a bartender, and the bartender circle in DC is too small for her to date within that pool. She meets a hot guy on the customer side of a bar and goes home with him. When she discovers he is a bartender too, she decides they never need to meet again. And that works, until he shows up to Thanksgiving dinner.

Xavier's family drama means he likes things clear and upfront. But he never forgot Lillian, and when they end up seated at the same dinner table, he decides he'll agree to just about anything for another chance with her.

Except secret relationships never stay secret for too long. When Lillian's brother and Xavier start looking into working together, Lillian and Xavier are either going to need to go public or end things.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3VrcBza

Apple: https://apple.co/454n0nP

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3RdOgdQ

Barnes and Noble: https://bit.ly/3X0PInw

Universal Link: https://books2read.com/u/mdwRYw

Bookshop: https://bit.ly/4aKZiy2

Three Interesting Things

1. As someone who has worked in benefits, I have a lot of thoughts about why hospital pricing transparency would be hard, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a great goal.  NPR talked to Fat Joe who has been working on this issue. 

2. In other healthcare news, there's a possible tooth regrowing drug that's about to go into testing. 

3. And it has come to my attention that a new cat color has been identified and named salty licorice. 

"Long Way Down" at Olney Theatre

Content notes: On stage death by implied gunshot, grief, frequent use of prop gun, including pointing at the audience.

I listened to a podcast about resilience after natural disasters where they interviewed mental health specialists who had gone to Puerto Rico and talked about meeting folks for whom this was like the third or fourth life disaster they had faced. 

It was an accidental choice on my part, I just picked next episode on my way to the theater, but in many ways it was apt. 

I listened to the audiobook of Jason Reynolds "Long Way Down" years ago. 

It was turned into a one man play that I never managed to get to. But the story of Will who hops in an elevator with a gun after his brother is murdered, intent on evening the score, only to encounter ghosts of his past - well a one man play made sense. 

The book is short, making use of prose and wordplay in creative ways. 

A musical did not seem as obvious a choice. But we all know I love a musical. 

For the musical, we get to spend more time with some of the characters. We get to know Sean, Will's brother, and his mom, quickly in the first song. So that when Sean is killed in the third song, it's heartbreaking, even though you knew it was coming. 

The set design was fantastic, using a whirling, twirling elevator cage that fills up with ghosts. 

There are lovely little details. During one flashback moment, when Will remembers talking about grief with his mom and his brother, his mom sings about not pushing grief away, while Sean dances and teases Will behind her. 

And Will's uncle wears a Washington Bullets hat. 

The songs cover a range of styles. 

This was a really fascinating show, that adapted the source material in an interesting way. 

For those who haven't engaged with the material before, the book, and this musical version fall into what I often call conversation plays. Which is to say, it's about the questions raised, not the answers. It's a great story, but the ending is intentionally open ended. (Two theater-goers at my showing spotted an actor leaving and tried to get him to give them the answer. The actor wisely, but kindly, refused.)

So, you may want to go with a friend so you can all talk about it after. 

Covid note: Olney Theatre does not have a mask requirement, but they do have MERV air filtration that runs prior to and during the show, per their website. 

Three Interesting Things

1. I have not had a chance to watch "Malihini" yet, but appreciated this profile of filmmaker Ha'aheo Auwe-Decker about the diasporan Hawaiian experience and challenging the frameworks of storytelling.

2. RWA blamed DEI and the pandemic for their recent bankruptcy filing, and Smart Bitches has the recap if you want to really go back to why their membership plummeted. 

3. The PWHL doesn't have a DC area team (yet) but they just capped off their first season.  Go hockey!

The View From the Couch

I sat on my couch yesterday and watched out the window as a giant dark grey cloud covered half the sky. There had been some rain earlier, but not much, compared to the day of rain that had been originally predicted. 

I got up and peered out the window, to make sure I wasn't just missing the rain, but no, it was dark, but not currently raining. The wind had even died down. There were flashes of far off lightning, but far enough off that I couldn't hear the thunder. 

I kept watching. I'm not sure why. I was indoors, as was my cat. (My cat is always indoors, unless we are en route to the vet, to be clear.) I had no plans to be outside. Witnessing the exact moment the rain started, if it started was not going to change any of my plans. 

Sometimes it feels like you have to watch. You have to personally witness the thing. And hey, I love live theater. I am not going to say witnessing a thing cannot be cool. It can! 

But sometimes, when it is something you cannot affect or change, witnessing it is not always necessary or helpful. It can be cool, if you enjoy storms. 

I still care about the weather. I thought good thoughts for my unhoused neighbors. I certainly thought about those who were facing deadlier storms. Who lost power. 

But after making sure I am fed, and rested, I'm going to focus on the things I can help with, can affect, and let the rain do what it's going to do. 

