Paper Fruit

I just got done with a fun, busy week with my parents! They came into town last Wednesday and left Sunday morning. While they were here, we went to the Denver Botanic Gardens, did the Continental Divide drive, took a lovely hike in the Flatirons, went to the Boulder Farmers’ Market for fresh peppers and Colorado peaches and bread, visited Boulder Falls, and ate a lot of delicious food, including my parents’ first-ever encounter with Ethiopian food at Ras Kassa’s! While John took my father on a brewery tour, my mom and Raech and I all got pedicures at ten20, which is an awesome establishment for many reasons, not the least of which is that they TiVO What Not To Wear so I got to watch an episode for maybe the first time in a year. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, but man, I am tired.

Now vacation is over and it’s back to work. I am anticipating receiving the edits from Strange Horizons for my interview with The Widow’s Bane (which is going up the 27th of September, so huzzah!), and working on another go-through of my novel.

Regarding the novel MS, I’ve received most of the comments back from my beta-readers, which have been incredibly helpful and not-discouraging, so that’s rad! It seems that, on the whole, everyone pretty much enjoyed reading it, and enjoyability was a huge concern for me. While I cannot be certain of the novel’s prospects, I am certain that I have written something genuine about things I care about, and I am happy about that!

In other news, I successfully veganized something I used to order when I was a vegetarian–baked goat cheese in tomato sauce. It came out amazingly well, and I plan on posting a tutorial ASAP. For any former Pinehurstians who might occasionally visit paper fruit, it’s totally that thing we used to order at Cafe Tu Tu Tango! OMG!

I wrote a whole thing, but then I realized that nothing I could say would be better than just letting people speak for themselves.

A true and thorough transcript of some of the unfortunate events that transpired during the Inquisition of Johannes Cabal, 8/23/10, provided by Inquisitor Tanzer to her Superiors, among them the Most Honorable and Lenient Inquisitor Staggs.

Gentlemen, I have failed you, and I only hope that the following record will shed light upon the reason that Herr Johannes Cabal was found roaming the passages of the Inquisitorial Chambers when the men employed by Inquisitor Jacobs found him. I pray to God that He will forgive me for my oversights in this matter once I die; for now I pray to God that you, my superiors, will show me the degree of mercy we expect from our Creator.

I had One-Thumb Harry (as opposed to Gap-Tooth Harry, he simply can’t be trusted ever since the incident I described in my transcript of the events of 7/3/09) tie him up, but though Harry assured me that his lack of a thumb wouldn’t hinder him in the art of knot-tying. . . perhaps I’d just better move on to the transcript. I asked:

Mr. Cabal, do you believe this court possesses the authority to try you for your crimes?

No.

Do you even feel that your nefarious actions constitute crimes?

No.

Do you believe in a universal standard for ascertaining right from wrong?

No.

To be clearer, do you feel that there is a way of determining right from wrong?

No.

Do you even care?

No.

Madam, a word of advice. I would recommend you avoid closed questions in future. Didn’t they teach you this in Inquisitorial College, somewhere between “Applying Thumbscrews the Modern Way” and “Framing Innocents 101”? No matter. I shall do you the courtesy of expanding upon my answers while I tie you up and make my escape from this dank cellar it pleases you to call a dungeon. No, believe me, I’ve escaped from proper dungeons, and this doesn’t compare. Yes, escape. Well, the way I’d planned on this working is that I point this handgun at your head, and then you become all manner of helpful. It usually works. Ah, how I procured a Webley .577 in a secure cellar. . . my apologies. . . dungeon, constitutes a professional secret. I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you. No, I would have to kill you. Yes, seriously. I have a gun, and you know I have killed before; I fail to see why this is so difficult for you to believe. Ah, there we go, that’s better. Being in denial is a corrosive state, much better to be in fear of your life.

So, to your questions. I do not believe that this court, as you call it, has any authority. It is a religious court and claims its authority from God, and trust me, God does not care. I am in no sense an atheist; I have met demons and devils and seen the irrefutable handiwork of gods–yes, plural–so why would I deny that which I have scientifically proved? My evidence for your god is more circumstantial. I have met Satan, who identified himself as Lucifer, a fallen angel, and who agreed that he had been cast down from the presence of God for the sin of pride. There is a Satan, ergo, there is a God. Although it occurs to me that Satan is a terrible liar. Try this for a hypothetical; there is no God, except as a scarecrow set up by Satan for his amusement. He watches mortals make fools of themselves in the somewhat smug knowledge that all will eventually go to Hell, because there is no alternative. Think of all the evil that has been done in the name of God–we are in a chamber full of instruments of torture, after all–and then think of how my hypothesis would explain so much.

