Reading Science Fiction and Fantasy

 

I've been reading a lot. Possibly too much, but that's a post for another time. I have thoughts about science fiction and fantasy stereotypes and tropes. This post was prompted by a friend sharing an essay on similar topics, linked to here.

I discovered science fiction in eighth grade, starting in my school library with Robert Heinlein. He had a book, Podcayne of Mars,  which features a 15 (earth) year old girl. She had agency and wit, and it started me on the genre. Reading the wikipedia summary today, maybe she had a little less autonomy than I remember. I continued with SF throughout my high school years. I don't much remember any authors besides Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, though frankly Asimov wrote enough to keep any single mortal busy anyway!

I started in fantasy at about the same time, though I don't remember much except for Tolkein, and The Last Unicorn, considered one of the best all-time fantasy novels. One of the synonyms for "fantasy" novels has been "sword and sorcery". More on the sorcery aspect below.

When I was a freshman in college, I took a class in science fiction and fantasy literature. The required reading expanded my horizons significantly. That's when I read, for example, Dune. And a great deal of Kurt Vonnegut. I don't know for sure, but I strongly suspect everything on the reading list would have been written by a man. Even "James Tiptree, Jr" was not publishing novels back then, and it wasn't until much later it was known she was a woman.

I remember having an argument in that class about women's roles in this literature. My point was that if you were inventing a world, there was absolutely no reason to perpetuate the sexist roles that exist in this one. Evil sexist people and societies might exist, but clearly their sexism was only an aspect of their evilness. Not everyone agreed with me - this was 1973, after all. 

It was only later that I found Vonda McIntyre, Mercedes Lackey, and Ursula LeGuin, as the first women of sci fi and fantasy. By imagining worlds free of our constraints, they expanded my own imagination into what would be possible in our world. Dreamsnake by McIntyre blew my mind. Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey captivated me and, as it the first of a considerable series, the author held my attention for quite a while. (According to Wikipedia she has published over 140 books! No wonder I haven’t read them all.) I sought out only books written by women for a while. Now, there are also works by men like John Scalzi. He has written some books where the main character, the narrator, is actually ungendered. Through the whole book, you don't know. I was chagrined to only realize this having read a whole novel like this. Throughout the book, my notion was the narrator was a man (after all, it was written by a man). But I read a blog post about it, and realized that it was never made explicit throughout the book.

I am sad to say that my awareness of racism in speculative fiction took much longer to awaken. There was no overt racism in any of the books I liked, but also there tended to not be any characters of color. That gradually changed, and frankly Star Trek was a leader in this area. But gradually, I have grown uncomfortable with the concept of whole races of non-human beings who are just plain evil, serving in some ways as a proxy for racism. Creatures like Orcs in the Lord of the Rings, non-human characters one can kill with a clear conscience. 

I've also grown impatient with the tropes of the semi-human magical race, and of the "chosen one" who alone can save the world (or the universe), due to some inherent quality born into him (it's almost always a boy). There is sometimes a theme of people with special abilities being persecuted and exploited, when they are clearly actually superior to ordinary humans. Huh. 

I remember reading an alternate-history book that took place with a Roman Empire that lasted through the 18th/19th century. There were excellent characters struggling with colonialism and identity, and a fun political setup. But then our main hero had to go off on a quest in the desert to find her magical heritage. The book was so interesting without that unnecessary bit, and I found it obscured the more interesting themes. Who even needs sorcery?

Lately I've been indulging myself in a series of (YA) fantasy novels, the Ranger's Apprentice series by John Flanagan. One of the appealing things about this book is the (almost complete) absence of magic. There is an evil race of beings that appear in the first couple of books, but in the many books that follow, they aren't there. I think Flanagan may have realized how they didn't help his stories forward. There are definitely people who are very, very, even unnaturally, talented in certain areas, but they tend to also utilize hard work to make the most of their talents. It makes it a much more comfortable world to indulge my imagination in. I could picture myself there happily. And I think that is often the point of fantasy novels.

