HI-
This is the month when the Redberries are blue with cold, so it is named FeBlueberry in the Ogre Calendar. It is perhaps my favorite month, not for the climate, but because it was suggested by my daughter Penelope, Penny in real life. Penny died of melanoma in 2009 at age 41, an ugly shock to our family and surely to hers, as she left a 9 year old daughter, our granddaughter Logan Stonering. We had lost three babies stillborn in the first decade of our marriage; Penny was the first survivor, for the limited time she had. She changed our lives almost more than marriage itself had. My writing efficiency was cut in half, as I was the one home to care for her while my wife Carol worked in an office to earn our living as I struggled to make it as a writer. Then Penny was gone, at first to college, then to marriage, and then to Heaven, if it exists for we nonbelievers. I am agnostic, but my wife Carol was a minister’s daughter; Penny was Pagan. Blessed be.
Doug Harter has updated the News and Bibliography web pages, and added links to where my books can be bought, at least for Amazon. Remember, I come from another century and don’t know how to do these newfangled things. As with the question where do I get my ideas? From my fans, obviously.
I finally figured out the Smith & Wesson Watch, and am using it. I like it. It lists the Time in Hours, Minutes and Seconds; Day of the Week, Month, and Day of the Month. It has an alarm function. It is also a stopwatch. That’s a lot for under $25. There’s just one mystery the instructions don’t address: there’s a little window to the right of the Day of the Week that looks like a rifle crosshairs that changes patterns every second. What is it for? If someone knows this watch, please tell me. I’d hate to learn too late that it was an avenue of communication with the advanced civilization of the galaxy ready to offer me the key to eternal life and welfare, not to mention saving the world from pollution, warfare, and overpopulation. Speaking of watches: my regular one is a kinetic-wind Seiko with a bezel I use to time town trips, but it is getting old and may not last much longer. Why does that make me self conscious? I discovered my first wife Carol’s watch, still running two years after her death; it is as if a part of her still lives. Ah, nostalgia. I might wear it, too, just because. I married MaryLee; that doesn’t mean Carol is forgotten.
I play the card game Free Cell on my computer to unwind; I regard it as similar to meditation. I think it is the best solitaire card game extant. The full deck is displayed face up in eight rows, and there are four spots to build up the suits from the aces on, and also four empty spaces, the free cells. Cards are played in descending order on the main layout, queen on king, six on seven, etc, in alternating colors. There are no surprises, no good or bad luck, merely brain power as you figure out how to get all four suits built up to kings. It’s a challenge. Theoretically every game is winnable if you play it right. There’s a reset option if you stall out. I have always won if I had time for repeated resets. If I get 15 or 20 cards built up, normally the win is assured. But one day this week I had a weird loss. Three suits were built up to kings, with only the Spades remaining. The 13 cards were spread out across the 12 spaces, including the 4 free cells, but the ace was trapped under the 8. I couldn’t move a card, as all spaces were taken and there were no alternating colors. So I lost with 39 cards out. I reset and played it over, this time making sure to free that trapped ace, and won without difficulty. But what a loss that was! Is that a first?
Our Sunken Garden remains, but the annuals we started with have departed, and only the Papaya tree, the Pink Hibiscus grown from a broken branch, several avocados growing from seeds of our salads, and flourishing purple Mexican Heather flowers remain. I planted six of those; three promptly died, but the remaining three have now multiplied to about eight, constantly flowering regardless of the season. Volunteer Ferns have now largely taken over the rest of the garden. Technically they may be weeds, but they are beautiful and we like them. So they stay. As with life, you don’t necessarily get what you expect, but there are virtues in the unexpected.
