"Among them the tradition is handed down from Elanor that Samwise passed the Towers, and went to the Grey Havens, and passed over Sea, last of the Ring-bearers."

Which is a lot nicer, really, than holding his breath repeatedly until he passes out and eventually dying of it, and I guess I will soon begin to think of my faithful servant's condition as sleep apnea instead of spite... anyway, I have a new-to-me Dell Latitude on-lap, and have to do a few more drop missions into Samwise to recover the files that aren't backed up on the external drive because I forgot to do that the last couple of weeks, and then figure out what isn't there and ask people to send it to me. I am calling the new machine Mertensia, because she is small and feminine and... not blue, but definitely not eighteenth-century either, and if you look back (gulp) eight weeks and read my last post you will understand that. Kind of.

Um, I guess there is really no point in my getting a Dreamwidth account, huh. Between the Samwise troubles and the general net access troubles I could say I have had some difficulty posting, but it's not really the case, and I have been busyish (google Grow It Eat It Maryland if you want to know what with) and still sick, but not so much either as to prevent dropping a note here. I'm just not so inclined to as I was, for whatever reasons. And the longer it is the more ridiculous the summary posts get. Oh well. We'll see.

I am writing in the spare moments - will be starting chapter four of the new book when Mertensia is settled in. For whatever comes of that. (For the betas: I had a wild moment of wanting to call the new machine Wilfrid, instantly quashed. I could never trust the clock, for one thing.)

The vegetable garden fence is done, thanks to Boy Home From College, and things are growing there, not thanks to the cool wet spring, although give it another week and I'll probably be complaining about the heat and drought. BHFC has been very useful all around, in fact, including cooking. Other Boy is still performing, both musically and dramatically (student-produced one-act plays, from which (not the one he was in) I also briefly considered calling the computer Wurzel-Flummery, but it seemed philosophically wrong). He is also dating an older woman. Cat went on the road yesterday and made a guest appearance at the demo garden, entertaining a fellow master gardener and the resident chipmunks. (I thought he needed to know that all car trips do not end at the vet's office. Although from the vocal protestations this was just as bad, even if we do grow prey animals and catnip there.)

That's... not about it, but what I said about summaries... anyway, I am keeping up with you all and wish you the best.

Thing that comes up when you start doing a little side research: all the sources say that Mertensia virginica, Virginia bluebell, was named by Carl Linnaeus to honor the German botanist Franz Mertens. Linnaeus died in 1778, lingering on for four years after a series of strokes. Mertens was born in 1764. I'm not denying this is possible -- they could have had friends or relatives in common, and Linnaeus could have been paying tribute to an intelligent child with a future in botany -- but I'm curious why no one questions it.

I'm just annoyed because this denies me the chance to name a character born in the 1750s Mertensia. I will have to wait until my Victorian novel period, I guess...

Oh, and happy early birthday to yunitsa! Am unlikely to be around tomorrow to say it.

It is tremendously reassuring to know, after you've tried hard NOT to slash the character your son is playing in the high school musical with the character of his enemy-turned-bosom-friend, that the cast has been doing it all along, to the extent of staging a post-curtain-call wedding with a bunch of spinach as bouquet. Pierre/Doumergue OTP!!

Still humming all the tunes... *hearts Stephen Schwartz*

I should do the linkage here: Vegetable garden at the White House yes!!

(And yes, it is weird that I'm linking American news on the BBC but I'm in a rush and it's convenient.)

Any recommendations for blog publishing systems, platforms, whatever you call them? I haven't used anything except blogspot and that was years ago.

What I'm setting up is an internal site for communication among a group of 50 people or fewer, which will mostly be me and a few other people posting announcements and others commenting on them. I think for this group it will work better that way than to use a mailing list since many of them tend to reply to the list when they don't really mean to and thus clog up inboxes that are not accustomed to volume. But I'm not sure; the blog may end up not getting checked. Security is not a huge concern; I don't think anyone will get a lot out of stumbling onto the group and no one in it will want to remember a password. Although I suspect at any site these days they will have to sign in to comment - just that, though, and not a social networking type format where you have to be a member with your own journal/page etc.

