Day in the Life of an Idiot

Do you ever find yourself hauted by the subject of a panel? I've been thinking a lot about the magic of places ever since Minicon and the "Magic of St. Paul/Minneapolis" panel. I remember, too, sitting next to Charles DeLint at the previous Minicon talking about how places have personality and trying to get him to admit that's why urban fantasy resonates so strongly with readers -- which is to say that place magic is the kind of magic that people can readily agree feels "true."

There are a number of reasons why Valparasio has never appealed to me. No offense intended to anyone who lives here, because a lot of my reaction to it has to do with the fact that there was some family tension around Shawn's folk's move here. Shawn, of course, has been here a number of times now, what, with her father's illness, and she's noticed some things that really speak about the magic of THIS place.

They're brutal to their trees. You know how in Minneapolis/St. Paul the city cuts or trims tree limbs that are close to powerlines -- usually making the trees into strange "V"s with the center part mising? Well, in ValPo, they just hack off half the tree, leaving behind trees that look they they're perpetually being bent in a VERY Strong wind. Also, Shawn noticed that when they do tree removal, they don't really. They'll cut the tree off at the trunk and leave it sitting there... not the little bits of tree stumps that need digging out, but giant eigtheen foot... well, markers -- like tree grave markers. Intentional or not, it seems like this town hates trees.

Also, we were in Walgreen's today picking up "feminine supplies," and there was a nice guy there who smiled at me a couple of times, and smiling back, I realized he was the first black face I'd seen here -- EVER. Given how close this town is to Gary and Chicago, the lack of African Americans is just down right creepy. Where'd all the black people go? Because this town is very ethnic in other ways -- there's excellent Polish sausage and lots of authentic Greek resaurants and Latino/a faces here and there.

I think faeries like multicultural cities that are nicer to their trees.

Maybe I'm just grumpy because I never wanted Shawn's dad to move so far away, but the only magic this town seems to have going for it are the fireflies.... and the eagles.

That's been pretty awesome. Shawn's dad used to love to sit outside in the sun and watch the neighborhood. We've been keeping up the vigil for him, in his absence, and Shawn's brother Greg and his wife Barb have seen two eagles in the two days they were here. Someone once told me that eagles are grandfathers in some Native American cultures. So grandpa's come back to his favorite spots.

That's cool.

First of all, thanks to everyone who sent along their condolences. I know that before our daughter Ella died, I always had a hard time knowing what to say when someone I knew suffered a loss. What I learned about how I reacted to the various cards we got is that, for me at least, it didn't really matter what a person said so long as an effort was made, you know? Soemtimes the most awkward attempts were the most touching. A dear friend, who is rather reserved generally, simply wrote an email that said, "That's just horrible" which still sticks with me as one of the most honest responses to the whole thing. But Shawn and I tended to feel just as touched by cards that were just signed as the ones in which someone tried to pen a few phrases.

Speaking of Shawn, I'm expecting her back home this afternoon. The funeral is planned for Sunday, April 6 in Valparaiso, IN, in order to give Pat's friends and relations from North Dakota and Minnesota a chance to attend if they wish. The big question right now for our family is what we're going to do with Mason. Personally, I think it's important for Mason to have a chance to experience the funeral, but we're having some questions over whether or not it would really make sense to him and whether or not his presence would end up being a distraction. I don't really know the answer. He's four, and the funeral will probably be a couple of hours long, what with the visitation and everything. Can I just tell you how much I despise visitations? I'm really not sure what purpose those serve except to possibly "prove" to the psyche that this person is, in point of fact, quite dead.

At some point I'd like to write a Minicon report, although I may have to learn how to "friends lock" the entry since I had a very personal reaction to one of the panelists on my "Embalming From Then to Now" panel. (How is it, exactly, you can take such a sort of scientific topic and find something inflamatory to say?) Because of my reaction to that particular panelist, I decided to skip out on the following panel about "How it Feels to Publish Your First Novel." Instead, I ended up at Khan's with naomikritzer, Harry LeBlanc, and his two buddies, with whom I instantly bonded with but whose names I've suddenly spaced on. Nice guys! One of them bought me dinner, no less! We had a hoot, actually. We talked a little too loudly about "bend over boyfriends" and such like in a public restaurant. Ah, good times! In fact, think it was probably time much better spent than raising my blood pressure with that certain unnamed panelist.

"The Magic of the Twin Cities" and "Demonology 101" both went well, in fact I found myself bonding with the woman with whom I shared Demonology 101. We apparently read all the same books (which when it comes to demons and angels is a strange, but wonder find,) and saw all the same movies, although no one remembered "Jesus of Montreal."

Shawn called today with this news about her dad: he's stopped eating. I guess one of the deals with hospice care is that they pretty much let you die if you are determined to do it. The nurse that Shawn talked to about it said that once someone stops eating they usually don't last longer than a week.

That sucks.

Shawn's other brother Keven is considering heading down soon. I have a feeling he'll wait to go until Sunday (which means I'll still be able to attend Minicon), but that will also mean that Shawn will stay down in Indiana so that he can have company. Her dad can't even respond terribly well, I guess. He's so weak it's even hard for him to talk or otherwise communicate.