I exercise regularly, three times a week for strength, daily for flexibility, mainly with hand weights and walking, having quit running when I fell on my face one time too many. Critics may figure those bashed faces improve me, but I prefer to avoid injury to the extent feasible. Back in 1995 I bought a Grizzly XLR bow set at a 55 pound draw weight. That is, it takes a pull of 55 pounds to draw the string so you can loose an arrow. I took up archery, loosing arrows at a target 150 feet distant, both right side and left side. I worked my way up to a 60 pound draw weight. Later when I got it restrung they ignored my instruction and set it 55 pounds, and I decided what the Hades, that would do. My purpose was to maintain my arm muscles. I have been told that exercise doesn’t count unless you keep building up, but I’m not trying for Mister America, just to hang on to what I have, physically and mentally, as long as I can. After about twenty years I was losing too many arrows in the brush; my aim was good, but damaged fletching caused them to go astray and miss the target. So I quit archery and changed to Chore Hour, getting many dull tasks done. I still drew the bow, but without arrows, merely for that exercise. Last year apparently a flu shot nicked a tendon and took out my right side draws for six months, but I can still do them as I brace the bow against a door frame so it can’t swing out of place, messing up my draw. There must be a muscle in my back that holds the arm in place as I draw, and it gave way. But I never had trouble with the left side draws. Monday I did 20 left side, as usual. Then Wednesday I couldn’t do it. No injury, nothing; I just seemed to lack the strength to draw that bow even one time. Friday I still couldn’t do it, so I made 20 tries, hoping that would exercise the muscle sufficiently. Maybe one day the ability will return. It’s weird having it stop so suddenly. I can still do it right side against the door frame; no change there. I hope that other aspects of my physical or mental life don’t follow that pattern. As it is, my right shoulder has been bothering me for weeks; it’s okay in the daytime, but hurts at night when I’m trying to sleep. A pulled tendon? I hope it’s that simple. Yes I am old, 87 now, but no, I’m not approaching that KICK MEE bucket yet. I hope.
I subscribe to a number of magazines, as these monthly HiPiers columns show. We also subscribed to three newspapers. One quit distributing in Citrus County, so then there were two. Now the TAMPA BAY TIMES has quit distributing physical copies here. They want me to resubscribe for a year for $392.60 for just the online edition. I’d have to get a smartphone, learn to use it—I believe I have mentioned how I come from another century and am still finding my way into this one—and then spend hours trying to make out the tiny onscreen print with my fading eyesight. I would not be able to tear out clippings to comment on here. I believe I will in due course get a smartphone anyway, but not for that limited purpose. So this is one more thing I will have to let go. The old order changeth.
I
completed the short collaborative science fiction novel Deep Well
in OctOgre, hoping that its relevance to the salient issue of the
day, global warming, would make it appealing to movie studios and
print publishers. Surely they, too, want to help save the world?
Alas, there seems to be little interest so far. After the turn of the
year I started writing Xanth #48 Three Novel Nymphs, and have
completed the first two chapters, totaling about 14,500 words. I’m
sure the market will be interested in my continuing frivolous
fantasy, if not in my serious fiction. If I thought about it I might
say something unkind about the market. In fact I do, further along in
this column. Some readers may remember that the original title was
Three Ugly Nymphs. Well, when the nymphs discovered that, they
objected, feeling that they are not ugly, just different. So they
sneaked into the office of the snoozing Dwarf Demon of Titles,
crossed out the middle word Ugly, and wrote in
Novel, as in original, unusual, different. The Demon never caught on.
Now you know. Don’t tell; you don’t want a nymph mad at you. Oh, you
are wondering what the story is about? It’s that something is
stirring up the Elements, so there are raging fires, soaking floods,
devastating storms, and erupting volcanoes and ground tremors. An
anonymous Demon must be doing it. A Demon can track regular folk with
souls, so the Good Magician recruits three soulless nymphs, formerly
good for Only One Thing, who can’t be tracked. They have to find out
what Demon is doing it. It’s quite a challenge, especially for folk
who have had next to no experience with Xanth culture. They have to
put on clothing and pretend to be normal girls. It’s a challenge.
