Bhutto Assassinated

Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan and I believe, the first female leader of a Muslim country, was assassinated yesterday (Thursday). The link goes to an account by a photographer who was there - this picture is his picture taken before the attack.

I didn't find out about this from the radio or the TV news, oddly enough I was checking out a new blog post by my cousin, where he's talking about the New Hampshire primary he's soon to participate in, and he mentioned this at the beginning of the post.

This is very sad - especially sad since when I was googling for articles about this event, most of the links were about the earlier attack on Bhutto in October in Karachi, where she survived and was quoted talking about it afterward. Since most of those posts didn't have a date on the first search results page, it was a momentary feeling of "oh, she's not dead. She's talking about the attack!" But no, it was just the earlier attack.

Cancer Rant on Craig's List

I am taking a break from packing and found this posting on "best of Craig's List" from a person (woman I'm assuming) who is recovering from Hodgkin's lymphoma (which is similar to what my Mom had).

And it's really just a very realistic rant about what it is like for her to have cancer, go through chemo, hear friends telling her about all their relatives who died of cancer, and so on. It's very annoymous but I would have wanted to write back to her and say "you go, girl"!

Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages

I'm actually rereading Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell right now, but I wanted to write about Portable Childhoods since I realized I only need a quick spiel on the Facebook thing.

And of course this is just me writing reading notes. I'm sick right now also and am writing this in bed on the laptop (having just had some generic Nyquil like cold medicine). It's kind of comforting to have Portable Childhoods and Max Merriwell hanging around. Also I just reread Points of Departure, but I guess that is a different post.

My copy is paperback and is signed but I think I bought it from Amazon, so that is mysterious. I didn't remember having noticed that it was signed when I bought it on the site. Maybe I should have bought it locally (and could have had Ellen sign it too, I guess) --- but I wanted it pretty quickly.

I like Neil Gaiman's intro because he paints a pretty good picture of what Ellen seems to be like in person (he calls her "a force of nature" which is quite fun) and how that differs from her writing. It's also obviously quite cool to have him writing the intro at all. I blogged here earlier about when we first met Ellen at the Gaiman reading in Berkeley - she was sitting behind us and we heard "nebula award" and our ears perked up. Then Dave actually asked her who she was. I think she thought we were more than a little crazy.

Basement Magic
I loved this one, maybe partly because I share this fascination with basements and I kind of miss not having one here in California. That one house we saw that was quite crappy, almost sold itself to me on the strength of having a huge, albeit unfinished, basement.
I also think Dave would be interested in this story with the stepmother theme too .
motherless daughter, strong female role model in Ruby, magic that comes true...

Intelligent Design
God as being almost like a spoiled child, making the world by whim, while his grandmother is the one who's been there even longer...
I think overall I didn't like this one quite as much as the others, but still liked it.

Green Glass Sea
Doesn't need much more description other than that I love Dewey (and I wonder when her birthday is).
And where is my copy of Green Glass Sea?

Clip Art
Nice "documentary" of a young girl who collects paper clips. amazing amount of detail with the clips and their names, and the cutting between different scenes...

Mobius, Stripped of a Muse
Ever increasing layers of authorship -- a scene...it goes for a while, and then the unseen writer is like, "no that's not working" and the scene starts again....
It sounds like an improv game almost (and maybe it is).
I liked this one a lot. Good pre-nano story.

Time Gypsy
I love this one -- woman goes back in time to meet physics scholar she's admired all her life, and winds up falling in love..

I bought this as a chapbook when I was at borderlands. Maybe at the same time I bought Green Glass Sea..
Part of why I like this is just the fandom of finally meeting and getting to know, someone you've admired for a long time.

A Taste of Summer
This is probably my favorite story in here that I hadn't already read before. I just love the feeling of adventure when she actually crosses the street, looking for refuge, and the cool science-y role model type that Nan is. Really similar to my character in the Nano (and not suprisingly).
I also liked how Nan isn't conventionally dressed - showing Mattie that's it's ok to wear men's clothes....whcih she hadn't really seen before.

Portable Childhoods
This one, sometimes I see myself in the unnamed child and sometimes in the mother, who always seems a little bit amazed to have this person in her life, her daughter, who is her own little person - different from the mom, and she wonders if the two would have been friends.
Also please note on p158 - there's a whole thing about St. Elmo's Fire, interesting because of Pat's affinity for St. Elmo.