Well, why not? It would make a change from cribbage. Oh, contain your outrage, madam. I am merely playing devil’s advocate.

Hah.

My actions–most courts would regard adding the adjective “nefarious” as an affront to the judicial process, but I don’t suppose that bothers people who dress for Halloween in August–my actions were necessary. If they are crimes, it is unfortunate, but irrelevant. You have no idea the things I have done to get this far. Stopping my researches, that would be the crime. My right may be your wrong, and that may mortally offend you but, believe me, madam, the answer to your last question was entirely heartfelt.

I do not care.

Now, I can hear your guards falling over one another in their haste to meet my revolver. That is acceptable. Good day, madam.

May God have mercy on his soul. And may the court have mercy upon me. . .

I don’t even know where to begin with this, but I’ll try just saying that Jonathan L. Howard’s Johannes Cabal books are awesome and you should go read them right now.

As you might imagine from the cover image to the left, both books are about a gentleman by the name of Johannes Cabal, and he is a notorious, unscrupulous, and irritable necromancer. They are both also completely lovely examples of how it is indeed possible to make fantasy humor work without resorting to puns, or–even worse–wisecracking stock fantasy characters like dwarves or goblins.

The first in the series, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (2009) chronicles a year in the life of Johannes Cabal as he co-runs a demonic carnival. It is written in a style that I can only really describe as “wouldn’t it be awesome if The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novels dealt with demons and vampires instead of spaceships? Yes.” The plot is well-conceived, the writing is excellent, and the characters are amazing. Johannes Cabal himself is deliciously nasty, socially inept, and utterly unscrupulous according to our meagre standards of what it means to have scruples. He does the things lesser men fear to do–if you’ve ever imagined, for example, snatching the iPhone out of the hand of that man on the plane who keeps waving away the flight attendant as she asks him time and again to power down his device so you can take off, and then braining him with it, sitting down, and wishing that the flight attendant would stop gawping at you and just bring over your little plastic cup of orange juice because you’re a bit thirsty, then this book will likely appeal to you. My only complaint with the entire endeavor is the pacing, which I felt faltered briefly in the third act–that said, the novel recovered completely in the fourth, and the ending left me all misty-eyed and deeply grateful that I had the sequel to comfort me in my distress at having to shut the book because it was over.

Johannes Cabal the Detective is somehow even better than Johannes Cabal the Necromancer. It is a masterpiece of silliness and good times, and I enjoyed every single moment I spent reading it. I can’t say anything about it, because I would hate to rob people other than my husband and my two best friends, who have spent the last week being very understanding of me chuckling to myself and occasionally spoiling bits of the plot, of the experience of discovering just what’s up with this book. Just go read it.

So yeah. Watch this space for more Johannes Cabal craziness, as there’s something fun in the works, let me tell you–I, however, must nip off and find the two Johannes Cabal short stories available in issues 1 and 3 of H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror. It’ll help me deal with the sense of loss that I shan’t hear anything new of Herr Cabal until I get ahold of The Way of the Wizard, which I’ve heard contains an all new Johannes Cabal adventure called “The Ereshkigal Working.” Huzzah!

Sure sure, Dr. Laura has “apologized” for articulating the word “nigger” on her radio show this week (though she has apparently excised the offending segment from her online transcript; thankfully sites like Media Matters snagged the whole thing so it can live forever on the internet). I’d like to take a little time to deconstruct her apology a bit, however, because it is filled with the same stinky privilege that informed her, um. . . I guess we could call it a “gaffe” instead of “racist outburst” for the sake of argument, right? Anyways.

For those who haven’t heard of this awesome piece of awesomeness, for some reason unbeknownst to me at least, a woman named Jade called Dr. Laura’s show for the cranky blathering that she passes off as “advice.” Jade is black, and she was concerned and frustrated because her white husband won’t just fucking tell his asshole friends and relatives not to do that thing where majority-dwellers assume that an “other” (like a real live black woman!) can speak for an entire group.

Dr. Laura then got all huffy and stuff (no, really?!) because it’s not at all racist (apparently) to ask a black person what, you know, all black people think about a given issue. Everyone knows they all think the same, amiright?

But yeah, so it unshockingly degenerates after that into a baffling exchange wherein Dr. Laura basically just shows her ass over and over again with comments like:

Well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply ’cause he was half-black. Didn’t matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That’s not a surprise.

and:

I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says [nigger], it’s a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing.

and, I guess because Dr. Laura ostensibly doles out “advice” on her show:

If you’re that hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor, don’t marry out of your race.

GAWD ALMIGHTY. You can read the whole amazing transcript, it’s linked above. There’s just so much to mine there, mostly amounting to the poor caller being accused of “having a chip on her shoulder” for expressing the sentiment that, essentially, well maybe black people don’t have some sort of psychic connection wherein they all think the same way about stuff–you know, “black-think” as Dr. Laura so sensitively put it in her summation at the end.