I would love to have nested comments but it's not essential. Aside from that, nothing fancy, text and the occasional picture posted, and as little start-up work as possible. Oh, and free. Ads are fine.

Any Dana Stabenow fans here? I picked up her Liam Campbell series a couple of years ago (mostly because Laurie King kept mentioning her) and enjoyed them, and just recently have been reading bits of the Kate Shugak series (somewhat reluctant Aleut private investigator in Alaska), missing some along the way since the library didn't have them. For the first few I was thinking, hmm, decently written, good characters, interesting information about various aspects of Alaska life (Kate gets around a lot since every book tries to address a different topic). Breakup was one of the more entertaining mystery novels I've read, but still relatively light. And then I got to Hunter's Moon, and OW. Not pulling punches, there. I have now read the next one, Midnight Come Again, but not any further than that.

I'm very much looking forward to the new Laurie King book, The Language of Bees, not least because of the bee content (although I suspect it's only an early-chapter mystery). I'm currently taking a beekeeping course that ends early next month, so the timing is excellent. Not planning to get bees until at least next year, but hopefully I can sign on with a local mentor from the association and get some experience actually helping out with real hives.

I do wish the classes wouldn't run 45 minutes on from their advertised end - didn't get home till 10:15 last night, and tonight will make three nights in a row of being out late, since it's opening night of The Baker's Wife at Patrick's school and I am spending the evening selling food.

I haven't posted in a while and I think it's because every time I start thinking about a post I realize I'm going to be complaining about something, and that's not what I want to do. Perhaps the best thing is to get it over with in one post and then hopefully get on to something more positive.

( Cut for complaininess )

I am NOT looking for advice, reassurances along the lines of "it could be worse" or intimations that I have no right to complain. I know all that. Don't need commiserations either; just wanted to write it all down. Will try to post something of substance later in the week.

Random post title from note in this morning's paper about why in heck a snowy owl decided to spend time in DC's legal district yesterday. This has nothing to do with why I dreamed about a needy stray puffin the night before (actually it was more like a penguin but with a puffin-like head, and it landed on my front porch after a storm). Hey, at least I was dreaming.

Australia holds pigeon smuggler.

1. There are items you just know are going to turn up on Wait Wait, the Daily Show, insert other national equivalents here...

2. I really ought to change one of my various usernames to "an undeclared aubergine."

The latest book sentence meme:

Grab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

"The outer leaves make a chiseled, swirling skirt around the core."

(from a description of Savoy cabbages, The New Kitchen Garden by Anna Pavord)

My life seems, of late, to be centered around vegetables and the growing thereof. Currently on my "desk" (which consists of a small table and a patch of floor): various notes on seed orders, sketches of garden plans, a basket of seed catalogs, several bags of seed packets, the aforementioned Pavord book (inspiring but rather impractical), Weaver's Heirloom Vegetable Gardening (just as wonderful as I remembered), and the Maryland Master Gardener Handbook. I have nearly completed my required MG volunteer hours for the year in January - mostly demo garden planning, but also stuff for the statewide food gardening program and a couple of other things - and I seem to have made the leap into local and even statewide prominence within the organization.

The other "desk" (patch of floor) across the room has some of the folk and fairy tale books and printouts that I'll be using when I get around to writing again, whenever that is, along with a few books about China and Malaysia (most of my latest haul went back to the university library the day I had to go there for a veggie group meeting). I did come up with one sentence in my sleep last night, in the voice of my character Janet: "For a while we had what I think they used to call a Boston Marriage. Except Anke had lots of suburbs." I suspect someone has made this joke before. (Not on Google, though, at least. I always Google jokes.) This is not a first chapter sentence (it appears to be dialogue and Janet's not going to say this to anyone she talks to in the first chapter) so I will probably forget it by the time it might work its way in.