Three Interesting Things

1. CHatGPT allegedly using a voice that sounds like Scarlet Johansson after asking her if they could use her voice is sort of the issue with so much of what we are calling AI.  It's trained on stolen data. And the stolen data seems to still be there. 

2. This local painter talks about how the city has changed since the 1980's and why he thinks painting is one way to document all of that. 

3. This family bought an octopus, and good thing their kid was super into octopuses, because said octopus was pregnant. 

Seemingly Simple Crafts

It has been fun watching people make friendship bracelets, a thing I did kind of constantly as a tween, learning to make 4 and 6 and 8 strand ones. I never knew the names of the stitches, but figured through trial and error, and tips from friends how to make many different styles. 

Recently I suddenly decided I needed to make potholders. And I ordered all the things, and now I have made an absolute ton of potholders. Okay, I have made like 16. And am debating ordering more loops, though I do also have some cotton yarn, and you can use yarn.

I'm still knitting. And making sweaters and shawls and such. But the joy of a potholder I can complete in a single evening, is really fun. 

I had tried getting into weaving before. The discovery that warping could take a whole evening kinda killed it for me. It's a me problem for sure. (There's a local class that has you do your first project on a pre-warped loom, which I thinking clever. Gets you hooked on the end result first, then you learn about the process.) 

But I also do not have to be a weaver. Oh but wait, I just made 16 potholders. I am a weaver. Just not the kind of weaver I thought I was going to be. But these are pretty. And they make me happy. And I do have plans for the potholders. 

Three Interesting Things

1. I really enjoyed Ashley C. Ford's podcast about the choice to become a parent, and appreciated this post where she talked about being an important adult in other kid's lives.

2. I confess, I was not really part of the "Blues Clues" generation, but this story of Steve meeting the now adult toddler who was part of the focus group that picked him, was adorable. (I originally typed licked, which was wrong, but then was it? Have you met toddlers?)

3. I continue to love this siblings series, including this piece about these Kenyan boys that have decided the key to education is community support.

It's Not the Remote Part

We're seeing a lot of back and forth about remote work, and office leases, and in person collaboration, and employee loyalty. 

And I think people are confusing remote work issues with things that are not entirely related to remote work.

Although, sometimes they are. I worked for a company where my entire office went remote, and then I got put on a team where other than myself and one other team member, they were not remote. They were getting one telecommute day a week, and were not allowed to have more. It was awkward to say the least. 

As such, we had team meetings where some of their questions were about the physical space, a physical space I had never (and still never) seen. They had contests involving listening to music in the hallways, that I could not participate in. We had large meetings, where a VP would come talk to us, and the VP would have to be reminded not to walk too far away from the phone, since some of us were listening in.

There were programs my co-workers had, that no one knew how to provide to me, or even who I should ask about them. 

I found out there was a group chat when my manager bragged that the team was so connected that we were all on a group chat. (I did get added the next day.)

When they moved to video meetings, another VP stood up and said this office space is the future of our company. Only for them to ask us to explain three months later why so many of us assumed they were planning to remove remote work.

And they posted no new job positions with a remote work option. Zero. 

So yes, as a remote worker I felt disconnected and not always valued. But it wasn't the lack of commute or the relaxed dress code holding me back. It was because I was disconnected. Because the company culture was built around in person collaboration and they did not know how to adapt it for remote, and honestly weren't trying. 

I've worked with other teams since, and plenty of us figured out lots of ways to stay connected across countries and timezones. To have weekly meetings and group chats that included everybody. To answer questions about tech and provide options for people to gather and even meet people not on their direct teams. 

Now certainly, not every job is suited to remote work.  But just like some meetings could be an email, if the only reason for in person gathering is collaboration, then it's time to consider altering the collaboration styles. 

Three Interesting Things

1. These high school students came up with an additional proof for the Pythagorean Theorem using trigonometry. 

2. I can pick up pens but not coins with my toes. But this next part of the sibling series talks about how such dexterity is often genetic. 

3. The  local student encampment was pepper sprayed and cleared early yesterday morning.  I have been reading student and faculty accounts.  Worth noting, there is an auction going on to  help raise money for people attempting to evacuate Gaza. 

7 Reasons Human Sex is Not Designed Solely for Procreation

It's very funny to me, because I spent years as a wee thing wondering how people were ever surprised to be pregnant. Yes, I know. I have studied more and learned more. But I mention this to say, if any of this is news to you, hi! It's cool. Learning is a lifelong process.

1. People who cannot conceive can have sex. Okay, remember when I said 7 reasons, it's really just one. But it's a biggie. 

2. Now you might be thinking, oh you mean like queer people? And yes, them too. And before you try to tell me why they shouldn't, I'm going to note, that if you are trying to argue our bodies, and more specifically our genitals were designed for this one thing, well, then they shouldn't work this way. And they do. It's almost like some humans just enjoy giving each other pleasure. 