And all the stuff about shuffling cards -- how important it is to learn and what a milestone it is. I totally feel that way too. I learned to shuffle at my grandma's house because we were playing a lot of solitaire, and I wanted to shuffle better. Dr. Gammell wound up teaching me.

And last but not least
In the House of the Seven Librarians
Which i had already read in the Firebird anthology but I love so much. And here kari is going to be a librarian.

And the best part -- the afterwod for me..
" I didn't start writing, or at least writing seriously, until I was almost forty."
there's hope yet for me!
Jon Hassler had said the same thing.

Online interview with PM

I found a long bibliography of Pat's work on the Speculative Fiction Database, and while poking around I found this interview -
in which her interviewer, who's interviewing via chat, suddenly disappears, as she nonchalantly continues the interview with herself, and then smoothly welcomes the interviewer back to his own interview:
"Welcome back Jim! While you were gone, I started talking about my new book from the Explo, The Color of Nature..."

Wonderful example of, even apart from her writing, why Dave and I both think she's so awesome.

Another reason: The Brazen Hussies Blimp.

And yet another reason: interview chat taking place while Pat has to run off and corral the Blimp.
So Folks...let's give Pat a hand so that she can supervise this rather wild blimping.

WisCon

I just registered to go to WisCon to reserve it in there right after the wedding time.
I also booked a room in the Concourse Hotel where the con is held.

Only thing now is to book a plane flight - may fly to Minneapolis and drive to Madison from there, especially if one of the twins wants to go.

Here's Pat's guest of honor (and TipTree founding) speech, at the 1991 WiscCon.

NaNo Dedication

Trout in the Dishwasher, by Solveig Pederson

Inspired by Pat Murphy, Susan Juby, Madeleine L’Engle,

Madeleine E. Robins and Ellen Klages

For David, who does keep me fed and almost sane, and makes life fun.

And for my mom, Diane Marie Dahlen Pederson. 1948-1990

“Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story.”

-- Pat Murphy, The Wild Girls

I'm not going to do much with the NaNo "novel", at least not right now, but can post the dedication page, and more info than I sent in a larger group email earlier, about some background.

Last night I went to the NaNo party at Root Division .
That was quite fun as my first time - Chris Baty actually bestowed me with a sticker on my crown (yes, paper Burger-King like crowns, but they were generic, not actually from Burger King). The stickers had numbers for how many NaNos one has won. Many have 6s or 7s on their crowns by now, it's been going on for 9 years.

I was also glad I was there to hear Chris' toast because it really captured the feeling of - "wow, we've been writing every day or trying to now, as much as possible for a month, and now...we don't have to anymore...but we kinda still want to!"

He told a story about accidentally bringing his laptop with him to a concert last night (after he was done with his NaNo) and then having to sadly leave it on his bed, crying its "dell tears" in its neglect.

Then I went to Killing My Lobster's first all female show - "For the First Time" which was appropriate for the first-time NaNo person, and conveniently next door to Root Division where the NaNo party was. The link is to a SF Weekly review of the show, which is pretty spot-on - there were parts that were amazingly funny but parts that were not.
Ellen and Mad met Pat and I there. More details/thoughts to be written in my actual journal...

And here's the NaNo Dedication (see below) - I had emailed out the basic dedication but not the paragraphs below of extra background info. See I don't want to email out the novel but will talk about bits.

In addition to the major literary inspirations below, Annie Lennox was my constant companion throughout the entire month, and actually popped up at the main character's door during a North Dakota snowstorm looking for refuge.

Also, my co-workers Shannon and Peri have been thanked in person and on Facebook -- Shannon brought up the idea of cooking trout in the dishwasher, and our co-worker Amy did it and wrote about it on facebook, getting my attention.

Peri told me about the cryptography career of actress Hedy Lamarr, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr) which gave my 12-year-old main character, Anastasia, an interesting topic for her combo science/writing project, and resurrected a huge amount of word count in the middle of the month. This article is really a great summary of her career as inventor, with a lot more detail than I found on the wikipedia.
It's really fascinating about the culture clash between the military and Hedy and her co-inventor, as their patent was partially inspired by a player piano, and as soon as the military read that, it lost a lot of credibility.

NaNoWriMo - done on time!

Here's my last posting in the "30 minute word wars" for NaNoWriMo.

My main character got caught up in an interesting conversation, and then a dream sequence followed, which carried through most of the last 5,000 words, written today, the last day of Nano.

It feels pretty good - I was able to finish on time even though I spent 10 days at least in the middle of hte month obsessing about my apartment hunt.