In happier news today is Ostara a.k.a. Spring Equinox. Mason and I decorated eggs, one of which you can see over on Tate's blog. I also tried to make hot cross buns, but completely space on putting in the condensed milk until the dough was mostly mixed and... uh, no surprise, attempting to add it late just ended up in mess. I baked them anyway. They're ugly as sin, but actually taste okay. I mean, get real -- hot cross buns are all about the droozling sauce anyway, right? Right.

Mason is off school tomorrow ostensibly for "Teacher's Appreciation" but we all know it's so that the Christian kids can have Good Friday off and the Jewish kids can get their costumes together for Purim and the pagan kids can folic in the daylight which is equal to the night time.

Speaking of other fine Easter/Ostara traditions, my Minicon schedule follows:

Demonology 101
The ecology of hell is fascinating. The variety of fallen angels in historical literature is vast, and Wayne D. Barlowe has created many more. What shapes do we give to our demons, and why?Alexandra Howes, Lyda Morehouse (m)
Saturday, 8:30-9:30pm ~ Krushenko's

Minneapolis Magic, St. Paul Magic
The Twin Cities have very different styles; Minneapolis has been called the “easternmost Western city” and St. Paul the “westernmost Eastern city”. A discussion of how the two cities have come to have different aesthetics, attitudes and auras.Naomi Kritzer, Betsy Lundsten, Michael Merriam, Lyda Morehouse (m), CJ Mills
Saturday, 7:00-8:00pm ~ Room 1/2

What It's Like Getting Your First Novel Published
Getting your first novel published can be a harrowing and giddy experience, even if you've already published other work.Lyda Morehouse (m), Katya Reimann, Patrick Rothfuss
Saturday, 5:00-6:00pm ~ Room 1/2

Embalming from Then to Now
From ancient Egypt to undecaying saints, we seem to have a fascination with the immaculate dead. We’ll discuss the evolution of embalming practices and try to dig out what it all means.Phyllis Eisenstein, Lisa Freitag, Tate Hallaway, Eric M. Heideman (m), Katya Reimann
Saturday, 3:30-4:30pm ~ Krushenko's

Signing: Tate Hallaway | Saturday, 2:00-3:00pm, In front of Dealers' Room

If people out there in the "interweb" have been trying to contact me, I must apologize. I was laid out FLAT by a really bad cold that hit me quite suddenly on Saturday evening (right after attending a great St. Patrick's Day celebration at the home of naomikritzer -- not her fault, though. There's no way the flu could have incubated THAT fast. I literally came home with a runny nose). I slept the entire day of Sunday away, as well as large portions of Monday. Today I have emerged from the fog.

In the on-going news regarding my con attendance and Shawn's dad, Shawn just got the news that her dad is being moved to a hospice with a "do not resussitate"/"no heroic measures" order. Given that he's currently fighting pnuemonia, kidney infection, and bowel infection on top of his cancer, Shawn has decided to head down to Indiana again with her brother Greg. This means she's going to miss her one scheduled panel at Minicon (yes, Virginia, my partner was ALMOST spotted at a science fiction con as a PARTICIPANT.) Thanks to the generous offer to take Mason for a sleepover by Shawn's other brother Keven, I'll be able to attend all my programming on Saturday.

Once the schedule is finalized, I'll post it here.

In happier news, Mason and I have been enjoying a fantastic series of pre-history books by Hannah Bonner. Last night we read WHEN FISH GOT FEET, SHARKS GOT TEETH, AND BUGS BEGAN TO SWARM, and today before school we read WHEN BUGS WERE BIG, PLANTS WERE STRANGE, AND TETRAPODS STALKED THE EARTH. I now know more about life before the dinosaurs than, well, perhaps I even cared to. However, one thing that strikes me as I'm reading these books is how resiliant life on Earth really is. It makes me quite hopeful that even if we completely frak-up the environment, SOMETHING will live here. We may kill off all the mammals, but, you know those nasty little cockroaches have survived since the Carboniferous period, so I think we'd be hard pressed to wipe them out completely.

I'm also surprised by the great big LIE of extinction. For some reason, as a kid, I got it into my head that dinosaurs were completely wiped out and that nothing from their era (or before) survived. Dinosaurs still exist. Tranosaurus rex became today's chicken. Crocodiles, turtles, sharks, horseshoe crabs, dragonflies, mayflies, cockroaches, scorpions, spiders, centipedes, ceolcanths, and tree ferns -- as well as tons of other things are still around and doing quite well, thank you very much.

Also my alternate personality got a couple of free vampire books from publishers hoping that she'd review them. I'm half way through one of them, thanks to my nasty head cold, Adrian Phoenix's RUSH OF WINGS. It's a really well written vampie book, but there's a "elohim" in the book named "Lucien," and my Biblical radar went up.... an angel named Lucifer, perhaps? I'm witholding judgment so far (although the vamps are telepathic and my suspenders of disbelief are often stretched by telepathy), because I want to see how Phoenix pulls off the whole story. When I finish it, I'll probably post something over on Tate's blog. But, in the meantime, if you're looking for good urban fantasy, this one definitely has some hot scenes... Dante is also bi, which is a nice touch in these modern urban fantasies. Most of the ones I've read since the turn of the century haven't been as glbt-friendly as Rice's vamps. (Although admittedly, I don't read many of the dark urban fantasy books -- mostly the humorous ones.)

Anyway, hope y'all are doing well. I'm looking forward to starting work on the AngeLINK prequel, which I should be able to do in a couple of months. Will keep you posted.