Deeds & Words

In the Celtic tradition, October 31^st is the end of the year, New Year’s Eve, basically.  It’s also the time when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is at its thinnest. El Dia de los Muertos is also an acknowledgement of those who have passed beyond the veil; people go to cemeteries and clean off gravestones; they cook the favorite food of deceased loved ones, and leave them candy skulls as a remembrance.  Somehow harvest and the turn into the darkness have merged. That seems right, somehow. 

*

The hosts of the Halloween party I went to wore matching costumes.  They had black slacks, Darth Vader helmets and black T-shirts that read “Come to the dark side. . . we have cookies.”  Karen started a debate over the logic of the shirt, stating as her premise that it should say, “We have Wookies,” in order to be more accurate.  She did not prevail. 

Karen also took several pictures of my costume, including (finally) good pictures of the hat!  Thank you, Karen. 

*

She managed to capture the bling as well, with a good photo of the buckle, and also of the clockwork-and-key pendant that I bought at the regatta. 

I talked to Karen’s husband, award-winning writer Brian Fies*, about my character.  Brian was a bit skeptical when I said my character’s husband had been killed by zombies.  He tactfully suggested that I could just be the spinster schoolmarm.  Perhaps he was a little disturbed by my blithely killing off a husband, even a fictional one. (I mean, I certainly don’t mean the Sig-O!  In my character’s life, the Sig-O is very much around, just in an. . .umm, let’s say unorthodox relationship.  I don’t believe women didn’t take lovers during the Victorian era, especially wealthy widows.  Did Brian think I wouldn’t make myself wealthy?) 

There are more compelling reasons not to make my character a spinster.  One is, of course, money, but the other is that the hat I got is mostly black.  Black was not a fashion color for the Victorians, it signaled mourning.  Widows wore full black for the first year after a husband’s death, and only then could add some other colors, and they had to be careful.  Purple and lavender were also signals of widowhood.  I’m using the word “signal” deliberately.  You can talk all you want about it being about respect; it also let the world know you were looking for a husband and had some experience as a wife. 

The reason people think all kinds of women wore black during Victorian times is because the queen herself stayed in mourning for the rest of her life after Albert died.  And, theoretically, in the steam-punk world, if you’re a woman who is shoveling coal into the steam engine of your war machine, black doesn’t show the dirt as much. 

A spinster could be wearing black for a father, I suppose, but it’s unlikely and a little creepy. 

So my character is a widow, and not a recent one, with some money, and she’s conventional, as the costume suggests, but she’s adventurous also.  She doesn’t dress like a man but she wears clothes that are practical for walking, riding and climbing.  She could be a society woman who followed Florence Nightingale to the Crimea, or an adventurer like Isabella Bird.  Since it’s steampunk, it seems to me that she is continuing the fight against the Zombie Menace, the very cause that took her dear husband’s life. 

*

And speaking of zombies, our hostess put on Army of Darkness, an old, bad, delightfully campy movie directed by Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert, probably even before their Ghostbuster days.  The movie stars Bruce Campbell, who was also the star in their first series of complete no-budget films, Evil Dead.  I kept trying to point out Bruce Campbell to Karen.  I’d glance at the screen.  There he’d be.  I’d look at Karen and say, “That’s Bruce Campbell.”  I’d look back and it wouldn’t be him.  I’d say, “That’s not Bruce Campbell.”  I don’t know if Karen ever saw Bruce Campbell.  I don’t know how impoverished her life will become as a result of that fact, but she’s tough.  She’ll pull through. 

* 

Bruce Campbell was in a Fox TV series years ago, called The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. It started the same year the X-Files did, and may have been the lead-in.  It was a western, set in California in the 1890s, with strong science-fictional elements including mysterious energy orbs, a time-traveling villain, and Victorian-era inventions pushed decades forward, like dirigibles and television.  It lasted for about two seasons.  Fox didn’t know how to market it, because nobody knew what it was.  Was it a western?  Was it science fiction?  Was it comedy?  Of course, now we know.  It was steam-punk before steam-punk had a name. 

*

I’ll be wearing the costume in another hour, when I stand by the door prepared to give out treats to the cats, the bunnies, the ghosts, the vampires, witches, goblins, princesses, ballerinas and—gasp! the horror—zombies who peregrinate through my neighborhood.  Happy Halloween everybody!