Janet, by the way, is 9/16 Chinese and the rest more or less white, through various interesting manipulations of time travel. I have been thinking a lot about how race works into my fiction (which it does a lot) during this whole latest discussion, and I would go on about what I have learned and how I'm going to use it, except that it is Not About Me. People can talk about it amongst themselves (and with me, as long as I don't have to simultaneously be a dead author and yelled at) when and if my works see publication, which at this rate may just be online self-publication because I will never have time for anything else. I suspect there are equal amounts of fail and win within. But I do keep editing.

I will just say this from one of our latest MG projects, which is a collaboration with an African-American women's group and several churches, a nutritional health program that is going to include vegetable gardens. My friend Pat, who's in charge of our side of things, was talking with the woman in charge of the health program, and was asked if maybe she could give a talk on the benefits of gardening or whatnot, and she said in essence, "Um. I really don't want to be the Nice White Lady Expert all over again." And the other woman immediately saw her point, and laughed. I think there have been a lot of instances of Nice White Lady Expert in this discussion, and although Pat did very well in the (entirely improvised) discussion of the project in the church site visit we did last week, standing up in front of everyone, it also behooved us to sit back and listen to the Nice Black Church Lady in the Hat, and even less Nice Ladies deserve to be listened to as well (and gentlemen). (The MG program in our county is about 90% white (not at all reflecting the demographics of the county). I wish it wasn't so, but it is, and I hope along the way one of the things I can help do is to change that; until then we deal. The public and published gardening world in this country is very white-dominated, too, which is not necessarily true of the activity it supposedly represents. I did a little post on minority presence in garden catalogs last year in my other (sadly neglected - and this one isn't?) journal - it's shameful, when you start really looking. The vast majority of the pictures are of plants, of course, but that's no excuse.) Anyway, much to be thought about, much to be done. I need to get back to sketching garden plans now...


*Actually, according to an internet dictionary it means cabbage, but they are variants of the same plant anyway (stop me or I will do a whole post on the history of cabbage. I'm armed with information) and on menus gobi usually indicates cauliflower. (He is named for the desert. His brother's name is Atacama.) By the way, Not All Cauliflower Is White. (Ms. Vegetable Symbolism 2009.)

Yes, we went!

(Sorry. It's kind of an irresistible cadence.)

We weren't going to go, not being crazy people and all. (Well, not in that way.) The predictions of total gridlock were dire, and the forecast was chilling. But somehow over the weekend we got the fever; J. and P. started talking about biking in (from halfway there: not totally crazy), and I didn't see myself doing that but thought taking the Metro would be possible, even if it meant standing in a packed train for an hour after waiting to enter the station.

We left the house at a little after 6 a.m. They dropped me at the White Flint station, after a strangely easy trip down I270 and other major arteries. And... I walked straight into the station, with only a tiny delay to assist some out-of-towners in putting their tickets into the fare gate right way forward, and a couple minutes later got onto an almost-empty train, which filled up to normal rush-hour levels by the time we got downtown. Got out at Farragut North, texted the bikers to let them know I was there (about two hours ahead of them, as it turned out; so much for gridlock) and walked through fairly quiet streets to look at where we'd decided to stand near the Reflecting Pool (completely empty, though I gather the Mall itself was beginning to fill up). Then I went to our meeting place at GWU student center, and sat reading The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club until J. and P. arrived, having parked their bikes at the wonderful valet bike parking area. After they'd warmed up (did I mention it was below freezing? Not nearly as cold as it had been a few days earlier, but still P's water bottle froze during the ride) we proceeded down to the Mall, or the not-Mall-proper behind the Washington Monument, and ended up standing just in front of the WWII memorial, within sight of a Jumbotron (enormous TV for broadcast of the events), nearly a mile and a half from the Capitol. We could have been nearer, but not with such a good view of a screen. This was about 10:15, and the area was pretty packed, and got more so.

(If you've seen the aerial view of the Mall, solid in the areas closest to the Capitol, and then breaking into clusters further back, you have witnessed the choice made between being physically close and actually seeing anything - the clusters are all around Jumbotrons.)