Social Media

I'm posting less and less on Facebook, in a trend that started quite a while ago, though I check it usually twice a day. The bulk of my posts are re-posts of someone else's stuff. Some friends are on Facebook often, some more distant friends are there often enough for me to want to scan and see what's up. I belong to many interest groups and I am entertained and informed by what I see there. For example, I've got some Aerogarden hydroponic systems for growing lettuce and herbs, and I've found helpful tips and always someone to answer questions in a dedicated group there.

Whatever happened to Tumblr? I know my girl still has a couple of blogs she occasionally will post on, but with no where near the tempo she used to. I set up several Tumblr blogs, because they were so easy to post from the phone. The usual format was always at least one picture, and not very many words. I had done one for Rocky, the Very Hungry Labrador. After he was gone this summer, I sent the whole blog into an actual book. It's an amazing account recorded as it happened of all he ate during the eight years I had him, and I'm glad to have it. Because I had a blog dedicated to him, it was very easy to get into book format. I was thinking I wanted something similar for Bixby, but decided to go with a dedicated Instagram account.

I love this moody photo! I think this is why
I decided Bixby needed his own account.

I actually post much more often on Instagram and fewer of them are cross-posted to Facebook. What I post on the 'gram are photos I have taken with a very short caption - re-posting someone else's stuff is actually difficult, not like Facebook. I follow mostly different people on Instagram than Facebook - including celebrities, which I don't follow or like on Facebook. I like fashion and lifestyle posts. The company recently have made it easier to set up multiple accounts. It used to be you needed a separate email for each Instagram account, but now it can be on one email, and switching between them is just a couple of taps on the phone. Commentary says Instagram has also redefined itself subtly as an app for content consumption rather than creation. The multiple accounts feature is pushed in app as a way to separate and organize who you follow, not how you post. For example, have one to follow your closest friends and another for celebrities. 

The way I have the 'gram set up right now is one account for me, and one for Bixby (@bixby.sato). I switched my account to "private" (I have to approve anyone who wants to follow) and blocked anyone I didn't actually know who had opted to follow me. Bixby's account is "public". I switched the many dogs I follow to Bixby's account, which has cleared my feed up a little. Most posts from Bixby get tagged with something like "rescuedogsofinstagram" so others may see those posts. I'm allowing anyone to follow - we're up to seven followers!  One of my main motivations for Bixby's separate account is because it will be possible to pull from a single Instagram account into the layout software to do an actual book someday. But I was amused, about a week after I set up Bixby's account and was really into the dog-related hashtags, to get a message telling me I could set up a deal to be an influencer. (Or for Bixby to be an influencer!) Not my cup of tea, not why I'm doing this, but amusing none-the-less.

Still not a daily twitter user. I go there when something is happening, and when I've exhausted other social media and for some reason need to keep scrolling. I follow different people there, and it's sometimes fun to see their take on things.

Streaks

Needs coffee
Pic just for cuteness factor

Hey, did you notice I blogged every day in the month of October? Either here or in the garden blog. It was one of my October goals, the main one I actually achieved. (I also kept this goal private, I think, so as not to set expectations for my fans.) It turns out I like daily blogging, and I may continue at an increased pace for a while, coasting on the momentum. But I'm no longer mentally fixed on "every day". I've found the psychology of a streak works for me for a little while, giving me increased motivation for what it is. But after a while, if I break the streak, then I get into the "why bother at all?" mindset and stop completely whatever it was. So "more often" is how I'm going to think about it, not "every day".

 

 

 

 

 

 A couple of things I noticed about daily blogging:

• I like posts with pictures, even if the picture is barely relevant. 
• Posts with mostly pictures are not cheating, especially if its a garden blog post. The visual record is an important part of the blog.
• As I went about my days, there was some increased mindfulness around, "I could write about this for the blog". It made me more self-conscious during the day, in what I think was a good way.
• I wanted a topic for each post, (versus just a general checkin) but it didn't have to be heavy or long. 
• It was ok to post about things that weren't entirely current, if the post had something worth saying (again, not profound, but at least mildly interesting or amusing).
  
