Picture Kermit the Frog flailing his arms wildly about. That’s how my week has felt, between work (somehow more hectic with Monday having been a holiday), medical appointments (physical therapy sessions for osteoarthritis in both knees), and trying to pick all these tomatoes (two for the bowl, one for the mouth…) before they go bad.
So I’m taking the week off, at least in terms of meaningful content. I need to blend the tomato soup now. (Quick recipe: 2 cups of bite-sized tomatoes, 1/2 a sauteed large onion, 2 small sweet peppers, a handful of thyme, single sage leaf, some minced garlic, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and a handful of cashews, left in the slow cooker all day with a carton of vegetable broth.)
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m following the upcoming United States presidential election with great interest. I commented on the Republican candidate during the last election cycle, which thankfully he lost. That said, poetry is not my usual medium, so it was a bit of a surprise Saturday morning when this got stuck in my brain and insisted on being written.
The energy is good, the message is better: we must save our democracy together. Talk to your neighbor, talk to your friends, let it not be how this government ends.
We will not go quietly into the night while those men, mostly white, cancel our rights. Forty-some years of these trickle-down tricks have made the rich even richer and the middle class sick.
When the middle class struggles, the country does too. Watch your officials, see what they do. If they try to divide us with a message of hate - stop and think, how does that really make America great?
Do they want you to vote or want you to hide? Are you too different from them, so not on their side? Or do they truly believe that each voice should matter? I can’t choose the former, thus I must choose the latter.
Every person that chooses to call the United States “mine” must now make a choice, they must draw that line. If you value each person for their friendly face, regardless of religion, gender, or race, Harris and Walz are the choice you must make, for your brother, your sister, for everyone’s sake.
This was followed by posting a recording of it to TikTok on Sunday.
Check your voter registration, check your early voting dates (where applicable), and research the candidates before our November 5th deadline. While this poem is specifically about the presidential race, your local races are equally, if not more, important.
When our dear friend Marinda travelled, she took her plush giraffe, Russell, with her. When she passed away, she had booked a Christmas-time cruise with her partner and had already purchased a membership to this year’s WorldCon, hosted in Glasgow. Russell collected several bracelets (necklaces for a smallish plush) during the cruise Marinda missed, and filled almost a page of his plush passport when he travelled with Cassandra and me to Glasgow’s WorldCon. These are some of the photos capturing his adventure in the UK.
The plush trio on the way to the Heath Robinson Museum: Menta (a bear), Francis (a macaw), and Russell (a giraffe).
The plush trio exploring the Heath Robinson Museum: Menta (a bear), Francis (a macaw), and Russell (a giraffe).
Russell (a giraffe) sitting on a wooden chair as several plush (owned by the Story Museum) sit on log pillows watching him. Well, except the wolf, he’s looking at the alligator.
Russell (a giraffe) by a thought bubble that reads “No-one must know… no-one must ever suspect… my shocking secret!”
Russell (a giraffe) hangs on the lampost in the Narnia story room at the Story Museum.
Russell (a giraffe) on a replicate Iron Throne (Game of Thrones) in an Oxford shop.
Russell (a giraffe) near a full-sized giraffe at the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, Scotland.
Russell (a giraffe) near the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland.
Russell (a giraffe) near the Kelpies in Scotland.
Russell (a giraffe) watches the Opening Ceremonies of Glasgow’s 2024 WorldCon.
Russell (a giraffe) watches the Hugos awards ceremony on a phone.
Russell’s passport page with his adventures from this trip recorded.
If you’re wondering about the blue bag that Russell appears in most of the time, that’s his crocheted travel pouch, which includes an inside pocket for his passport.
This gardening season has been… strange. You may recall I started the season with sixteen eggplant seedlings. We have no eggplants. Early summer saw an unusually high number of rabbits in our garden; I’m guessing they enjoyed the seedlings. That or the burst of exceedingly warm weather around the same time, followed by a temperature drop, and fairly sparse rain throughout the season killed them off. Given those choices, I’d prefer if the rabbits ate them.
Fortunately, some of our other plants thrived. Not surprisingly, we have tomatoes again – all volunteers from seeds dropped in previous years – along with small pumpkins (a volunteer from the composter in the keyhole bed), and three varieties of cucumbers that I planted. The strangest of those are the lemon cucumbers, a round yellow variety that have a delightful crunch to them.
This was our first sizable harvest, a few days before we left on a trip to England and Scotland. Cucumbers, like other plants in the squash family, have a tendency to spread their vines under (or over!) other plants, resulting in what I refer to as stealth fruit, which are ones I don’t find until they’re either larger than usual or otherwise overripe. The two cucumbers pictured above with yellowing (orange-ing?) skin are examples of stealth fruit. We made an effort to finish our early harvest before leaving on vacation, knowing that we would likely be coming home to more ripened fruit.