I'd like to thank:

* Dave, for being very understanding and supportive, and cooking endless meals for me.

* The word wars on the Nano site, which provided structure for the task of writing thousands of crazy words so quickly.

* Annie Lennox and her new album, "Songs of Mass Destruction"

* Pat Murphy, Madeleine Robins, and Ellen Klages, for providing inspiration, and the impetus to actually finish, because we are seeing a play on Dec 1 and I told them all I'd be done before that time!

Unwrapping the Gifted: blog for teachers of gifted kids

Here's another site I'm looking at instead of actually writing.

This woman who started this site is in Montana.

NAGC (Gifted Child) conf in MN - Keillor keynote speaker

This is an interesting karmic thing maybe (or maybe there are conventions for teachers/parents of gifted children all the time).

This is one of the topics of my Nano, and I just googled around looking for some info on what a good "gifted and talented" teacher is supposed to be like, since I didn't think I had one.

It turns out that their convention was just a few days ago in Minneapolis, and Garrison Keillor spoke.

Also, we just saw Beowulf last night, which should probably be a separate topic.

LiveJournal

It appears that LiveJournal is the place for writers, more than facebook or myspace. Or even blogger.

I have linked two LiveJournals already to my links area - it looks like there are even more due to the links that they have linked to in their blogs.

Wild Girls Writing tips

These are from the back of "Wild Girls" - quotes from Pat's fictional writing teacher, Verla Volante:

A good writer tells the truth by telling lies.

When you're talking to a character, you find out what they think and feel. But what a character feels isn't always true.

Pay attention. Notice things and think about what you notice.

Sometimes you're writing about one thing and you realize that you're really writing about something else.

You can work on a story while you're doing anything that doesn't engage your whole attention.

Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story.

Annie Lennox's blog

Annie Lennox has a blog on her site and she's posting really frequently. One post has a list of beauty hints (I think of her song "Keep Young and Beautiful" when reading it).

She also has various thoughtful things to say about her activism for HIV/AIDS, plus random things like stories of seeing rats outside venues that she's performing in, of watching a couple actually arguing in the middle of one of her shows (!!!) etc.

It loads in really slowly because she has various artsy graphics. Right now I just want to read the text in the blog, but the page reloads every time I want to see a new blog post...

There and Back Again, by Max Merriwell, by Pat Murphy

Rereading There and Back Again because I picked up a nice pre-signed copy at Borderlands Books when I bought The Wild Girls.

This is Pat's space-opera homage to The Hobbit -- but here it's not Bilbo, it's Bailey Beldon, a norbit (I think I read somewhere that the word was coined for Pat by Ellen Klages) who ventures forth from The Restless Rest, his cozy home in our solar system's asteroid belt, in the company of Gitana, a mysterious female wizard-like figure, and Zahara, with her group of "sibs" (female clones).

What I love about this book is that I usually get caught up in all of the stuff Pat herself has dreamed up - the 'pataphysicians, the space travel through black holes, etc, the base 12 math, etc.

-- and I forget about the underpinnings to Tolkien. But when there's a more clear or obvious reference (such as when Bailey finds his "ring" and goes through the riddles scene)
I think - "Oh cool, that part is familiar - that's how she tied that in..."

I had forgotten that this book, like "Adventures in Time and Space..." and "Wild Angel" has a "mysterious Murphy" -- here, it is "The Curator" who presides over a host of artifacts which sound suspiciously like they could also be Exploratorium exhibits!

I like the cover as well - maybe because every time I look at it, it reminds me of Annie Lennox, who is another of my favorite people.

I also love the character of "Fluffy"! Read the book to find out who (or what?) Fluffy is!

The Stone War by Madeleine E. Robins

This is a book that has the lions in front of the NY Public Library coming to life to fight on the side of a band of survivors of a bizarre disaster in New York City -- plus emotionally gripping characters and relationships, and a faun!
That is a very simplistic rendering but this blog is more for me to keep track of what I was surprised or delighted about.

Books for Motherless Daughters (and others too)

I started thinking about making a list like this because in various groups and talking to my sisters I am always recommending books, movies, music that has helped me.
Either these help me dredge up feelings that I bury otherwise, or make me feel less alone.

Kari and I talked about this list and she added several others

Books
The Wild Girls, by Pat Murphy
* this is a book for the 12-year-old that I still feel like I am, because that's when my mom first got really sick (in the coma).
And for those whose mothers left them as children or are emotionally distant, there's a lot of stuff relevant to them here too...