It was cold, but not so cold in the middle of the crowd. I dressed in layers (two pairs of wool socks and thick-soled hiking shoes; wool long underwear, fleece tights, tight-woven cotton trousers; wool camisole, wool underlayer shirt, two fleece shirts, thick acrylic sweater; wool overcoat with hood, gloves, scarf, hat. The people selling Obama hats and Obama scarves were doing good business) and was stiff but not frozen when it was all over. The crowd was great: completely mixed in race and age and sex and region, and though I don't think we were as loud or organized as the close-in crowd, really enthusiastic and happy. So happy. Great cheers not just for the Obamas on the screen but for lots of other people too - well, the Democrats, this being a partisan crowd (though not overtly rude to Bush and friends). Though Colin Powell got a big hand too. It was fun watching the direct feed because a) no obnoxious TV announcers; b) the microphones on the platform kept picking up the conversations and comments the dignitaries were exchanging. The biggest laugh at our end was after one of the prayers or other formal moments when the announcer (there was an official announcer, a bass in one of the military choruses I think I recall reading) said "Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated" and we looked at each other and the cold ground and cracked up.

Anyway, I'm glad I was there: glad to have been in the middle of that cheering throng when Obama took the oath, glad to have heard the glove-muffled applause and the whoops and the church-cadence responses to the best points in his speech ("You tell it" "Oh yes"), glad to have seen forever-optimistic America at its finest. I really adore my country today.

Afterward we meandered back to our food-court meeting place for a snack, and then to the bike valet, and then I walked uptown some more hoping to find a less-packed Metro entrance, but still had to wait ten minutes to get into the station. Letting one full train go by, I got on a mysteriously-empty one, which went out of service with mechanical difficulties four stations later, but then caught another with a little free space and got out (very very hot and a little nauseated) at White Flint and went to the mall (small m) and had some iced coffee and watched the TV at Borders (the parade, which we didn't even try to witness; you couldn't really do both), until my menfolk arrived. And then went home, tired but pleased.

(Have no appropriate icon in my six. Can I make it topical by adding that the only thing Obama could have done better was to promise in the inaugural address to put a vegetable garden on the lawn of the White House? But he will do it anyway, I'm sure.)

Christmas presents I made use of on New Year's Day:

Wool long underwear, worn under several other layers of clothing for Sugarloaf Mountain hike.

Hiking pole, one of a set, which I'm not sure actually makes the pain in my hip and knee less, but does give me a lot more confidence on the downslopes. Something like a 4 mile hike, ups and downs - was supposed to be longer but we started running out of time and light and took a shortcut - and I was pretty darn stiff for the rest of the day. Very tired of this. Resolution: more careful consideration of injury treatment. Regular yoga stretches and ice and short walks instead of going out once a month for a long one (though this is the third in a week).

Books: read a little more of George R. Stewart's Names on the Land, reprint of an older book about how places in the U.S. got their names. Some are fascinating stories and some are pretty routine (like our Sugarloaf Mountain, not mentioned specifically but one of about a hundred that... looked like the rounded-top loaf that sugar came in). Also finished William Woys Weaver's 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From which, I know I am geeky, but heirloom vegetables! and history! I also got, courtesy of my father's tendency to buy random books he thinks might be interesting and never look at them again, a copy of Weaver's Heirloom Vegetable Gardening, which is out of print and hard to find for under $100, and was just sitting there on the shelf apparently when I happened to mention it. Yay!

The Squngee, which is a portmanteau combining squirrel and bungee, and consists of a long cable with a stretchy bit and two dried corncobs on the end, and you hang it from a tree and gradually raise it from the ground as the squirrels get wise about jumping onto it and bouncing. Right now they are still hanging with their hind paws dragging on the ground and their tummies showing. Technically this was my husband's present, but it is really for the whole family, including the cat (who received a birdfeeder we haven't put up yet).

Dutch Blitz, a "wunderful goot" card game courtesy of the Amish, of the sort where everyone plays at once and you try to pile up cards in the middle while getting rid of your own "Blitz Pile" (and strategically using your Wood Pile and Post Piles, if you can think strategically at that speed). I turn out to be rather good at it, when I am not laughing hysterically. In one game (several hands) we had a score range of 89 (me) to negative 35 (not saying).