We were not wrong. There are a handful of green, of varying shades, cucumbers on the vine; we picked every one that looked ripe or overripe, including a couple lemon cucumbers that had been partially eaten. The eaten ones were left in a garden bed, so someone can finish eating them or the seeds can have a chance of germinating next year. We did find that the skin becomes less edible at this stage, so the lemon cucumbers will likely be peeled before eating. Unfortunately, it didn’t rain much while we were away, so many of the cucumber vines have dried out, which means they’re not likely to produce more flowers or fruit.
Of course, we also have an abundance of tomatoes! Amongst the traditional red cherry and yellow pear tomatoes, I found the occasional batch of yellow cherry and red pear, a consequence of growing the two varieties side by side for so many years. We have the usual sprawl of tomato plants, refusing to be contained in their beds and cages, so I expect we’ll miss some during the harvest process and have volunteers again next year. Fortunately, the rain has arrived, which should keep the tomato plants happy for the next few weeks. At some break in the rain, we need to harvest raspberries and strawberries too.
If the title Peter and the Starcatcher brings to mind Peter Pan, you are on the right track. This was my second time seeing it, and while I recall enjoying it the first time, I didn’t recall just how… Ren Faire it was. Or maybe that’s just the Paramount’s presentation, with ladders on the stage, model ships representing The Wasp and The Neverland, and a general air of snarkiness from the characters. On the other hand, according to Wikipedia, it’s based on a book by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, so maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I first saw it nearly a decade ago.
Peter and the Starcatcher is a prequel to the classic Peter Pan, exploring how Peter came to Neverland and received both parts of his name. He teams up with Molly when pirates – lead by Captain Black Stache – seize The Wasp, the ship her father is sailing on with a bounty of “starstuff” to dispose of for the Queen. Except the captain of the Neverland switched the trunks, so the starstuff, which grants some magical abilities, is actually on Molly’s ship, and when both ships face off in a storm, the Neverland’s wreck and leaking starstuff result in magical hijinks.
This is a delightful story and a truly enchanting performance. Be prepared to laugh for an extended period.
I may have mentioned my tendency towards gaming in past posts. OK, that’s an understatement, of course I have. And while I’m not currently involved in a Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D to those of us in the fandom) game, it was one of the role-playing games I started with in college, way back in 2nd Edition. (It’s on 5th Edition now.) Not surprisingly, that means I enjoyed the Dungeons & Shakespeare show that appeared on the Bristol schedule this year.
Some shows are carefully scripted – and followed. I can quote significant portions of The Swordsmen show, and Cirque du Sewer follows a basic pattern, with variances for the animals’ behavior. Dungeons & Shakespeare is a combination of improvisation and luck. The Stage Master selects volunteers from the audience who draw cards from various decks (characters, goals, encounters) to determine what will be included in that performance’s adventure. Additional volunteers are selected as needed to fill the cast, and ultimately the outcome depends on all of their decisions and, of course, the results of a 20-sided die.
If you have the opportunity to experience this show, at Bristol or location, I highly recommend it.
One of the privileges of a WorldCon membership – whether you’re attending the convention or just supporting the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) with a membership – is the ability to nominate and vote on the Hugo Awards. After the committee filtered through the nominees to determine the top six in each of fifteen categories, they assembled a Voter Packet that was made available to the membership. That Voter Packet includes a mix of excerpts, entire books, trailers for one movie and a couple movies in their entirety.
In terms of quantity of material to review, it was certainly overwhelming. I made a deliberate effort to read the material provided in the Novels, Short Stories, and Astounding New Writer categories, and was lucky enough to have seen half of the movies already. As I polished off what I was going to make it through in a specific category, I logged into my ballot and updated that section. Pictured below is the Novella category with no votes logged.
Each category starts will all items listed as Unranked; you select the numbers one through six for each item you’re voting on. You may also use the No Award option at the bottom, if you think none of the nominated works deserve the award. You don’t have to rank all six items, and you can place the No Award in between rankings if you think some items should earn an award and some shouldn’t.
Oddly, to me at least, there is betting on the Hugo Awards. I only found out about that because there was some fraudulent voting in this year’s process that the committee identified and removed from the counts. Regardless, the entire process of assembling the nominees, and Voter Packet, and tabulating the votes is tremendous effort by a team of volunteers. I applaud them and appreciate the new literature this process has exposed me to.
I have mentioned several times that we enjoy attending Bristol Renaissance Faire each year. But in last year’s post, I also mentioned some unpleasant waits… in particular, the hour it took us to get from the highway exit (after driving more than an hour to get to that point) to actually walking through the gates of Faire. That was compounded by arriving after the food lines started getting long – because of the traffic delay – with the perennial problem of finding somewhere to sit, knowing that finding a place with a table is unlikely. So we approached this year a little differently, specifically stopping to eat lunch most of the way there, which allowed us both adequate seating (with a table!) and a minimal delay from the highway into Bristol’s parking.
Since we had already eaten, it was easy to select snacks at less crowded times, and we even found seating at one point in what used to be the Kid’s Kingdom. As an added bonus, arriving later meant we had energy to stay until almost closing, catching different performances from some of our favorite acts, such as Cirque du Sewer’s Fire Show, which includes a cat jumping through a flaming hoop. In a stroke of luck, we had near perfect weather for opening day (as opposed to the next day, which had storms that shut down some shows for safety and eventually the Faire itself).
