Monthly Archives: October 2015

The Scarecrow Parade

Once again, Main Street Benicia is hosting its Halloween scarecrow contest! There are many to choose from. The figures break down into some natural categories: Classic: Two actual scarecrows and a skeleton display represent the best of the “classic” theme. … Continue reading

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The Hugos, 2016; Some Good Novels

I’ve read four great SF novels this months, and three of them would be eligible for Hugo nominations. One I read as an ARC and it will not be released until 2016. The others, however, I recommend highly, depending on … Continue reading

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Michele Anna Jordan: The Good Cook Comes to Copperfield’s Books

Michele Anna Jordan gave a presentation at the Sebastopol Coppefield’s on Saturday, October 17. Jordan has revised and reissued several of her classic food books, and she highlighted them for us. This particular Saturday she had driven down from an … Continue reading

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Whose Story is This, Anyway?

Two years ago I wrote a short fantasy story. It had a first-person narrator, in the person of a slackerish teenaged boy in a strange family. It started off with an almost-funny premise, and I tried to create pop-culture-weird family … Continue reading

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The Pomo Youth Dancers

The local Pomo Youth Dancers group performed at the Farmers Market on October 11. The group was founded by Joe Salinas, a staffer at the Sonoma County Indian Health Project. I hadn’t heard of them until this Sunday,  but I’m … Continue reading

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There are Doors

There are doors in books. Not every door in every book opens for every person, but when they do, they can take us far outside ourselves, or deep within ourselves, or into a place that’s sideways from where we walk … Continue reading

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Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood

In the Afterword to Stone Mattress, Nine Wicked Tales, Margaret Atwood explains that she chose the word “tales” deliberately, to differentiate from stories. A story can be a telling of an actual occurrence; a “tale” is always made up and … Continue reading

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The Eclipse

Moonrise occurred at 7:14 PST, and the moon rose already in the penumbra of the earth’s shadow, so it looked like a cloudy pink smear. I walked over to the nearby park about 7:30. In the early stages, the color … Continue reading

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