Hope you are enjoying 2009 so far.

It's not very often that I pop onto the intarwebs and my BBC international news homepage and see local news. I'm sorry for the people in the cars, and those who have no water and/or heat at a very inconvenient time (this happened over the summer too, other side of the county. Our infrastructure is crumbling - glad I have a well), but Patrick is happy, because they closed schools early on the last day before winter break. Although he stayed up late last night finishing his analysis of Juliet's epithalamion and school ended before English class. Oh well.

I wish you all the happy holidays you can cram into this week, and no water main breaks, and waft the scent of Joe Froggers baking in the oven your way. (They are molasses cookies, in case a nasty imaginary scent got there instead.)

I have to run in a few minutes, but I've been meaning to post this for ages, along with the rest of the Lima travelogue oh well. We visited several excellent museums there, but the one I'd point any visitor to, to gather some sense of the progression of Peruvian cultures and to view the archaeological treasures thereof (it does help if you read Spanish, but that's true of all of them. It also helps if you don't go through the ceramics exhibit backwards), is the Museo Larco. For one thing, it's a beautiful building in a beautiful setting, and it has a very nice restaurant onsite. It also has, along with the exhibits, an enormous vault of artifacts not on display, mostly ceramics - multiple rooms of floor to ceiling shelves, arranged by subject, e.g. a whole section of birds, of insects, of people performing various tasks, etc.

I completely fell in love with Nazca pottery, but that's neither here nor there. What you really need to go there for is the separately housed erotic ceramics gallery, which you can get a glimpse of here. NSFW, although obviously it was once. They all actually pour, I gather. Enjoy.

Because it is a good time of year to do so, I have been rereading Patrick O'Brian. And much as I revere him, the dear man, not only is he full of inconsistencies (which are only annoying if one decides not to treat them as part of an only appropriately fluid narrative), but quite often he not only declines to give answers but doesn't even ask the questions. Which is what fanfic is for, I suppose.

This is unbeta'ed; it's just me playing with questions and answers.

The Language of Home
Set between The Wine-Dark Sea and The Commodore, but not heavy on the spoilers; completely and utterly gen. The child known as Sarah Sweeting meditates on her world.

( Sometimes she still dreamed in the old words )

Very interesting watching a potential flame war erupt on a mailing list where the majority of members a) don't really understand how mailing lists work; b) are well-schooled in polite behavior if rather good at passive-aggressiveness; c) post at the rate of once every few days when their dander is up. Actually I am not an observer exactly; I am right in the middle (by virtue of attempting to be practical instead of self-righteous like nearly everyone else), but it feels like watching a punch thrown in slow motion, and we may all just fall asleep along the way. I suspect it's just one of those things where people have to be self-righteous for a while (the holiday season, you know) and don't intend to actually do anything about it, and the status quo will return until someone brings up the same topic next year. Would rather something actually happened, please.

Spent a good deal of time on Thanksgiving watching squirrels. A cute pair who live in our porch ceiling have been chewing the top off a large squash that used to be Halloween decoration, and yesterday they broke through into the seed cavity - or rather one of them did, and picked out one seed after another, chewing ecstatically, while the other one (who will be begging by midwinter) ran around doing gymnastics on the Pieris japonica and generally wasting calories. The cat was not amused.

Older son spent the holiday alone in his college dorm, as I was afraid; I hope we managed to push him out the door for dinner at least. We had a nice low-key meal for the three of us (smoked turkey breast, beet-cranberry-pomegranate salad, green salad, snap peas with cider-cranberry sauce, challah, roasted parsnips and carrots, and for dessert pumpkin pie (or tart, since it was in a tart pan with paté sucrée for crust) and chocolate mousse). Then we went to see Quantum of Solace and followed that up with several first season House episodes. Not a bad day.

Happy birthday penwiper26! Much joy and thanksgiving to you.

Oh, and by the way... since I somehow just discovered it...

http://www.eattheview.org/

Petitioning the new president to plant a vegetable garden on the White House lawn.