• It's much easier to post using the laptop than the ipad (and almost impossible using the phone). And my current laptop boots up much more quickly than the ancient one I replaced this spring. That reduced a barrier to posting.
• With Blogger, posts can be written and then posted at a later scheduled time. A few times, when I was inspired, or I knew I would have a hard time finding the time in the next day or two, I stacked up posts in advance. I did this especially with garden blog posts.
• Sometimes I broke long posts up into multi-day posts, sometimes written together and then staged to go up once a day. That was based on my wanting to hit the "every day", and also not impose on my readers' attention spans.
  
• The self-consciousness, and maybe the writing, actually stimulated more private journalling rather than replacing it. This surprised me.
• I like writing. I've just finished another story-telling class, and it led me to think a bit more about the crafting of a story. This mostly hasn't bled over into the blogs, which are more stream-of-consciousness, but I'm thinking about it a lot. 
  
• For some time, I've organized my pictures I use in the blog into google albums, one for each blog and year. I chose google some time back as the cloud storage for all my photos, so iphone photos go there automatically and off-loaded camera pictures go there manually. But I take so many photos that it's helpful to have the blog pics in an album dedicated to this year's blog so I can find them again.
  

2020 Report Card and Final Wrap-Up

 Herewith is my final report card for the year. After this, 2020 begone! I'm only looking forward!

 

First up: Activity. This past year was not great for my moving. Kim's friend Chris would be sad for me. I expended fewer calories overall, had fewer high activity days, fewer steps, more days very sedentary, and what I'm saddest about, many fewer days working out with weights. I got the bike out once, and tried running once. Only in "intentional miles" walking am I up slightly - and I think that is because I was more assiduous in tracking those miles. (In order to be logged, a "walk" needs to be at least 1 1/2 miles - no counting the incidental miles in the course of living my life.)

I have reasons and excuses, of course. The main one is I felt bad much of the time. Joint and muscle pain, headaches, upset stomach, all the things that are elusive and not subject to definitive diagnosis or fixing. But I'm extremely optimistic that I've now got a firm grasp on the mind-body approach to this, and this next year will be much better. 

 Next, my weight. I didn't achieve any big goals here, but I guess in the quarantine context I'm doing ok. I weigh slightly less than last year at this time, and (not shown) slightly more than I did in November, my lowest point of the year. Not coincidentally, I'm planning and tracking food much more often. I'm also really tuning into my hunger and satiation signals. I think I'm on the right track here, and again, I'm optimistic things will be even better next year.

 

On mind-body, it's a mixed picture. Not shown or tracked, I started serious therapy this year for the first time ever. First, in January, for twelve weeks I was in a structured (zoom) group, and following that, I started individual therapy over facetime. What I'm doing is geared towards somatic issues, specifically to address those with chronic pain of the types I have. On those things I do track, I'm meditating, less than last year (huh, if I didn't track it, I would have guessed different). My migraines are up for the year, but there were NONE in December and I think this is an effect of the emotional work I'm doing to re-train my brain. I am generally a champion sleeper, I certainly have plenty of time. My resting heart rate, which generally shows an overall fitness level, is slightly better than last year.

On the category I might term "self-actualization", if you are a regular reader, you know for sure I was a reading fool this year. I blogged more than last year, less than I would have liked. I started tracking "trips downtown" last year after I retired - generally trips last year were social, catching up with former work friends. Most of this year's trips were solitary dawn walks, reminding myself the city even exists. It feels like I sailed a lot this year, but seeing that it's less than last year, it must feel like more because it stands out so clearly in such a mass of otherwise undifferentiated days. Other accomplishments include a tap dancing class at the local community college (surprisingly effective over zoom) and several seminars and on-line short courses. I also got into sewing masks, and really engaged on the design and engineering creativity side while doing it.

I think I'm going to add movies watched to this list for next year - I would like to see a movie a week. This seems so very do-able, and I find setting a quantitative goal and reporting it here would be helpful. I want to do even more classes and short courses, tap class again, and sit down at my piano sometimes. I don't know I'll be tracking quantitatively here, though tracking can be part of the reward system that encourages me to keep going. I aspire to travel, but you know...