“BS Foolsbane” sent me his memoir “Once Upon a Time at the Library.” There are aspects of his life I relate to. I have gotten in trouble all my life for trying to be honest and decent and standing my ground rather than be wronged or cheated. The world can be an ugly place. I will call him Mike. He worked for years at a public library, doing the best he could, yet somehow things went wrong. For example the way he lost his job. A woman was using a staff computer, resting her right hand on the desktop next to the computer. Mike used the adjacent phone to call a teacher about a teacher’s collection service that was ready to pick her up. He had a paper in his hand with the phone number. After he dialed and was waiting for the connection he lowered his hand and a corner of the paper brushed her hand. She rubbed her hand and said “Uh.” Mike said “Must have felt like a spider.” That was all. But she put in a complaint, and he got fired. How’s that again? Did she think he was making a move on her? Did the library administration check for the facts before making such a decision? Was fairness even considered? But his job was gone. His career had been peppered with similar misunderstandings. But generally he got along with people, and they would tell him private things. One woman told him that she also worked at a prison, and men there would get raped, go to the infirmary, and have their rectums sewn up. Nobody got disciplined or fired there. A female coworker pulled down her pants to show Mike a tattoo or her upper thigh. Another told him she took a whore’s bath. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds pretty personal. A staff member thought it was funny to call Mike a pederast. Some joke! On occasion he complained to the administration about such things, but nothing was done. It seemed that complaints counted only if they were about him. One acquaintance spot diagnosed him with SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, and decided he was mentally ill. Ouch! As one who was similarly diagnosed and excluded on my insurance for all mental diseases, when what I actually had was low thyroid, I relate. When the manager told him to shelve a cart full of videos, and he did, then next day she told him he had disobeyed her and hadn’t shelved them. If there was mental illness, it would seem to have been in that manager, but it degraded Mike’s reputation. When he repeated to other staffers what a manager had told him, he got in trouble because it seemed it was a secret. When a circulation manager asked him to get her some information, and he did, he got in trouble for leaving his desk. When he complained about his treatment, his Performance Assessment was downgraded from Strong to Satisfactorily. When he wrote a formal complaint detailing his treatment he was told that if he felt he was being treated unfairly, he should quit the job. On and on; this is depressing reading showing a pattern of prejudice against him. Do I believe it? Yes. Remember, I’m the one who got blacklisted in publishing for six years, accumulating I think it was seven unpublished novels, because I had the temerity to protest when a publisher cheated me. It seems that all too often folk prefer to blame the victim rather than the perpetrator. Sometimes I am ashamed of my species, mankind. Yes, once the blacklist was broken and accounts became honest I became a bestseller at that same publisher. Therein lies a key difference between us: I got a remarkable break. Mike did not. But it shouldn’t require a virtual miracle to get fair treatment. So where is Mike now? “My partial pension won’t cover my bills [because he got fired before he qualified for more] so I’m going to have to find some part time job that I am physically capable of doing … It’s just that there aren’t that many jobs for a 60 year old fat man with a bum knee.” This is America? There’s an odor.
The Equedia Letter keeps coming. I never subscribed, but evidently they like me. The one for December 19, 2021 describes how insiders play the game to get richer. I am not much amused by that game. The one for January 9, 2022, speaks of turn of the year predictions, such as economic and how the Virus will fare. Don’t trust them. It has a nice analogy. “There’s a running joke among statisticians: if a woman loves you more each and every day, by the theory of linear regression, she hated you the first time you hooked up.” As a man remarried for under two years, that makes me a mite nervous. The one for 1-16-22 discusses crypto currencies, concluding they are essentially scam. “These are straight-up Ponzi schemes. And they are pushed by some of the most influential people in our society.” It gives examples. I think I got the message: stay the heck away from those currencies, unless you are an insider out to take the gullible public folk. I sure am not. The one for 1-30-22 discusses how lawmakers illicitly profit from stock trades. A study showed that stocks that senators bought beat the market average by 8.5%, while those they sold dropped. It’s insider trading. When 60 Minutes blew the whistle on this, Congress passed the STOCK Act, banning it. Then they quietly took out key aspects, in 30 seconds, no debate, so the Act became toothless. In one year 48 members of congress were caught violating it. There is a $200 fine. So they can make literally millions, for that token fine. Sure there are investigations, but they routinely fade out without notice, and the game goes on, wrist slaps and all. But don’t you, an ordinary citizen try it; you’ll wind up in prison.