3. People who are fundamentally, congenitally unable to conceive, can and often do, have sex. Not all species work this way.

4. People who have had their reproductive parts removed often still want and/or crave sex. 

4. Some people don't want or crave sex ever, even when they are able to procreate. 

5. People who have aged out of procreation, often still want and/or crave sex.

7.  It's probably worth noting, that I am not trying to argue that all human bodies are inherently perfect. I personally would like to submit my knee and my sinuses for a recall. The point I am actually trying to make is that there are an infinite number of humans who like and desire an infinite number of things. Every time we attempt to squish humans into a small number of types, we both harm people and leave them out. Any policy that tries to do more of that is by design biologically wrong and intentionally harmful. 

Three Interesting Things

1. I loved this story about the importance of public libraries.

2. This story is audio only, but Artomatic in DC this year is in an old office building, and one artist is displaying his art in the very office he used to work in.

3. A cat apparently got sealed into a box that was being returned,  I am fascinated about so many things in this story, including that the warehouse took the cat  home and then to the vet, where the microchip alerted them to the owner. So, it's helpful for even indoor cats, especially ones that sneak into boxes, to be microchipped.

Pasifika Reading Challenge Suggestions

So the Pacific Islanders in Publishing group has put together a Pasifika Reading Challenge for May which is somehow this week. 

I have suggestions of course, and yeah, they include me. 

Book to Film/Translated Book:

Chapbook/Short Story: I have a few short stories that would fit into this, including Called to the Water. Melissa Llanes Brownlee writes mico and short fiction, and lists her recent publications here.

Climate Fiction: Weird Fishes by Rae Mariz

Fantasy/Sci-Fi: Nafiza Azad has several fantasies that would work for this. 

LGBTQIA author: Kahaula writes queer and polyamorous romance.

Literary: Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's Every Drop a Man's Nightmare is a great read. 

Melanesion: Nilima Rao has a book called A Disappearance in Fiji.

Memoir/Biography: Okay, this is an older pick, but if you've never read Liliuokalani's memoir, written while she was imprisoned in the palace after the Americans overthrew the Hawaiian government, maybe now's the time. 

Micronesian author: Makiia Lucier has a new YA fantasy called Dragonfruit that looks great.. 

Mythology/Folklore:Malia Maunakea's Lei and the Fire Goddess is a great option for this. 

Mystery/Thriller: Michael Bennett's Better the Blood.

Non-fiction: Emma Espiner has a memoir There's a Cure for This that looks amazing. 

Poetry:UH Press has Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Futures, which has a trove of poetry by PI authors. Another option is Jamaica Osorio who has videos of some of her performances on her site linked here.

Polynesian Author: Lehua Parker is a prolific author. 

Romance: Oh hi. So I have many choices that will fit into this, but let's say, Clear as Ice. Also, if you have already read me, consider Azalea Crowley and/or Kahaula.

Middle grade/YA: Juleah del Rosarios has a YA called 500 Words or Less that looks wonderful.

Three Interesting Things

1. As someone who, since the pandemic, has worried about air quality in indoor concert spaces, I was interested to see this article about the Clean Air Club's work in Chicago.

2. I have been doing a little research for a project that led me to historical markers. So this deep dive into historical markers and their accuracies and viewpoints was of interest to me.

3. And also for research reasons, I have been listening to the "Hadestown" cast album.  (Okay, fine, maybe it's just because I like it.) So this piece about how Anais Mitchell took the West End staging of the musical as a chance to tweak a pivotal song, and then how social media meant that change spread, was fascinating.

The Butt Rule

I was once doing a group exercise where we all passed around papers, there was one for each person in the group, and everyone had to write on each one and then pass it on. So sometimes one would take a little longer, or the person you were passing to would clearly be busy and the person passing to you already had another ready for you. 

We discovered one had gotten stuck along the way and everyone looked, and nope. The person passing to me told me they had given it to me. And I was sure I had passed everything but shifted to look again, and discovered I had tucked the paper under me. So it was found and all was well. 

One person told me, they called it the Look Under Your Butt Rule. That it had started when they had kids in carseats who would call out that something was lost. And often once the car was stopped the search would find it underneath the kid.

These days, I often find in my squishy couch that I have lost track of, and often standing up and looking at where I was sitting helps. Though I can't swear I haven't been sitting on a park bench and suddenly realized I misplaced something I had just a second ago. 

We could get very profound about how things you need are often just right there.  But also we are keeping track of so so much these days.  Juggling all the things.  Sometimes, a thing or two slips underneath your butt.

New Release - Dream Catchers Anthology

Newsletter subscribers got the heads up first, but surprise! 