Motherless Daughters and Motherless Mothers, by Hope Edelman
These are both great books - Motherless Daughters is divided up by age the person was they lost their mother. We find in our group that people sometimes don't feel ready to read these for a while, it's just too close.

Summer of the Great-Grandmother, by Madeleine L'Engle
L'Engle is best known for "A Wrinkle in Time" and the rest of her Time Trilogy, as well as many books for adults. This is one of her Crosswicks Journals, about the summer when her mother was declining into senility and they brought her north to their house (Crosswicks) to take care of her before her death.
This is a great book for everyone and especially for those with a recent loss -- L'Engle remembers the mother she knew, and her mother's past, that she doesn't really know. And talks about how hard it is to take care of a mother who's sometimes herself, and something not.

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
This book is about the year after Joan's husband suddenly died in their house, while she was making dinner. I was moved by this book because she has feelings that I thought only kids who experienced loss were having (like extreme guilt about not being able to help, and wanting to save his shoes because of a fantasy that he'll come back and get them)

The City, Not Long After, by Pat Murphy
The main character in this book loses her mother, and then goes to San Francisco to warn the city of an impending invasion (she and her mother were trying to do this when she died).
Oh, by the way, there's been a plague in SF so it's back to a more agrarian trading existence. The girl (Jax) finds the house where her mother lived and feels her presence there. I guess I also like it because she's very self-reliant but learns to get help from people (which I have trouble with)

The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis
One of the Chronicles of Narnia - in this book Digory's mother is sick, but he is able to bring her a magic apple and she gets better! Oh wish fulfillment! Of course she doesn't live forever, but she does get better.
C.S. Lewis' mother died when he was a child.

The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis
Another Chronicle of Narnia, the last. Our pastor (whose mom also died when he was a kid) finally showed us that he had actually read all of the series, when he used the below when he spoke at our mom's funeral:
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.

The Wild Girls, by Pat Murphy

This is the review I posted on Amazon.
I wrote more about this in my journal and in an email to Pat.

I love this book.

I don't want to give any spoilers about the content, and I think there's enough information about the book at Pat Murphy's site and here on Amazon for readers to learn about that. The book itself is just really good.

Plus, it makes me want to
1. write more, and
2. also get to know my mom better via the questions that Joan and Fox learn to ask in the book (unfortunately this is not possible for me, except via #1).

Pat has written that she wrote the book for the twelve-year-old that she once was, and I feel like she wrote it for the twelve-year-old that I was also. And for the 33-year-old that I am now (and all the ages in between).
I bought an extra copy for my 13-year-old niece.
The woman working at the bookstore where I bought the book (Sorry Amazon, I went for a local bookstore on this one) told me that she has been waiting for this book "for years!"

December 5, 2007
I still love this book.
It really did serve as a good inspiration for my NaNo novel.

Discovered recently the link to Pat on the Speculative Fiction Database
which also includes her birthdate. We are both Pisces, which somehow does not surprise me too much.
Useful for potential gift surprises...

Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life by Michael Krasny

I just bought this book on Sunday morning when hanging around at Kepler's while Dave was working in Menlo Park nearby.
I got up to the counter to ring it up, and the guy said, "Are you going to the event?"

"What event?"

He points at the huge sign to the left of the counter. Michael Krasny, host of KQED's Forum (ie my constant companion if I'm in the car from 9 am to 11 am, and I often listen to the podcasts other times) - was discussing the book, the next day, Monday.

But I had to be at focus groups at work so I couldn't make it. Nicely, the Kepler's guy offers that they'll have Krasny sign it to me.

I just picked it up today, and was reading it tonight after bringing pizza to Dave, at work tonight too. He had written, "To Solveig - Best wishes for a good life with good books and good listening!"
All the "goods" were underlined. It's pretty cool - seems like he could be a bit more original with his adjectives, but I'm not complaining. I haven't finished the book yet. Maybe this is an inside joke.

It's kind of fun to read about some of his interviews, like his early one with Gore Vidal, that didn't go so well. He usually sounds so prepared and put-together on the radio, it's quite amazing. Also he manages to make the book, at least in the first part I've read before he meets his wife, a little bit spicy! I was surprised.