Some time back I remarked on “For Pete’s sake,” the symbols and letters marked on recyclable plastic. It starts with a triangle marked PETE. I approve of recycling; it helps mitigate the environmental damage done by discarded plastic. But over the years our local recycling centers, which handle plastic, paper, glass, and such, have been shut down, and new, less accessible ones set up elsewhere. When those get popular, they too get shut down. It seems that the local authorities want to claim they support recycling while tacitly discouraging folk from actually doing it. But this isn’t about that hypocrisy. It’s that recently I discovered a triangle on a PETE bottle marked RPET. Interesting. Maybe it stands for Re-Pete, made from recycled plastic.
In a letter, the speller challenged “unagented” that I mentioned for an aspiring writer, referring to my ongoing survey of electronic publishers, which are way more open to new writers than are the traditional publishers. One of the suggestions the speller offered was “untalented.” Another was “undaunted.” I like the latter option better. This reminds me when I was asked what my greatest frustration as a writer was, and I answered “Dealing with publishers.” That was one reason I worked to make self publishing more widely available: to provide new writers a better option than tackling the money-minded, hidebound idiots whose idea of art is what makes the most money. Yes, there are sensible quality publishers out there; good luck in finding them.
As mentioned in a prior column, I glance at the books on my shelf near the balky email system. Last time I commented on a book about ice cream, with an appealing picture of a woman eating it. This time it’s All the Things Your Mother Never Taught You by Charlotte Slater. If you’re a housewife and something goes wrong, why let yourself be hung up indefinitely waiting for a repairman to get around to fixing it expensively? Indeed, as a family in the 1970s we got our little girls the usual dolls, but also little tool kits, so that they would never be dependent on some man for an incidental fix. Who knows what a man might want of a girl? That’s rhetorical; we all know what a man wants of a woman, and it’s not her intellect. Some don’t draw the line at a legal age. She needs to be independent as much as feasible. This book is an excellent roundup of practical things a woman can handle for herself, once she knows how, ranging from gluing labels to jump starting a car when the battery dies to burglar proofing her home to fixing a malfunctioning toilet. It seems to cover everything, with pictures and diagrams to make it clear. I recommend having a copy on hand so that when an unexpected foul-up occurs, you can make at least a temporary fix, until hubby gets home. Left field is full of things to mess up a routine existence. We know; we practically live in Left Field.
Clippings: THE WEEK for December 31, 2021 remarks on how the new year holiday is a tradition that goes back 5,000 years. Yes, well before Christianity existed. Similar is true for a number of other holidays, such as Christmas. Christianity simply renamed them to conform to the new order. That’s why agnostics like me have no problem celebrating it; it’s not religious in origin, or if it is, not Christian. Its point is to have fun. NEW SCIENTIST 18-25 December 2021 (we don’t necessarily receive them when they’re dated, thanks to snail mail) has an article by Thomas Lewton titled “Galactic Ghosts” tells how astronomers analyze intricate patterns in the movements of stars that indicate the cosmic origins of galaxies including our own 100 billion stars Milky Way. I suppose it can be likened to stirring new ingredients into the boiling cook-pot. I’d like to see a 3D film animating that monster, with our own star Sol highlighted. We are on a mere speck near the outer edge, pretty much beneath notice. The same issue has one by Leah Crane “’Space Cow’ explosion was probably a failed supernova.” Interesting that even novas can mess up. And one on “Why we laugh” by David Robinson. I believe in laughter. When I attended the Hospice bereavement group meetings, in my mundane personal life, not as Piers Anthony, after my wife Carol died, I often enough made the others laugh, and had no shame in doing it. The purpose of that group was to get past the crisis of grief, learning how to handle the loss, and get on with what life remains for you, rather than mourn continuously. Those meetings did help me, and I hope they helped the others similarly. Okay, the dialogue of those meetings is private, but I think I can give an example of what I mean. The subject came up of the song with the line “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he’s watching me.” I was an agnostic amid generally religious folk. I said that this made me think of how a woman could be walking with God, when something awful happened to her. She tells God “I thought you were looking out for me! What happened?” God replies “Oh, I’m sorry. My eye was on the sparrow.” Yes, that got a laugh. This article says that laughter evolved as a potent and flexible social tool with three key purposes. To show appreciation, to signal connection, and to signal dominance, such as when your boss laughs dismissively at your outlandish idea. Yes, I was glad at last to become a writer and be my own boss, so I could no longer get reprimanded or penalized for someone else’s mistake. I think it was office politics that got me laid off; as most of you surely know, it’s not necessarily enough to do your job right, you have to play the game. It was not a game I liked. Regardless, it seems that laughter can have health benefits. I try to bring laughter to my readers, and not to my critics who guffaw at the very notion that I can write.