*On this blog, I will almost always preface the words “Brian Fies” with the words, “award- winning writer.”  Sometimes I’ll put “award winning graphic artist” instead, so watch closely!

So, as most of you probably already knew, the best day to go shopping for Halloween decorations is the day before Halloween.  Everything was at least 25% off and one store had things marked down by 40%.  That store, by the way, was across the freeway from Dianne’s, where I was headed to pick up my costume.

After I got it–and it looks great!–I stopped at a shop in eastern Santa Rosa called the Classic Duck.  It used to be in a mall at the north end of town but it moved.  It is frou-frou, which is a phrase I usually use to be denigrating, but not in this case.  I love this store!  They have Christmas stuff and autumn stuff and jewelry and Thanksgiving stuff and table stuff and stuff for your deck and stuff for gifts and stuff for you mother-in-law and. . . it’s a great shop.

And their Halloween stuff was on sale, so I went a little crazy.  This may have been a case of post-costume euphoria, a rare but documented medical condition.  Possibly I should not have been driving while under the influence of the costume.

I had a very helpful clerk who searched through the back storage room twice to find something I was looking for.  Then he and I went scavening through the store and finally found one in a distant corner.  He was ringing me up.  I had bought a number of tiny Halloween ornaments.  Yes, that’s right, ornaments.  I was using one on a gift package and picked up a few more as hostess gifts for the party.  He admired them.  “My Halloween tree’s already filled, or I’d get a couple of these pumpkin ornaments,” he said.

Um, Halloween tree?  I read horror, so for a second, that conjured up a very gruesome picture!  Then I figured it out.

He said, “Do you have one?  What would you use?”

“I don’t have one, but I guess I’d look at manzanita or a piece of driftwood,” I said.  I used to have a driftwood grape root, and I hung my necklaces on it.  It was great.

“Manzanita!”  he said.  “Of course, you’d need a permit. . .”

I could see the wheels spinning in his head as I gathered up my bags.

*

About the costume, here it is on a hanger.  Here you can see the buckle a little better.

It had stopped raining but there was a shallow puddle right in front of the walkway up to Dianne’s studio.  As I pulled in and parked, a friendly smooth-hair  terrier in the car next to me poked his nose up to the cracked window, his tail flailing.  I put up the back of my hand to let him lick, but there was no way to pet him.  I got the box with my boots and hat (and parasol) out of the backseat and waded through the water.  Dianne opened the door as a started up the walkway.  A man came out and introduced himself as Henry, her husband.  “This will sound strange,” he said, “but your dress is beautiful!  It’s not a costume, it’s a dress!” 

“Thank you,” I said.  “I’ve been imagining what it looked like all the way up here!”

Dianne had the ensemble on the dress form.  It wasn’t exactly what I had expected.  I had expected the sleeves to be the chocolate brown of the skirt.  Instead, she made the undersleeve brown and went with the plain blue for the whole jacket, with a reversible belt.  An inspired choice!  The other surprise, for both of us, was that the view I had chosen, the bicycle skirt, was not a split skirt after all, but a very full skirt with box pleats front and back.  It looks a lot like a split skirt, but those Victorians didn’t want to remind anybody that women–ladies–had “limbs;” so the skirt is designed to cover practically the entire bycicle.  And it’s still great.

Still doesn’t do the hat justice.

The jacket, which is dramatic and more obviously “costumey” will not have brown cuffs.  It was just easier for Dianne to pin them that way.  The jacket will close at the top with a hidden hook and eye, decorated with simple black buttons.

You catch a glimpse of a glittery oval-shaped buckle on the belt.  I went out in last weekend’s rainstorm to look for antique belt buckles, finding that one at Whistle Stop Antiques in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square.  It is not quite the right period but has a vintage look and I liked the shape.  To our surprise, it worked!

 I pick up the finished thing tomorrow at 1 PM, for tomorrow night’s party.  There are still a few props, most notably the big piece of jewely I bought at the handcar regatta, that need to be included.  I had a grin on my face the whole time I was there this afternoon, when Dianne and I weren’t laughing.  It’s just a set of clothes, but I love it.