Something a little different from me. I had the chance to participate in an anthology. We all wrote flash stories around the theme of dreams. I have two stories  in this, one straight contemporary with a smooch (flash, so not much time) and the other is a little more folklore based, though there are relationship shenanigans.

Balloon Dreams is about a woman who, after a weird dream, hops into a hot air balloon to see if a change in perspective helps, and discovers that there's a cute balloon pilot.

Dream God's Assignment is about dream god Pahulu, who is asked to send a dream message to a friend's granddaughter.

The anthology is being made available on Amazon in e and paperback. 

It was such a fun prompt and I enjoyed the chance to go in two very different (and yet still very me) directions with the theme.

If Amazon is not your book purveyor of choice, I do have plans to make the stories, including an extended cut of one, available later this year, so stay tuned for that. 

Three Interesting Things

1. It has probably been a decade since I went to Salt Lake City for dayjob reasons.  But while we were there, I insisted I needed to see the lake.  And so I and the one co-worker who felt similarly drove out there, and circled past.  It was winter, there was snow, so we didn't get out of the car.  But it was gorgeous.  So, hearing about how climate change and drought have affected it, saddens me.  This article talks about some of the efforts to address that.  

2. In Wellington, one family has some native birds nesting underneath their house.

3. A DC born artist is part of two Broadways shows coming soon. 

Support the Things You Love

I missed talking about this last week, when it was National Library Week, but as anyone who has ever working in any sort of customer service job, which is a lot of them, people are so quick to tell you what they hate. 

And fair. I am currently trying to get information from a company that I have paid money too, I get it.

So it stands out when people take the time to tell you what they love. I wrote a love letter of sorts to my library this year. I made a point to reference specific things they were doing that I loved, books was obviously a feature. I mentioned branches that I frequented. Access to learning and to COVID tests that I made use of. And ways it had improved my life. 

First, it is so much more fun to write a letter about all the things you love about something. Try it. 

Second, I wanted to mention specific things that I loved, in the hopes that those would continue. 

And third, I wanted to mention how it had helped me. 

We are also in a tight budget season this year in DC, I am going to mention libraries as a thing I love, on the list of things I want more of. It's often easy to get stuck on the newsy bits of the city budget. But libraries, funding for shelters, for youth programs, also are parts of the city budget. And I plan to advocate for them. Your list may be different. 

And of course love letters can also go to grocery stores when a particularly helpful person got something taken care of, or to bus drivers who are fabulous. I think we all get customer surveyed to death these days and it's hard to remember that you can just reach out on your own to whomever or whatever you want to lift up. Like acces to books. 

Three Interesting Things

1. I am really enjoying NPR's sibling series, and this one about grief with siblings was interesting. 

2. American University's student paper wrote about the shrinking local news coverage in DC.

3. I enjoyed this story of two friends who first met in DC, and have stayed touch throughout the years.

The Things You Get Used To

I've had glasses for a while now. It was distance where it showed up first. The first glasses I bought fit tightly on my nose. I mostly wore them when driving, at sports, plays, things like that. 

I remembered when I realized that there were a group of people who knee me through my sports attendance who only saw me in glasses. And how weird it was that those people thought of me as a glasses person.

This happens in other ways too. I was in one group, where someone once asked me, after I did some new member interviews, if that was the most I had ever talked in a single day. (A friend of mine died laughing when I recounted this.) 

We all contain multitudes, and nit everyone gets to see every facet of us. So it can be weird when things collide or shift. 

Last year, I got progressives. I had started to find my eyes at the end of the day were having issues. And realized that I was working harder to see some smaller print, and maybe I needed to give my eyes some additional support. 

It took months to get used to them. I was in the very lucky position that a lot of my middle distance vision is still very good, so the contrast between the things that are blurry when wearing progressives versus not, was an adjustment. 

But now I'm used to them. (Okay, I may have typed some of this without them, but still, I reach for the glasses every day. Plan how many pairs to bring on trips.)

And recently I looked at my face and felt it looked different, and realized, it was because I wasn't wearing glasses. I have grown used to my face with glasses now. 

Three Interesting Things

Baltimore is fundraising for the families of the workers who died in the bridge collision.

1. Sibling relationships are fascinating to me, and I find the fact that this story mentions that birth order is less important than some think, while covering a story with very stereotypical birth order, fascinating.

2. The founder of Trans Day of Visibility is thrilled at the success.

3. Jemele Hill wrote about how this baseball gambling story is part of a long line of gambling and sports stories.

Pushing Back Against Cynicism

One of the things that happens, if you have researched bad sports environments, or lived through enough bad managers, or even done too deep a dive into certain advice columns is that you forget how hard the mundane terrible stuff can be. 

Sure, the stories about coworkers who show up at your house to proselytize are clearly very bad. But coworkers who just smirk and say, "I know you have a lot going on at home," can be soul draining. Even though when you try to describe it people will say, oh, she's just trying to be empathetic. 

