Sorry I’ve been away (and that I will be MIA for a few more days). Death in the family. I find it humbling and strangely joyous that everyone, at one point or another, experiences the challenges and strain of family loss… and continues on.
Archive for the ‘Other’ Category
Jen’s Not Here Right Now…
Posted in Other, tagged death, joy, Thoughts on September 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Welcome to the New Normal
Posted in Other, tagged climate change, home, ottawa, summer, tornado, weather on July 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Tornado touched down in Ottawa Monday…
A funnel cloud. In Ottawa. And it’s the, um, 10th Ontario tornado of the season, according to Environment Canada.
Yes, Dorothy, the climate does seem to be changing.
A critical question: If a tree falls in the woods… do you have insurance?
Sunrise, and All’s Well
Posted in Other, tagged awesome, beautiful, inspiration, national parks, sunrise, usinterior, yay on July 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Good morning!
Geek Girls: Meet Your New Anthem
Posted in Likes, Other on July 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Love, love, love this!
“Nothing to Prove” by The Doubleclicks.
P.S.: The album it is on is now for sale. In addition to that link, you can get it on iTunes and Amazon and all the other places.
Survival Hints for Creative Young Weirdos
Posted in Likes, Other, tagged artists, awesome, creativity, culture, finishing, inspiration, kids, Motivation, NPR, Thoughts, weirdos, yay on July 19, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Just in time for Comic-Con, Linda Holmes over at NPR’s Monkey See pop-culture column has written a lovely piece today. It’s framed as a letter to “young creative weirdos,” those who may be socially awkward now but who will constitute our next wave of creators, of thinkers, of innovators. Here are a few excerpts, but if you are interested in encouraging young people to do more, do better, do different, I suggest you read the whole thing.
On change, and the making of same:
Don’t confuse what people are getting with what people want…. If you had told people [100 years ago], “I am a young person, and I intend to create Superman,” they would have told you, “That’s nice, dear, eat your dinner.” Things change.
On feedback:
Only listen to it if it’s supposed to make you better, not if it’s supposed to make you stop.
On work:
Write a lot, paint a lot, shoot a lot of film, take a lot of pictures, dance a lot, sing a lot, whatever the thing you do is, do it a lot.…Keep going.
This is exactly the sort of letter I would have appreciated as a kid. Pass it on.
Boy, Did My Parents Get a Deal
Posted in Other, tagged adoption, biracial, NPR, race, srsly, Thoughts on June 29, 2013| 5 Comments »
Twelve and a half bucks, that’s what it cost my parents to adopt me. Would they have had to pay more for a white baby? We’ll never know, but according to NPR’s article on the issue, ‘Black Babies Cost Less To Adopt’, a skin-color based fee structure isn’t uncommon today. Not to mention how incredibly expensive the process is across the board.
/wtf, world?
Honestly.
Reporting Harassment at a Convention: A First-Person How To
Posted in Other, tagged arts, books, conventions, genre fiction, how to, inspiration, publishing, sexual harassment on June 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Reblogging this because Elise Matthesen has been brave enough to turn a bad experience into something useful, and it may help someone in the future… although I hope you don’t need it.
My friend Elise Matthesen was creeped upon at a recent convention by someone of some influence in the genre; she decided that she was going to do something about it and reported the person for sexual harassment, both to the convention and to the person’s employer. And now she’s telling you how she did it and what the process is like. Here’s her story.
—-
We’re geeks. We learn things and share, right? Well, this year at WisCon I learned firsthand how to report sexual harassment. In case you ever need or want to know, here’s what I learned and how it went.
Two editors I knew were throwing a book release party on Friday night at the convention. I was there, standing around with a drink talking about Babylon 5, the work of China Mieville, and Marxist theories of labor (like you do) when an editor from a different…
View original post 1,930 more words
Fauna Report
Posted in Other, tagged fauna, get outdoors, i should be working, inspiration, Motivation, nature, Thoughts, vacation, work, Writers, writing, yay on June 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »
[written from The Bush, as they say]
Greetings from Northern Ontario, where I sit at a table in a cottage overlooking a broad grey lake. Most mornings the lake sits still and calm, its surface and the encircling hills a chalice in which to hold mist. Like so many others in this region, this lake is surrounded by birch and pine, underpinned by the heavy, flat bedrock of the Canadian Shield. A small grassy lawn surrounds the house, illuminated by daisies and orange hawkweed.
It’s beautiful here, in the stark, almost frantic way of northern climes in summer. The sky warms around five o’clock in the morning and doesn’t fade until almost ten at night. Local wildlife takes full advantage of the long days, and I try to do the same.
Speaking of local wildlife, in addition to the usual chipmunks, rabbits, hawks, etc. I have seen the following in northern Ontario:
It’s raining now, providing me with the perfect reason to stay in and keep working. But even work is better in the woods!
Another Thought After Iain Banks, or, Origins and Destiny
Posted in Other, Science!, tagged atoms, awesome, human body, iain banks, illness, Motivation, neil degrasse tyson, physics, science, stars, Thoughts on June 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Now might be a good time to spend a little time with everyone’s favorite physicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, as he revisits the origins of the atoms that make up the human body.
From stars we came and to the stars we must return.
Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Where Our Atoms Came From
Iain Banks, 1954-2013
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged artists, arts, books, cancer, creativity, iain banks, illness, literature, Motivation, neil gaiman, patrick nielsen hayden, pnh, Writers, writing on June 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Iain Banks, 1954-2013 | Tor.com
This piece by Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden gives a kind remembrance of author Iain Banks, who died yesterday from cancer. I particularly liked this description of Banks’s personality:
In the social world of British SF, Banks will be remembered as a larger-than-life figure—irrepressible, fearlessly outspoken, a boisterous lover of life’s many pleasures, and given to unsung acts of kindness and generosity.
We might all wish to be remembered so. And as Neil Gaiman says in his own reaction to the news:
If you’ve never read any of his books, read one of his books. Then read another. Even the bad ones were good, and the good ones were astonishing.
-
Recent Posts
She Said, He Said
-
-
Favorite Posts
Archives
Categories
It’s All So Random
What I’m Reading
You must be logged in to post a comment.