Usually, around February I decide I should do a Halloween costume.  Then I forget.  About three days before the holiday I scrounge around and find my old black velour cape and my witch’s hat, and call it good.

Not this year.  No. This year I had a Plan.  A Goal.  A Costume.

I went about the process in a strange manner, typical for me; I started locating props first.  I had a vague idea that I wanted something “steam-punk.”  Or, well, what I thought was steam-punk, anyway.  I browsed steam-punk websites and looked at spyglasses, fancy fake guns, goggles, etc.  I didn’t really find what I wanted, but in a catalog I came across a cool pair of lace up boots.  Perfect!  On a costume website, I found a gorgeous Victorian hat, which I promptly ordered.  There!  I had feet and head taken care of. And that’s what matters, right?

Then I ordered an authentic Victorian pattern from another website.  I had forgotten one vital detail; that I sent my sewing machine to Goodwill a year ago. This created a speed-bump.  Well, more of a road-block, actually, since by now I had purchased material.  I debated buying a new sewing machine.  Sometimes, though, you just have to be honest with yourself.  If I bought a sewing machine, I wasn’t going to use it more than once a year.  That is not a good investment.

So, in desperation, I looked around for a seamstress, and found Dianne.  We are getting down to the wire on the costume, and it looks like I will have it sometime Saturday afternoon, for a Saturday night party, but it will be done.  And I’m guessing this will be a costume I can wear more than once.

When I said it was “steam-punk” I was thinking of Victorian sensibility with a degree of inventiveness and feminism that really wasn’t in play during the era.  When I went to the handcar regatta, I quickly realized that with one or two exceptions, “steam-punk” costumes for women mostly mean black bustiers and calf-length tulle skirts, with big guns and metallic gauntlets, and goggles.  Okay, that won’t be me.  I look more like Amanda Peabody from the Elizabeth Peters books; a “lady explorer” in a fitted jacket with leg-o-mutton sleeves, a full, split skirt for riding, and a hat.  Pictures will follow.  I promise.

When the student is ready, the costume will appear. Soon, a little more on my “character.”

Woken Furies, Richard Morgan

Ballentine Del Ray, 2007

Takeshi Kovacs spends most of Woken Furies, the third book in the Kovacs series, in a bad mood.  When I’m in a bad mood, I’m more snappish and sarcastic than usual.  Kovacs is an ex-Envoy, a carefully selected, highly trained, rigidly conditioned covert operative and assassin for the powerful, draconian Protectorate, so when he’s in a bad mood, he kills people.

Of course, many of them are not really dead, or rather, Really Dead, because people in Richard Morgan’s future universe have cortical stacks, shiny storage devices attached to their cervical vertebrae, holding consciousness.  As long as your cortical stack is undamaged, your consciousness can just be downloaded into a new physical body, called a “sleeve.”  While you’re waiting for a sleeve your consciousness can be dormant, or it might be active, inserted into a virtual environment.  This could be a paradise or a torture chamber, depending upon who got hold of your stack.

I’m slightly disadvantaged by not having read Altered Carbon, the first book in the series, but only slightly.  Each book stands alone, with one or two overarching storylines, mostly focused on a 300-years-Dead revolutionary named Quellcrist Falconer, and the peculiar Martian satellites that orbit Harlan’s World, the planet Kovacs was born on.  The discovery a few hundred years before of Martian artifacts, the decoding of their technology and their astro-charts propelled humanity off Earth and into space, on the trail of already terraformed—or marsaformed—planets.  However, due to all the known time problems with intergalactic travel, humans travelling these distances needed to be suspended.  Presumably, this pushed the cloning and the development of the magical soul-amulets, oops, sorry, cortical storage devices.  There’s an implication that the cortical stacks also interact with the nanomachines that are injected into newborns to keep the current “sleeve” running at optimum efficiency.  It isn’t clear where all the sleeves come from, whose genetic material is being harvested for the sleeves, or even how people who decide they want to have a child are choosing to do that now that consciousness and identity have been irrevocably sundered from DNA.  Clearly there is still a biological imperative to procreate, since evolution doesn’t move that quickly; but which sleeve are you going to do it with?  And what does this do to inheritance laws, since there is no way to use DNA tracking to verify identity once a person has shifted bodies?  There’s not much discussion about how this triumph of Calvinistic mind-body split affected people psychologically or spiritually.  Religion, in Woken Furies, is a straw man built up to be torched by Kovacs’s anger, not a real force with any impact on society. 