Some of what I've been doing the last couple of weeks:

Being cold. Why do I never get used to this onset of winter stuff? It might snow today (well, flurry). Blowing my nose a lot. Also, dealing with pretty much constant hip and back pain, which I can alleviate somewhat with yoga stretches and a combination of heat on the back and ice on the hip, except I don't want ice anywhere near my body. Brr.

Trying to get my new vegetable gardening consult business, Nightshade and Crucifer, launched - I was going to wait to post anything about it until I had, like, actual clients, but since my usual luck and timing are firmly in place, I'd better register its existence for the record in case it rots away and becomes part of the compost of failed businesses. No one wants to spend money right now. Maybe in the spring. I have other ideas I'm working on.

Fighting seasonal depression. Goes without saying.

Volunteering for things, for which people love me and which might make up for the other stuff if... but oh well. I'm now part of the State Strategic Planning Vegetable Gardening Initiative (which is really not Master Gardeners trying to steal my business ideas, at least not in this lazy county); I've started a yahoo group for our demo garden volunteers on which we (I hope not just me) will discuss some new plans for education and outreach; I offered to organize trial MG appearances at school mulch sales; I helped organize a coffee evening for drama parents (at which we did not have coffee, due to a small electrical oops); I baked and helped with concessions during one performance and will do another tomorrow, and agreed to co-chair concessions in the spring (OMG, why?).

Attending an afternoon seminar on beekeeping. They have a longer class in the spring, but this was an intro so you could order equipment over the winter. I really might do this, finances permitting. I will have to steal yunitsa's icon if I do.

Attending a talk by Dava Sobel on the longitude problem - not much I didn't know from the book, but some new personal anecdotes, and she is an excellent speaker. Rereading Longitude and Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before, and having ideas about R&D and the invention of time travel, which may help coalesce Book Five (no, I haven't written Book Four yet). Also reading about John André and Benedict Arnold, for similar reasons; this may all work together or it may not. It would be nice if John Arnold (watchmaker) and Benedict Arnold were related, but that would be too much luck.

Rereading some of my old fic, including the Snape/Vorkosigan trilogy, which I haven't looked at in ages (it's not awful!), which means something having to do with nostalgia and insecurity. I really want to be writing, but I can't get started on the new book yet (one, too much real life stuff not related to writing; two, real life issues regarding writing (like, I ought to be re-editing and trying to sell what I've written already, not charging onwards); three, my very good plan to thoroughly research and outline the book before starting to write). And nothing else really appeals; the last thing I need is to invest in any other original fiction, and no fanfic is calling to me. I thought again of a sequel to last year's Draco/Neville fic; I reread that too, and although I still like it I really have no interest in the universe any more and don't know what I'd do with them (aside from letting them have sex in a greenhouse).

Not building a deer fence. But it will get done!

From mctabby:

I have BBC International News as my homepage - moment of zen, clicking on the top story of the morning (which is GUESS WHAT??) the ad that came up at the top of the page was Blizz for Whiter Whites. Ha, not so.

I love this. I want to claim President Obama (shivering pleasantly whenever I hear it) as part of my generation, 'cause he is (one year older than moi) and think over and over what that means, and how much has changed, and that, yes, we can do this and we did, and we can look better in the eyes of the world.

Stayed up till 11:30; heard McCain's gracious concession speech but not the victory speech (hey, it's on YouTube and Hulu). Really could have gone to bed earlier because the result was clear. Favorite moment of the coverage, two guys on ABC:

GuyOne: Obama has won Pennsylvania and Ohio. Is there any realistic way John McCain can still pull this off?
GuyTwo: Not sure; I'd have to do the math.
GuyOne: Because it sure seems unlikely at this point.
GuyTwo: Let me do the math and check on that. *pen poised over notepad*
GuyOne: *continues to blather on*
GuyTwo: *gives GuyOne the evil eye* *gives up on doing the math which is fake anyway because someone with a computer is doing it offstage*

Followed what seemed like months later by the 11:00 declaration of pollsclosedtwosecondsagoinCaliforniahewon!!! Like I said, you just want to be there for the end of the narrative (which is like Chapter One, but still). Literature trumps math, at least as live TV.