On the money front, I've spent some time working on the budget. My goals for this year were to get a handle on where the money goes, and specifically to reduce costs on food and clothes. Missions accomplished! This is the one area where the quarantine really helped. I cut food spending by 25%, mostly because I'm not eating out. Clothing was down by more than a third. (There was really no reason for me to buy any clothes at all this year, but I get bored and just want something new.) 

As another couple of money accomplishments, I did a final distribution to my family of the money from my mother's estate, and cut down on the number of different bank accounts I have. My mother's probate estate was something of a nightmare to deal with, and the IRS combined forces with the US Postal Service to screw some things up that created a great deal of angst for me. So when I close the estate's last bank account next week, I'm going to do a happy dance.

I tend to be analytic and want to be intentional about how I live my life. My current focus is trying to engineer my days to build good routines. When do I do what kind of exercise or other work? I've learned about habit formation so I'm thinking about this as another design challenge. What is my trigger to make me go work out? What might be the barriers? How can I make it easier to start? I know I hate going outside on days like today (grey and drizzling) so what can I do to get over the hurdle? Or is there something I can do indoors instead? Stay tuned!

Family Archives

My mother in high school

I am the family archivist. This comes to me naturally. I was the family photographer, starting in the 1980s. I physically inherited boxes of documents and photos from my father and my mother. I had a brief engagement with family genealogy in the 1990s, and have some partial family trees from that era. I missed an opportunity to review old family photos with my mother, and so a lot of that knowledge is lost forever. Who are these old people in these stiff and faded photos? I just remember old Hester Anne, with her clay pipe, born in 1830. But where on the family tree is she?

I'm paying for a storage unit, where I put some furniture and many boxes after my mother died. I finally decided I needed to make a start on the boxes. I stopped by, and brought a few home and tossed them in the spare room. But before I tackled them, I though I spend a few minutes on the stuff already at my house.

My father in 1952,
when he got his PhD

I was quickly overwhelmed. There is simply too much, it's too diverse, I couldn't decide how to handle it. My initial thought had been to sort and scan as I went, tossing some things outright, others after a scan, and saving few physical items. Though my desktop scanner is of decent quality, it is very slow, and I realized Plan A was simply not going to work. So I stepped back, and spent some time thinking and researching how to organize the project. I didn't want to get too far into it before having to re-do everything I'd already done.

I'm a natural librarian, and I have professional librarian friends. I also have friends in similar situations wanting to tackle similar projects. So I got some sage advice, from physically how to handle the materials to digitally how to set up a filing system. One of the main points is to do a physical sort first, without engaging with any of the materials in depth. Sorting by family branch / family member, and/or by year, seem to be the leading alternatives. And, toss stuff in this first sort. Be realistic. My parents traveled a lot, but does anyone need pictures they took of European buildings, with no recognizable people? Of course not. Keep a trash bag nearby.

It's hard to stick to the guideline of "don't engage" when dealing with documents (as opposed to photos). I have to review them enough to know what I'm looking at. And then it can be hard not to get sucked in. For example, I found a stack of sympathy cards I had received after my sister died. My memories of that time are extremely hazy. I sat down and looked at all the cards, and put them into an archival envelope to keep. They won't be scanned, but maybe I'll look at them again in a few years.

At that point, I realized why the advice is not to engage with the material as you move through it. I was a little bit comforted and also a little bit blue after going through those little bits of thoughtfulness that had come at my most bleak time ever. I needed another break before getting back to it.

So today, with two inches of rain forecast, I dove back in. There was necessarily some spool-up time, as I needed to remind myself how I was doing the physical sort. I know I've decided many photos need to be scanned by a service as doing it myself isn't physically possible. But each service has its rules for how to sort and label batches, so for the time being I'm just grouping by rough family group and date. So all of those will need to be handled again, when I review detailed instructions from a scanning service. Documents can also follow the same rough sort, with another distinction between records (diplomas, birth certificates) and more personal stuff. Probably, documents that get scanned will be scanned by me.