Of course I’m going down the wrong path here.  The Kovacs books aren’t about societal questions or spiritual questions. They really aren’t for people like me.  The target demographic for these books, I’m guessing, is male, eighteen to twenty-nine, ingests large amounts of caffeine and plays Worlds of Warcraft until 3:00 am.

For that audience, this video-game universe with its endless supply of spare lives should work well. Morgan has done a great job of establishing the legacy of the Martian technology, although it helped that I had read Broken Angels first.  The Martian machines that orbit Harlan’s World, where Kovacs has returned, are intriguing and deadly, since they vaporize any airborne craft that gets more than a certain distance above sea level.  There is only one place on the planet where shuttles to the star ships can land and take off, presumably because the satellites allow it.  No one knows why the orbitals do this; sometimes, arbitrarily, the orbitals shoot at other things.  Nobody controls the orbitals; nobody knows how.

Kovacs is pursuing a scheme of personal vengeance when he connects with a group of DeComs, soldiers for hire who decommission smart weapons left on the planet’s war-ravaged lost continent.  He’s also dodging the local yakuza.  Soon he realizes that one of the DeComs appears to be channeling the consciousness of the long-dead revolutionary.  Then he finds out that the yakuza clan has sleeved a backup of himself, to hunt him down.

The book has plenty of suspense and Morgan’s action sequences are good.  In a strangely schizoid construction, the feminine principle is strongly represented while most of the individual women characters are comrades-in-arms and sex-buddies.  It’s interesting to see how he pulled that off.  The action moves from the lost continent to the planetary capital to a surfing community that could have been lifted intact from Oahu’s North Shore. 

Other reviewers mentioned the language in the book.  By this they mean the liberal use of the f-word.  Morgan knows very well what he is doing with his words.  He uses the f-word the way everyone under forty does now, for emphasis and pacing—and he also uses it correctly to mean copulation.  Since the dialogue is one of the strong points of the book, and characters use many colorful phrases and descriptions, I can’t tell if Morgan is using rough language out of habit, in an attempt to capture a sense of camaraderie, or whether he is trying to show us something about the deadening of sensibility in his world. There’s not enough of the world available to let me make that decision.

Kovacs, the pinnacle of human engineering and conditioning, is a bit slow sometimes.  I found myself yelling at the book, “It’s a setup!  A setup!” more than once, like a viewer of a bad horror movie.  Even though he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, he does get to fulfill a Hot-for-Teacher fantasy and work out his daddy issues, all the while saving Harlan’s World, or at least getting ready to really make things unpleasant for the ruling class there.  The book is billed as action adventure, not social commentary. It has action and adventure.  It has mythical beings who hurl lightning from the skies.  How can you not love that? As an example of video-game science fiction, it satisfies.

Last Monday my mother-in-law and I made the trek to her favorite used bookstore, Paperbacks Unlimited.  She had two bags of books for credit, I had three.  She hadn’t been there in a while, and went wild–I think she got over 20 books. Definitely the kid-in-a-candy-store vibe going on.  I got 8 books; not because I didn’t want more but because I was trying to hold back.  If I don’t want to reverse the flow of incoming/outgoing books completely, but I do want to slow the rate.

After I used part of my $63 in store credit, I paid $18 for what I got.  Two of them were in the science fiction section and I didn’t bring my little card with my sci-fi credit on it, so I paid full used price for those.  Still a deal.

Here’s what I got:

1. A Michael Swanwick:  Bones of the Earth
2. A Paul Preuss:  Secret Passages.  I read this when it came out.  In fact I think I have a signed first edition, but it was an impulse buy.
3. A Lee Child Jack Reacher thriller
4. Two John Connolly Charlie Parker thrillers
5. Two PC Tracy Monkeewrench mysteries (another author that Terry Weyna introduced me to.  Thanks, Terry!)
6. Lily Dale; a nonfiction book about a small town in upstate New York that is populated by spiritualists.  Every summer they have  Camp Days, and thousands of tourists come to town for seances.  My friend L saw a documentary about this town a few months ago.  When I saw the book, it seemed like an omen.