Assuming the prices don’t continue to rise astronomically – ticket prices increased last year, and the parking jumped from $10 to $15 this year – we’ll probably follow this approach in future years.
The search for free time is a recurring theme this year, between travel, local excursions, work, conventions… the list seems never-ending. But I have stories to write, fun things to crochet, images that need drawing and coloring! The trick that I’m learning is that no matter how enthusiastic I am about the project, I don’t actually need to do it all in one sitting. The images below are a good example of that.
I follow a couple artists on Instagram, mainly ones who focus on watercolors, which is a medium I have little experience with. This particular image came from Andrea Nelson’s account. While the basic concept is fairly similar to what she did, hers has a lot more dark space in the cloud, separating the sections more. That’s one of the fun things about working from an inspiration… I’m making my own version, not a copy. Even the drawing part was split across multiple sessions as I had time… those little circles in the cloud take a while to draw!
The next step was painting the image. I started with the background, then moved to colors for the raindrops. It’s been a busy couple weeks, I can’t remember if I actually did the raindrops in a different sitting than the background. I did, of course, have to let the background dry before trying to reach past it to the raindrops. And I had to let the raindrops dry before outlining them with a white gel pen. Like a recipe, I tried to stay true to the original art for the first iteration. The next iteration – still a work in progress – is a little bit more me, and I already have ideas for a third iteration.
That’s right, it’s raining meeple! I’m not as happy with the cloud on this one – I like the first cloud more, with more subdivisions and the patterns seeming more chaotic. I’ll keep that in mind for the next one.
That said, I definitely like having the meeple there. The drawing was all done in one sitting, and the background paint (not pictured) on its own when I had at most 15 minutes to spare. Next up is painting the meeple.
Our Alaska cruise involved a day at sea, three port days, and another two days at sea – including one passing through Glacier Bay National Park – before ending in Whittier, which is near Anchorage. Most of the movement between the ports was done at night, giving us a reasonable amount of daytime in each port for shore excursions if we wanted.
We wanted. In fact, we managed to schedule four excursions across the three ports, without having to feel like we were rushing from one thing to another. In each port, we had some time to explore the area (mostly shopping) near the ship, including finding lunch twice. The photos below are from our shore excursions, grouped by port: Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway.
Ultimate Saxman Experience: Cultural Showcase, Native Crafts & Culinary Tasting
An eagle ornament and paint near the beginning of the painting process.
Alaska Craft Soda from Forty-Ninth State Brewing – a root beer can stacked on a spruce tip soda can
A trio of eagles carved onto branches of a pole
Tlingit dancers displaying the back of their capes, identifying their family affiliations.
The decorated front of the building where we saw the Tlingit dancers.
View of the water from the Saxman Village.
A totem pole in progress.
D&D Mammoth Ivory Dice at the Saxman Village store. It’s a standard set of 7 dice, priced at $1000.
Best of Juneau: Whale Watching, Mendenhall Glacier & Orca Point Lodge Meal (yes, we saw whales, but they don’t show up well on the photos I took)
A mountain view near Mendenhall Glacier.
Mendenhall Glacier across the water.
Mendenhall Glacier across the water with some green between us and the glacier.
Mendenhall Glacier across the water with some people for scale.
Wandering the path near Mendenhall Glacier, alternating between talking and singing because continuous noise alerts bears of your presence.
St. Yakov, the boat we took on our whale watching excursion.
Orca Point Lodge, where we stopped for an early dinner during our whale watching excursion.
A land bridge outside the Orca Point Lodge. We were warned that the land bridge would be underwater by the time we finished dinner. (It was.)
Sea lions lounging on a buoy with raindrops on the windows.
A great view of mountains and water on our whale watching excursion.
Kitchen Science Alaska: Garden-to-Table Skagway and Musher’s Camp & Sled Dog Experience
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, the science part which involved beakers of mystery liquid and testing for acidity.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, where we saw a Big Green Egg and another smoker.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, raised garden beds growing mostly salad greens, which don’t travel to remote areas well.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, feeding the sourdough.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, assembling our own Baked Alaska desserts.
Holland America’s Noordam in Skagway with a mountain in the background.
Mountain views behind the Noordam while docked in Skagway.
Amazing views near Skagway on our way up to the Musher’s Camp to meet sled dogs.
Amazing views near Skagway on our way up to the Musher’s Camp to meet sled dogs.
Me in front of an amazing view on our way up to the Musher’s Camp to meet sled dogs.
A passenger view of the vehicle – a Unimog – we rode at Musher’s Camp to go up the mountain to see the sled dogs.
An action shot of the sled dogs, just starting their run, from the front seat of the wheeled sled at Musher’s Camp near Skagway.
An action shot of the sled dogs from the front seat of the wheeled sled at Musher’s Camp near Skagway.