Summer of the Great-Grandmother, by Madeleine L'Engle

I wish I could still find a graphic of the cover art for the edition of this book that I have.
I store my letter that I got from Madeleine in 1990, in my copy of this book. My mom died in 1990 but the letter is dated several months after that.
This book overall was very comforting -- as I think I started reading it at some point when my mom was sick and perhaps after she had moved home with us.
L'Engle talks in this book about what it was like to spend her mother's last summer, with her in their house at Crosswicks, with all the generations - grandchildren, etc.

She writes about the mom she knew, and what she knows about her mom's life before she was born, and how the two differ, and about how hard it was for her when her mom sometimes seemed to be there, and be her mom, and sometimes was somewhere else. (Her mother was declining due to Alzheimer's).

The Severed Wasp, by Madeleine L'Engle

I was also reading my beloved copy of "The Summer of the Great Grandmother" this week and also decided to check this out from the library, because I wasn't sure if I had read it or not.

Much (all) of the present storyline of the book takes place in New York, in and around the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I know that she actually spent time at the library of this cathedral - Kati and Kari and I had always wanted to bump into her on the grounds, and we're sad now, that that is never going to be possible.

It's interesting that in these couple weeks where I seem to be quite present for my teen self (doing the focus groups, promoting Pat's "middle grades" book, thinking about what I was doing during these teen years) -- that I read this book and will be reading "Wild Girls".
This book, although an adult novel, has a lot of teens and children being mentored and encouraged to develop their talents (both in Katherine's past and present). Katherine Vigneras, the distinguished pianist who is the main character, becomes a teacher/mentor for a young girl who finds she is a good composer (she loses her ability to practice her main talent, dancing, because of a tragic accident).

Yolande, a former pop singer, teaches another young girl who has a singing gift.
And really there is a good mystery here, but on top of that is just feeling like I'm spending some time hanging out with Madeleine L'Engle. You feel that L'Engle herself, as a famous author living in NY, may have dealt with some of the prank calls and other trappings of fame, that Katherine does in the book.
And then in Pat Murphy's "Wild Girls" -- we have a charismatic writing teacher who brings out the talents of Joan and Fox...

PBS Once Upon a Time show on YouTube and elsewhere

On YouTube and at the link above, there are actually people talking about the PBS Show Once Upon a Time. I found this by googling Kerfumbly after nostalgically looking at the "Teeny Little Super Guy" videos from Sesame Street.

This was one of my favorite shows but i usually mainly ended up watching it when home sick I think because it came on during the day.

The person who made the site above wrote the following - they watched the show on South Dakota Public TV - I watched it on Praire Public Television (North Dakota). I wonder why North Dakota's was not called by the name of the state also.

"It was produced by NPTV (Nebraska Public Television). Actually the Nebraska Department of Education had a hand in it, and it was produced at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. The story revolved around this librarian named Marian that had been kidnapped by a witch named Kerfumbly. Kerfumbly demanded a story every day, and Marian would put ingredients into a machine and out would come a book with a story containing elements of all the things she had fed into the machine, and Marian would read the story to us (and the witch).

Chronicling some reading on Facebook

I am also chronicling the "what I am reading right this minute" on Facebook's iRead.

And I started a group for Pat's Wild Girls book - see on profile.

Haven't posted here much at all since earlier this year, though.

The Falling Woman, by Pat Murphy

I am resurrecting my blogging habit here since I'm also keeping my iRead app on Facebook updated.
This is Pat's Nebula-winning novel -- it's been often described as more mystic realism than science fiction, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
I could not remember for sure if I had read this already or not. There is some sort of parental abandonment/early loss thread that is certainly present here (although it doesn't speak to me as resoundly as "The City, Not Long After" does.
Here Elizabeth leaves her daughter Diane to go off and be an archeologist.

In "The City" Jax's mom actually does die, but her spirit still seems present in San Francisco, and it appears that in "The Wild Girls" -- Fox's mom inexplicably leaves her and her dad. Fox believes that her mom must have turned into a fox.

PRETTY CHICKEN

This is my dad reciting a poem that his grandmother used to recite by heart. I'm testing how this works for me to suddenly choose to post it to my blog after seeing it. I really like how he's sitting in the rocking chair and ends up rocking back and forth as he gets into the reading. Also see in the background our mantel and fireplace in the house in Valley City, ND. The picture above the fireplace is one my parents have had for a long time. The smaller pictures underneath are of us, my Grandpa, etc. There's also a really cool small heavy bell that is on the mantel but can't be seen here. To the right of my dad's head is part of an Ederstrom painting of a grain elevator.