Eight books, eighteen dollars.  I can’t think of a much better deal unless it involved free chocolate.

This first one is from Whitehouse.gov and it talks about the First Lady’s garden.  I liked it, but, geez, Michelle Obama doesn’t wear jeans and sweat shirt even when she’s gardening? 

Here is the President’s response to the recent suicides of teens and young adults.  

Because I work with Food Stamps, I found this profile of program use in Hawaii interesting.

I had a bad week at work last week, so on Friday I put in for half a day’s vacation time, and gave my inner child a play-date.  The Sig-O and I went to the Petaluma Pumpkin Patch and the corn maze. 

If I had been by myself I would still be forlornly wandering the loops of eight-foot-high stalks, but I was the Sig-O, former Boy Scout, scout leader, Explorer and orienteer.  Oh, and he had the map.  Even with the map, this year’s maze was difficult.  Once you made your way to the north end of the maze, the trail took you back almost to the entrance, and then  you veered left to complete almost an identical set of loops and turns as you had done first. 

“It’s like a mirror image,” the Sig-O said, holding the map.  I peered around his shoulder. 

“It looks like the two sides of the brain,” I said. 

He gave me a sideways glance.  “Yes, or a mirror image.”

After we escaped from the maze we went back to the entry booth to ask the two women there how the maze designer does it.  Does he use graph paper?  Does he download designs from the internet? 

One of the woman was the wife of the maze builder.  “Jim does it in his head,” she said.  “He goes out then the corn is a few inches high, and walks around the field, and gets the idea.” 

We were like, “Wow!”  She seemed less impressed. 

“That’s a real gift,” I said. 

“Gift,” she said, narrowing her eyes slightly and staring past me. “Yes. . . That’s what it is, all right.  A weird, crazy, whacky. . . gift.”

The pumpkin patch and the corn maze grow in the adobe soil Petaluma is famous for.  Adobe; good for making bricks, difficult to grow in.  Jim, the maze builder, roto-tills his field at least once.  The pumpkins, though, looked like they were growing on a field of clinker lava, or on Mars.

They have been building the corn maze since 1993.  In California terms, that’s an eternity.  In California, if a building that was there when you were in high school is still there, it practically qualifies for historical landmark status.  

This year’s maze had four hubs.  Hubs are what make a maze challenging, and Jim knows his hubs.  They’re intersections where more than four paths come together.  Filled with oblique angles, they make it difficult to know whether you should make a hard left or merely veer left in order to get where you want to be.  We kept finding broken bits of corn ears as people left markers.  I started making little markers with discarded husks and adobe clods for the same reason; so we’d know if we’d been there before.  Is that an instinctual human response?

Two women in their late twenties emerged from behind us at one point.  They had entered the maze before us.  “We’re staying with them!  They have a map!” they said, but they were adventurous types and ranged ahead on their own.  We saw them about four more times.  We also saw two teenaged girls who had been ahead of us most of the time.  They did not have a map, but they had a system, and they made it out before us.  When we made it out, we went to look at the animals; a calf, some goats and pigs, a horse.  They all had tarp shelters, water and plenty of food, but they looked a little bored.  The calf wanted to be petted and then decided that eating my sleeve would be a good idea, pulling at it with its raspy tongue.  Then we went to look at the pumpkins and the sunflowers.  While we were standing and talking, the two twenty-somethings joined us.  “We made it out!” they said.  “You got out ahead of us, though.  How long have you been out?” 

I was nice and said, “Oh, a few minutes.”  I didn’t want to tell them it had been closer to twenty.

After we saw the sights, we stopped at Sequoia Burgers on Highway 116 for a late lunch/early dinner.  It’s a burger stand.  No goat cheese and arugula burritos, just burgers and dogs, fries and milk shakes.  It’s been there as long as the Sig-O can remember and he grew up in this town.  Now that’s a tradition.