I thought this as I read the WaPo article about Kim Mulkey, who was so upset that someone wanted to write about her she held a press conference about it. And the article says she's exacting, and unforgiving, and that she was probably meaner to some players, providing punishment unequally. And yet, the article does not seem that bad. Well, you know, unless you had to play for someone who was a my way or the highway perfectionist. Unless you, at a critical point in your physical and emotional growth, were playing for someone who would make fun of your hair, or your love life, in front of all your teammates. 

See, when I say it doesn't seem that bad, I mean, when you include coaches who have strangled their players, sexually abused them, drugged them, and starved them. Coaches who encouraged a gravely injured athlete to keep going, even though it was clear that further movement would likely cause lasting injury. So, when I say not that bad, to be clear, I do not mean this is good. 

It becomes easy to be like well, coaches are often like that. When the correct thing to say, is why do we let coaches be like that? Why are we constantly letting supposed geniuses harm others because sometimes they do great things - be it science, tech, or sports. And it isn't progress that we sometimes let white women be terrible. It's bad. 

I have the sense that this story is probably going to peel off another layer or two in the coming weeks. But even if it does not. People can win sports without making fun of you. People can win sports without being jerks. And if they can't, then they were never really good at sports anyway. 

Three Interesting Things

1. Leprosy is on the rise in the US.

2. This piece took a look at some of the mundane uncertainties related to the damage done to a, ahem, Key, Bridge in Baltimore, from longer commutes to changes in where customers stop after work. 

3. This story about a baby hedgehog that was taken to a rescue, where they discovered it was actually a hat bobble, is hilarious to me.  But I also want to note how wonderful that someone saw something fluffy in the wild, and assumed it needed to be treated with care and attention. May you treat every accessory with such care, and also potential tiny animals. 

Three Interesting Things

1. This is lovely retrospective of DCist, what it was, and what it became.  (Note: WAMU and I share an employer.  I am not responsible for any of their content.)

2. The inventor of the karaoke machine passed away recently. Imagine, karaoke with 8 tracks. 

3.The WaPo spent some time with a local Scrabble club. 

Annoying Phrase

Can we talk about the phrase "wasted on a man" in reference to any body part? Like why would lips/eyelashes/cheekbones be wasted on anyone? 

Because let's really unpack that. All those body parts serve a purpose. Eyelashes are there to protect your eyes. Cheekbones and lips are both structural and decorative. 

And yet, somehow this phrasing has become incredibly common in books. Implying that men don't deserve or need functional faces. Which seems like a weird take.

And yes, I am taking this super literally, but also, what else is that phrasing meant to say? 

And if it's solely meant to convey jealousy, aren't there way healthier ways to say that? Like if I looked at someone and thought, wow, that is an incredible set of cheekbones, I wish mine were that chiseled, or round, or prominent. That is one thing. But saying the person who has them doesn't deserve them, is honestly a little rude.

So how about we try to avoid that. 

Three Interesting Things

1. The prison population is aging, and this article looks at what that means for prison infrastructure.

2. Apparentlysomeoneopened some mail in the archives and found a gorgeous sweater.

3. The Iditarod is on (though,yes, several people have finished), and this story of the pizza place on the route that takes orders is just adorable. 

Altered Plans

So March is about where it gets feasible to eat outside around here. I obviously eat all year long, but eating outside is fun. Eating with other people is fun. And so I start making more plans to gather for food in March. But March is volatile too. It can snow. The temperature can drop wild amounts. It can rain for days. It gets a little iffy.

So I had plans to do a taco tour of sorts with a friend. But then a wind advisory came. The things was, one (okay several) of the taco places were very near me. And one often has a line. (It's a small space, no indoor seating.) And I kind of really wanted a taco. And wondered if the wind would make the line shorter. 

So I went. My hat blew off, but not too far. The taco line was shorter. And I discovered another place nearby that had been scheduled to open had opened. So I carried my tacos into the other place, and made a second to go order. And then I went home and ate all the food where it was not windy. 

Other than the wind it was a very pretty day. 

And my friend and I will convene for more food on another day. 

Three Interesting Things

1. DC is known for cherry blossoms (which are gorgeous) but we also have a goodly number of daffodils, so this story about the daffodil line in the UK was interesting. Getting out to see the flowers is the best part of spring.  

2. The Iditarod is on, which means there are dogs of the day, like this snuggly one. 

3. "This American Life" replayed their Math or Magic episode from last year, which as a romance author and reader I found fascinating. 

My Questions for NaNoWriMo

I became aware of the issues that had been raised to the NaNoWriMo board last year, during NaNo and wanted to give them time to respond, though it was quite clear there had been an egregious lack of oversight. 