Every so often the “Curtis” comic strip celebrates Kwanzaa with a related story. This time it’s “The Three Maidens and the Water Jug.” It was a time of terrible heat and drought in Ghana. Rivers were drying up, and the people struggled to keep crops, cattle, and themselves alive. With the exception of one hut, which teemed with green foliage. How could this be? Three maidens who were forced to fill their jugs with stagnant water guarded by a dangerous crocodile wanted to know the answer. What follows is the narrative of how they remained mystified despite even stealing the water jug and breaking it to pieces. But when they drank of its water, they started sneezing out feathers, belching live tadpoles that expanded into three-eyed frogs, and hiccuping out baseball sized spiders. Only an honest, friendly neighbor prospered. An appreciative wood spirit was responsible, trading fresh water for cheese. Now that’s my kind of story! I was turned on to the “Curtis” comic strip when I saw Curtis’ friend Gunk, a crazy magic vegetarian white boy from Flyspeck Island. I can’t think why I, a vegetarian from the island of Britain, once insurance ridered for all mental diseases, who made his fortune writing silly fantasy, relate. I loved the way Gunk’s sandwich consisted of two slices of bread with a whole carrot between them.
More clippings: an unadvertised tragedy is the growing number of suicides in the military. They dwarf the number of soldiers killed in combat. I am dismayed but not completely surprised. I served two years in the US Army, 1957-1959, and apart from paying my way during a recession and facilitating my achievement of American citizenship it was pretty much a waste of time. It cost them a phenomenal amount to train recruits, then they treated them so shabbily that they quit the moment their terms expired. This was expensive stupidity. In my case, when I declined to “volunteer” to sign up for a bond investment program, they punished the whole unit, removed me as a math and survey instructor, and finally kicked me out of the unit. They didn’t care how good an instructor I was; the first sergeant had a bet that he could get 100% participation in the bond program, and he was determined to win that bet. I finally reported him to the Battalion Commander. Nothing was done in the open, but I suspect that sergeant regretted his action, because it was hardly legal and now the upper chain of command knew. Naturally I quit the Army the moment I could. But what of those locked in, economically, socially, or because the Army was the only job they could handle? After a time being constantly treated like crap gets to you. Perhaps related is an item in THE WEEK quoting from a column in Vox.com, that suggests that America needs a mass movement to save democracy. The US is no longer a democratic model for the world. Instead we are “sleepwalking toward a disaster” in which the Republican minority rigs the political system in its favor, rendering majority rule effectively obsolete. “Is this what it looks like when a democracy dies and nobody cares?”
Quote from Margaret Mead run in the local CITRUS COUNTY CHRONICLE: “Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” True, actually. Customer-owned rooftop solar is a popular and growing source of clean energy in Florida, but it is under attack. That figures. The fossil fuel industry stands to lose if clean energy makes too much progress. Article in NEW SCIENTIST by Margaret Cuonzo titled “The power of paradoxes.” Some statements are both true and false, such as “This sentence is false.” There’s a picture of a triangle whose sides don’t make sense when you try to trace them. I love mental exercises like this.