As part of Art Trails I went to John and Sunai’s house.  Sunai had a young woman named Mai helping her.  I think she might have been in her first year of college, perhaps a little younger.  She had shoulder-length black hair and a movie-star pretty face.  Sunai added up my purchases. It came to something with thirty-one cents, and I did not have exact change.  Mai had moved the calculator and couldn’t find it.  She stared down at the change box, a little confused. 

“Let’s try this,” I said.   “Let’s count it back.  I needed to pay you thirty-one cents, and I gave you a dollar.  Pretend I gave you thirty-one cents. Give me back enough pennies to make thirty-five cents.”

 She counted out four pennies. 

“Now give me enough change to add to that and get forty cents.”  

That took a second, but she gave me a nickel. 

“Good, now give me enough dimes or quarters to equal a dollar.”  

She gave me six dimes.  It worked, but I could see she wasn’t quite getting it; just following by rote what I was telling her.  Then I looked at Sunai, and she was staring like she’d never seen such a thing.  “That’s so good!” Sunai said.  “I always have to subtract, in my head.  Does it always work?” As if it were a magic trick. 

And I thought, I’m really old.

Last weekend I went to the studio of Tony Speirs in Graton, and Atalier One, also in Graton.  Tony and several of his artist friends created the Shrine of Fortuna, most recently seen at the handcar regatta.

Lisa Beerntsen and Tony Speiers used to be a couple, and I guess they still are, but she has moved to Atalier One.  Pretentious name, good use of space for many local artists.

 Two artists I always visit; John Chambers and Stella Monday.  Stella is a photographer who has been to half the countries in the world, including the mysterious kingdom of Kansas, of which she has some stunning pictures.   This year some of the new ones included blistered paint on weathered wood.  It doesn’t sound like much, but the textures create something magical.  On the other end of the continuum, she has several amazing paintings from China related to the Cultural Revolution; Buddhist paintings, icons and mandalas scraped away to phantoms, or originally painted over and now bleeding through, becoming visible again. 

I never take pictures at Stella’s. 

The locals who made choices years ago to live out in the country on these beautiful winding roads must love and hate Art Trails.  Many of them are artists; many of them participate and they need the exposure.  On these weekends at any given time you can see four or five cars trundling along these roads, usually with two people; one driving, one consulting the Art Trails catalogue.  Sometimes the car has one person doing both of these things.

Many people choose to live out in the countryside so that they don’t have to deal with people.  These two weekends must just drive those people crazy.

 This year I added Barbara Hoffman’s pottery studio, west of town on the way to Occidental.  Barbara’s significant other used to work with my significant other, but I didn’t recognize Gary at first when I saw him.  It’s been about twenty years.  He didn’t recognize me either.  He is immersed with wood-turning and wood-working, in part, making polished lids for some of Barbara’s pots.  He also carved a beautiful wooden pumpkin box that was on display. 

I was pretty selfish this year.  Usually Art Trails is all about Christmas shopping.  I got one birthday gift, and three Christmas gifts.  And a bowl for myself.  And a Barbara Hoffman pitcher for myself.  And some cards.  Those aren’t really for me, so that’s not selfish, right?  Right?

Blade’s Edge

Mark Schynert

If you like high fantasy, urban fantasy, or alternate-time-line stories, and you have a Kindle, check out Blade’s Edge at the Kindle store. My friend Mark Schynert wrote and self-published this. 

It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I remember some of the ingredients vividly:

1.      A compelling schizophrenic street-person hero
2.       Strong women characters
3.      An enchanted knife that is, well, let’s say soooo not Excalibur
4.      A convincing villain with a point of view you can understand, even if you don’t share it
5.       Mark’s dry-as-a-good-martini wit
6.       An interesting magical system 

Mark is one of those irritating people who knows a lot about a lot.  Whether it’s the military tactics or the visioning of how technology would develop in an alternate timeline, the world-building is detailed without being obtrusive—and yes, he has military tech and magic in the same book. 

I really enjoyed this when I read it.  I don’t have a Kindle yet, but if you do, I think the cost is about $3.00—half of what you would pay for a less original fantasy work bound in paper.  Yes, Mark’s a friend, and this is not a “review.”  It’s just a suggestion.  I think you’ll enjoy Blade’s Edge as much as I did.

(PS–It’s the one with the simple gray cover with a dagger; not the live-model cover with the young woman who looks like she’s playing the violin.)