Well, NaNo has now provided a roadmap of sorts for going forward, though no clear way to respond. So here are the questions I have. 

NaNo states they will reopen the forums, but going forward limit them to folks age 13 and up, rather than allowing all ages. How will they verify ages?

NaNo states all volunteers will receive criminal background checks.

First, I want to note that this is likely to dissuade great volunteers. Because it requires sharing info like national ID's and real names, which not everyone is willing to do. I'd also love to know if these checks will be run in the country the moderator lives in, or just the US. Or somehow in every country the moderator has lived in. But let's be real, criminal background checks show you who has been caught, which means it is more likely to demonstrate which of your volunteers are overpoliced where they live. 

In general, the best policies when you have kids and adults together, is basically a buddy system. Adults should not be alone with kids, kids should not be alone with adults. That means things like more mods, not allowing DMs. Does this eliminate all bad behavior? No. 

I worked with teens in the nascent days of Facebook, we had a policy that the adults wouldn't send friend requests to be teens, only the teens could initiate that. If they DM'd us, we shared that message with another adult. 

And yes, the place I volunteered also background checked us. 

NaNo has said regional forums will be moderated by people in those zones. That way moderators will be in the same time zone and familiar with the language. Cool. Does this mean NaNo is going to have no oversight? With NaNo reducing staff, is the remaining staff going to be fluent enough to check in on those, or is it going to be a free for all situation? 

And what processes will they have in place, if any, to monitor the safety of teens operating in those spaces? 

It's also worth noting that one of the issues raised involved a volunteer moderator making racist comments about someone. What, if any of these processes, will help NaNo catch or address that in the future?

And look, I do absolutely understand that running a global forum is a huge undertaking. My hope of for NaNo to succeed, rather than end up right back in a place where we have issues again. No set of systems will be perfect. 

And if you are a kid who wants to do NaNo, maybe the answer is that the NaNo site is not the place for you to make friends. With hashtags and whatever else, you don't even really need the forums. Not to say that literally every social media isn't also problematic, but find people where you are. Treat the internet like the shark infested waters that it is. And definitely don't trust adults who tell you to join another site where you can talk more freely. Sites where you can block people are probably your best bet. 

Also, in past years, particularly with the pandemic, regions were encouraged to set up discords, zooms, basically lots of ways to communicate outside of the forums. Will NaNo discourage that going forward? And if not, will NaNo state anything that happens off the NaNo site is not their business?

I have questions. 

But please, whatever your age, keep writing. We need your stories. 

 

Sale - Aloha to You

Newsletters subscribers already got this news, but my novella Aloha to You is on sale. It's part of Kobo's Leap Year Sale in Canada and the US today. For non-Kobo readers, it will be on sale next week March 3rd - 8th in honor of Read an Ebook week.

Aloha to You is the start of the City Complications series, so a great place to jump in. It features Seth and Adriana who meet when he interviews her for a lifestyle magazine about her lei business. He is a museum admin who secretly yearns to be a journalist. There are nosy parents, opinionated friends, and brownies.

Content notes listed here.

Available at multiple etailers:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2KJ1DR7

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2KM3RiR

Universal Link: https://books2read.com/u/4XZnd6

Note, print is not on sale, but if print is your jam, print link: https://bookshop.org/books/aloha-to-you/9781393545323

Three Interesting Things

1. RO Kwon wrote about the complicated feelings involved in writing to add to the stories about people like you, when you also kind of hope your family won't read it. Note: contains references to panic attacks and statistics about suicidal ideation. 

2. This story about a tech billionaire buying up property in Hawai'i was interesting.

3. Nepalese folks have been repurposing some of the trash mountain climbers leave behind.

7 Things: An Evening with Stephanie Hsu

I had the opportunity to attend an event with Stephanie Hsu. Here are seven things she talked about.

1. Hsu talked about how picking up a job in college working on a permaculture farm taught her a lot about understanding the environment and the context you are working in, rather than just coming in and plopping down the seeds you want.

2. She talked about how an industry person had told her "Everything Everywhere All at Once" was a silly title, that was too long, and it was a niche movie that very few people would see. 

3. She talked about how she really enjoyed working with people who were wonderful, and that being on a set that made things like sustainability part of their ethos has been something she is carrying forward as she produces her own show. 

4. She talked about visiting Copenhagen and being impressed with how the city was designed, and the cultural ethos, and also the practice of regularly jumping into the water. (She was advised that our local waterways were perhaps not the best choice for that.)

5. Hsu talked about working on a movie that was so specific and felt so much like the story she had been dying to tell was wonderful. But that she had not expected how wonderful it was to hear from others about how much it meant to them, and to feel like that was a wonderful feedback loop to be in. 