THE WEEK for January 21, 2022, has an item from Germany titled “You can’t cheat your way to net-zero.” Folk know that natural gas and nuclear energy are not green energy sources, yet the European Commission has decided the only way to hit its goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions is to reclassify natural gas and nuclear power as sustainable. Yes indeed. I note that they don’t even mention the one that really can do it, geothermal energy. Meanwhile in Britain they are so afraid of being called racist that they are ignoring the way Muslim girls there are being abused, raped, and threatened with being doused in gasoline and burned to death, if they tell. Is England becoming a third world country? That situation needs to be cleaned up in a hurry. Web3—This may be the next chapter of the internet. Web 1.0 was the first version in the 1990s; Web 2.0 saw the rise of mega platforms like Google and Facebook. Web3 is a “vision of the internet where ownership and power are more widely distributed.” Lots of luck on that, world; the big boys are not going to give up their power voluntarily. It seems that access to Web3 is still controlled by a few companies with names like OpenSea, Infura, and Alchemy Insights, but new names does not mean a new system.
The January 1 issue of NEW SCIENTIST has a preview of 2022, eight aspects. 1. The rise of supergrids as they get set to use high-voltage cables to connect powergrids around the world. 2. mRNA technology may treat stubborn diseases. 3. Controversy continues over the first drug designed to treat the cause of Alzheimer’s. 4. The Large Hadron Collider is coming back online after a three year shutdown. Will it unravel the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, assuming they exist? 5. TheCOP15 biodiversity summit may help protect more land and oceans. Maybe, but I am reminded how in Britain they debated whether to save the island’s diminishing forests, but by the time they finished talking, the forests were gone. The lumberjacks had cut them down. I suspect this will be a repeat. 6. 2022 could be the year of a quantum computer cracking encryption and solving problems impossible for classical machines. Ah, but will they tackle Global Warming? 7. The coronavirus will evolve further. Yes, especially with the proudly maskless folk spreading it. 8. Exploring space, blasting off for the moon, Mars, and the asteroid Psyche. I will watch with interest, but keep my feet firmly on the ground.
I subscribe to the Hightower Lowdown, one of the “little” publications that doesn’t follow the corporate line. The last issue of 2021 remarks on the power of political cartoons. Ordinary folk may be too dull to read and understand articles, but the point of a cartoon generally comes right through. Boss Tweed in the old days, a wholly corrupt tyrant, desperately wanted the cartoons stopped. “My constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see the pictures!” Now its the big corporations that don’t like cartoons. At the start of the 20th century 2000 newspapers featured their own full-time staff cartoonists. Today only a couple dozen do. The first Lowdown for 2022 has the thesis that Nature deserves representation. Maybe lawyers should represent the trees, rivers, coral reefs and such. There is a case in Minnesota where wild rice is a plaintiff against the pumping out of five billion gallons of groundwater so Line3 can pass through the region. More power to you, Rice! The battle is here in Florida, too. The Florida Rights of Nature Network is trying to stop the poisoning of the land in Orange County, where Disney World lives, to save lakes, creeks, marshes, and other waterways from degradation that leads to toxic algae blooms and such. 89% of Orange County voters approved the initiative. But Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump imitator who is making Trump himself nervous, sneaked a provision into state law to nullify any local election that grants protective rights to nature. So the battle continues. What’s the will of the people, or the welfare of nature, or the world, when there are profits to be made right here in River City? Stay tuned.
Thus another month in my supposedly placid existence with MaryLee. We have now been married one and three quarters years. When the world stops ending and the pandemic abates, we still hope to have our honeymoon on the beach, and maybe do a bit of traveling. It’s not that we’re tired of each other’s company, but chronic lockdown is for the birds: the buzzards and vultures. I promised her warm Florida winters, then we got a low of 26°F. She should forgive me in time.
Thus another month of yesterdays has lighted we fools the way to—never mind.