Hester Anne. Note clay pipe.
One of the girls is probably my grandmother

I pulled out a bag - roughly a plastic grocery bag sized bag, and dove in. As it turned out, this bag held stuff from my father's mother, Haila Yvonne Miller Shellabarger. It appears she saved every letter or photograph my father ever sent her. The big surprise - and a treasure trove - is that he wrote to her a lot.  In 1957, the year my family first lived in London, he typed out a tissue-thin blue air letter nearly every week to her. Mundane doings of our young naive American family having an adventure abroad. But there are letters before and after that time as well - somewhere between 50 and 100 in total, I guess. So I sorted out the letters by year, and put them in envelopes for dealing with later. I'm really looking forward to working my way through them. But for now, they are all in a box labelled "Shellabarger - to be scanned."

Most of the photographs are copies my parents sent them. Everything peters out in the mid-1960s. Did long distance become affordable then? Or maybe, more recent things are in another box!

So I packed everything up again, and I'll do more sorting and organizing when next it rains or snows - that will be Wednesday, most likely!

Mask Crafts

I've spent quite a bit of time on designing and sewing masks. I've been through several different designs, surfed around on the 'net, watched a bunch of youtube videos, ventured onto pinterest.

The first masks I made back in April were being done when supplies were not widely available, and a general call came out from some hospitals asking for masks. I ransacked my house. I hauled out my old sewing machine (bought in 1981) and I found some elastic and threads. I had some bits and pieces of fabrics from projects planned and never done. I also looked in my clothes closet and linen closet, finding cotton clothes and old pillow cases that could go into masks.A very basic rectangular design, with two layers of cotton, 2-3 folds and ear loops were the basic starting point. The first one took a few hours, subsequent ones came more quickly. I supplied three each to my local family members. 

Too matchy-matchy?
But an excellent all-day fit

Then I started wearing the masks. More and more evidence indicated they were a good thing, with more suggestions on the best materials. I realized the masks I had made first had some flaws. As a wearer of glasses, often during masked walks my glasses were steamy. I had a few occasions when I had to wear the mask along with my hearing aids, and ear loops were no good. I noted comments on TLo about how one should up their mask game for fashion purposes. I also found I liked sewing them. Making the masks became a creative outlet, requiring engineering skills and allowing some artistic license. 

I bought a new sewing machine (after forty years, what the heck). I have serious sewing friends who have very expensive machines, but when I went online I found new, apparently adequate, machines from brands I never heard of for even less than $100. The top-rated one at Wirecutter was sold out everywhere (hello, apocalypse thinking), but I got an "also good" Singer heavy duty. It doesn't squeal when the wheels go round, but otherwise seems the equivalent of my old machine.

White hair and black mask
But a good fit

So here are attributes of a well-designed mask: the fit from the bridge of your nose to under your chin is important. (My family varies from 4.75" to 5.75" in that measurement.) It is helpful, especially for glasses, to have a shaper over the nose, bending the mask to follow the face's contour. I worked with some pipe cleaners I had in the house, but then bought purpose-made metal strips on-line. It's important to have fabric layers as padding under the metal strips. It's good to have some space between your mouth and the mask, which requires some structure to be built in (the rectangular masks do not do that well). If the side of the mask is done as a sheath, the ties or elastic aren't sewn in but instead threaded - they can be replaced easily - and so a mask can convert from ear loops to behind your head fastenings. Two layers is good, and the inner layer should be soft. Three layers is better, but you don't want a big bump of fabric seams piling up on top of your nose, especially if you wear glasses. Cotton is universal, but a silk lining helps with comfort, facilitating breathing while still efficiently trapping particles (and adding warmth when outdoors). A lazy, quick mask can be made out of tshirts by just cutting ear loops right into the mask itself.

So now I pick up pieces of fabric, stack them double or triple, and first look at a light bulb through the stack. If I can see the outline clearly, it's a no-go. Then, I hold the stack over my nose and mouth and try nose breathing through it. If that works, I'm in business! I'm venturing into new pieces of fabric, aiming at fashion now that I have the basics of structural design down. I have a feeling we'll be wearing them for a while now.