6. She talked about how she had realized a lot of the things society had told her about Asian Americans was not factual, or based on erroneous assumptions. And so she was working on unlearning and challenging those.

7. She was asked about role models in media she had growing up as a Chinese, American and she said there weren't really many, though she did mention Lucy Liu and Sandra Oh. But she noted there has been change, that she got to be on "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and get a role in a historical that didn't feel embarrassing. She also mentioned an Asian American extra on the show, thanked her, because she was pretty sure Hsu's role led to them considering an Asian American extra for a historical show. And she told some aspiring actors in the audience, and they haven't met you yet, so imagine what can happen. 

Quick Note

Hi, all,

WAMU announced today that they are shutting DCist down effective immediately. 

This is sad for me personally, and for the region, as the sign of a trend of local news being trimmed.

But, it also means there are a ton of links, including one I posted yesterday, that are now dead. 

So, tread carefully. If you are a local journalist, I love you, and please save copies of all your work. 

Three Interesting Things

1. Not to take away from Caitlin Clark's incredible achievement in scoring, but it turns out there are other high scorers, who, due to changes in the divisions and such, who's achievements should also be noted. 

2. I agree with this column on trigger or content warnings and how good ones let you make informed decisions, and how good media will suck you in regardless.

3. Mychal Threet's library videos have popped into my timeline few times, and are they always lovely.  This interview with him was equally so. 

Better at Mistakes

I've been sharing some of my knitting oops moments on Bluesky, and was tempted to be like, really, I do know how to complete a knitted object without an error. And then a small internal voice said, but do you? And my initial response was of course I do. I have lots of finished items. 

And then I started being like, well okay, that one, I crossed the cable the wrong way, and that one, I had to reknit the panel twice, and that one I had to tink back two rows. 

Many moons ago, Yarn Harlot said experienced knitters don't make less mistakes, they just make different ones. Except, I joined a cowl as a moebius when I did not mean for it to be a moebius, which felt like a newbie mistake in many ways. What's different is, I knew immediately what I had done wrong and what it would take to correct it. I still let it sit for a day, pondering, just letting it be a moebius. If it was gonna get double wrapped around my neck, who would even know? 

But in the end I fixed it. Because it is silly to have spent this time and money on something, that I could fix easily with minimal effort. 

I think this is often true of other things, like writing. Now that I've written multiple books, my drafts are both better and worse. But if I forget what character C's name is halfway through, I know how to fix that. If no one has hair or clothes, I know how to fix that. So, as much as I whine that I hate editing, I know what things are no big deal to fix later. So that helps. Even if sometimes I write myself an edit note and go, yeah, that's a future me problem. Now I'm going to eat a treat. 

Three Interesting Things

1. This conference happened in September, and I am very biased, because one of my knitting friends is in it, to say nothing of all the wonderful authors. But the videos are posted to the Yale website, so you can hang out with these wonderful people, without travel. 

2. This article is originally from a few years ago, but this discussion of how Bob's Red Mill became a leading gluten free provider was reposted, as Bob himself passed away recently. 

3. I loved this story about the gentleman known for rapping on the X2 bus.  Note:  DCist and I currently share an employer.  I am not responsible for any of their content. 

Adjustments and Enjoyment

I've had a week where my body has reminded me how connected everything is. How doing a thing here, affects a thing there, and so on. It feels like one of those lessons you learn over and over. 

Lunar New Year was over the weekend, and we switched from one animal to another, and I thought about how switching from a rabbit (or cat) to a dragon signaled a change in movement. In the ways that animal approaches the world, and all of us. 

It can be easy to focus on the cleaning, the desire to have the perfect or best first day. But many of the traditions are about eating favorite foods, gathering with loved ones, and resting. The prep is in service of that. 

I realize there are new year switches that happen - for us on the Northern Hemisphere - late spring, or early fall, or with a wider rotation. 

So whether this past week was a new year, or just mid-February, making time for enjoyment is always a good plan. 

Three Interesting Things

1. Sometimes somewhere on social media, someone will say this thing is cool, and I will open a tab and go back to social media, so by the time I get to the tab, I have totally forgotten who or where this person told me this thing.  Short story "End of Play" by Chelsea Sutton is one such thing.  It's wild, appeals to me as a theater lover, and also a person who enjoys short stories that go deep into a thing. 

2. My time on social media Spoutible was short, but I did still have an account there, when I heard about this data leak, and was concerned that the org itself did nothing to communicate this well to users who were not active on the site.  I have not deleted my account.

3. I hadn't really thought there was that much variation in tennis balls these days, though I certainly had noticed that injured seemed to be taking out a lot of players.  So this article discussing the differences,and how players are hoping for better standardization was interesting. 

A SCUBA tale

A while ago, so like the early aughts, a friend asked me to be her buddy and take SCUBA lessons. It sounded fun. I had been on a trip where I snorkeled a few times, and sometimes us snorkelers were on one side of the thing, an and the SCUBA boat was on the other side, and the SCUBA folks moved faster and got closer to stuff, and did not have to clear their snorkels (or so it seemed). So I was in the right place to be interested even though I had no travel plans to anywhere I wished to SCUBA.

So I did, and I learned there is SCUBA math. I mention this because so many things turn out to have math, and my math teachers had a poster about how math was useful, but I do not recall SCUBA (or knitting) being on there. Maybe it was and I just didn't know yet I would ever care about those things.

So, SCUBA also involves pool lessons. Our first pool lesson was at Holton, and yes, as an alum, I am biased. But I was like cool. I know where it is. I did my lifeguard training in that pool. I'm ready.

But it turned out we were at a semester switch or something.

Worth noting that in SCUBA pool lessons, part of what you practice is sinking to the bottom. So you have all your gear on, and you swim along to the bottom of the pool, looking through your SCUBA mask. And then after the lesson, you kind of want to take a shower and rinse some chlorine off before you trek home.

Anyhoodle, the rest of the lessons were at Georgetown Prep. If that sounds familiar to you, you are either or local or remember the Kavanaugh hearings. Does this have anything to do with my story other than to remind you of my biases? Nope.

Now I also knew where Georgetown Prep was. And again, this was a while ago, I am sure someone has cleaned this all since.

But let's just say, there was not nothing to see on the bottom of that pool. And the lockers were -again, at the time, you are free to tell me they rebuilt it all three years ago.

But, there was a towel in one of the lockers. The lockers were all open face, no doors. The towel was gray. Except a teeny corner on one edge that revealed it had not originally been gray.

I did not put things in the lockers.

But, one of the other students did tell me she liked the Prep pool way better, that the Holton pool had just smelled like chlorine. So see, I'm biased

Three Interesting Things

1. This recap of some of the responses "Sesame Street"s Elmo got when asking on social media how folks were doing was a fascinating glimpse into the ways social media and characters for kids, speak to a lot of us, even adults. 

2. I first saw Chita Rivera in the filmed version of "Pippin".  I listened to her memoir last year and enjoyed it. This remembrance for her captured some of her spirit. 

3. I have read enough British historicals to have heard of posset, but never actually looked into what it was.  Per the wikipedia, it was done a little differently in olden days, but this recipe for a modern lemon version looks wonderful.

Sunrise and Sunset

I am not a morning person, even though I naturally (now, umpteen years later) wake up by a certain time in the morning. I am more of a late afternoon/early evening kind of person. 

So, I tend to associate seeing the sunrise with some sort of event that forced me to be up at some tortuous hour. And conversely I associate seeing the sunset with great evenings eating outside with friends or family. 

But this time of year, in this part of the world, as the days slowly lengthen, my normal schedule means I see both the sunrise and the sunset. 

Which, yes, is very cool. And I realized maybe, possibly, it's not the sunrise's fault it happens to occur early for much of the year. 

And while I do not plan to rearrange my schedule as the days lengthen, I can pause to appreciate these things while they are occurring at such convenient times. 

Three Interesting Things

1. I'm so sorry that George Carlin's family has to spend a moment on this, but someone decided they could use AI to make a "new" George Carlin special and now the estate is suing. 

2. I appreciated this article about the strategies one scientist in Australia is using to keep COVID safe.  

3. I swear I don't only care about the new winningest coach in college basketball history because she has a delightful name, but she does have a delightful name.

2023 Reading Tally

So, a few caveats. I've been doing the reading tally for enough over a decade that I no longer wish to be specific.  But here's a link to last year, and it links to the prior year, and so on. 

Last year I had a really good reading year.  And it turns out, that the slow destruction of Twitter, well, that freed up quite a bit of reading time too.  I also had a period where I was between contracts, and had a lot lot of reading time.  And I had two trips to visit family, and that helped too. 

Read 377.  Yes, I'm sure.  Some were graphic novels that were short, and many were not.  It's also worth noting that I DNF'd 24.  (So they are not included in that number, I just like to track DNF's.) Per Storygraph, about 56% were in the 300-499 page range, the rest were shorter, except for a small percentage that were 500 or more. 

There were 310 different authors read (not including anthologies and shorts). 

The oldest title was from 2006. 158 were from 2023. 

193 were new to me authors. 

Most read author was Holley Trent. 

Highest reading month was June, followed by July. 

37 were audiobooks, which was actually lower than last year, though not by much.  266 were library books, in case you are wondering how my book budget sustains this.   And 54 of them were from Kobo Plus.

I hesitate to predict, but it seems like I might not hit this peak again.  I may watch TV or something this year.  But I am glad reading provided so much fun last year.  And have high, if not quite this high hopes for this year also.