It’s so outrageous. But the thing is, Dr. Laura articulating “nigger” several times isn’t what’s so problematic here, shockingly enough. Sure, throwing around the word “nigger” in casual discussions of race like it was no big deal marks you as an idiot (or someone who knows she’s losing an argument so she throws out an epithet so completely offensive that it’ll get people riled and impact their ability to argue with you effectively, not that I think that could have been her purpose at all, oh no no no of course not!), but that’s the obviously problematic part of all this.

The more insidious–and thus more damaging–aspect, is the willingness on Dr. Laura’s part to play the wide-eyed innocent white person who’s like, just so confused by all this “black stuff!” Gosh n’golly, why can black comedians on HBO say “nigger” but I can’t? It drives me insane.  It’s like, the same privileged bullshit Aaron McGruder called out constantly in early Boondocks comic strips, or that Spike Lee mined in Bamboozled where his Quentin Tarantino knockoff tells Damon Wayans that he knows more about black people and what’s offensive because knows, um, Spike Lee.

Dr. Laura pretty much exemplifies racial privilege. Her comments during the show–and in her apology–are representative of the sort of entitlement that says “as a white person, I find it offensive when black people won’t let me causally use hurtful racial epithets that have been reclaimed to some extent within the black community! That’s discrimination, you know, and we live in America!” And it’s sad.

It’s also disingenuous–because, honestly, the concept of in-group versus out-group is understood by everyone. And Dr. Laura seems to get that–after all, she apologized for using “the n-word”–but yet, of course, she doesn’t seem to realize anything else that she did wrong during that exchange:

I was attempting to make a philosophical point, and I articulated the “n” word all the way out–more than one time.  And that was wrong.  I’ll say it again–that was wrong.

I ended up, I’m sure, with many of you losing the point I was trying to make, because you were shocked by the fact that I said the word.

Right! Right! Yes, Dr. Laura! Thanks for “getting it!” Your point, which as far as I can tell was that that a woman who’s upset because she feels compromised by her husband’s unwillingness to stand up for her individuality, has, quote, “a chip on her shoulder”–that was totally lost because you said “nigger!” I suppose that, actually, we can only hope that your other points–that black people voted for Obama because he’s black and they’re black and not for any other reason–were lost, as well. . . not because you said nigger, but because that’s an ignorant attitude that allows white folks to feel better about the world because it ignores what a whole lot of what both black and white folks call “reality.”

And the most hilarious thing about all of this is how Dr. Laura also manages to then undermine herself in a last-gasp effort to redeem herself to her white conservative demographic. Let’s just take a moment to analyze the letter she put on her blog in defense of herself–the lone example of all the mail she received on the matter, that was, I’m sure only incidentally, written by a black lady:

I believe that African-Americans using the n-word is disdainful, as well as Caucasians or any other race for that matter.  I agree that the argument some African-Americans use that it is ok for them to use it and not others, is ridiculous.  But, I have to say, when I heard you saying the word repeatedly, it struck a negative chord with me.

I don’t believe you are a racist, and I don’t believe, as an African-American woman, that I am hypersensitive.

Wait–what? Could it be. . . omg! This particular black person disagrees with the notion that it’s OK for black people to use the word nigger! But. . . I thought. . . waaaait a second. . . I thought black people were guilty of “black-think!” That they all just agree on stuff? I mean, didn’t “they” just put Obama in the White House cuz he black?

Could it be, that perhaps Jade, who mistakenly sought advice from Dr. Laura in the first place, was right to feel offended when people constantly try to force her to represent all “black people” because. . . wait, maybe. . . it’s that black people. . . just like white people. . . have different opinions about stuff?

Nah. They probably just all have chips on their collective shoulders.

I know, I always call my updates that when it’s been friggin’ forever, but I don’t care even one bit!

First of all, I must mention that there’s a new Films of High Adventure over at Fantasy Magazine, this one on The NeverEnding Story. We’re probably the nicest we’ve ever been to a movie prominently featuring an annoying moppet telling the audience what they’ve seen/are about to see, so, yay!

Moving on, I’ll be heading to Florida this Saturday to visit my folks! I’m looking forward to reading some novels, chilling out, cooking some food, doing crafty stuff with my mom, taking walks with my dad, all that sort of thing. Sadly, John will be in Orlando at a staff conference for his job while I’ll be in Tampa, but I think we’re going to organize some WoW parties with Raechel, who’ll be holding down the forts in Boulder.

I am also very proud that I just sent out the novel I finished up recently to the host of awesome beta-readers who volunteered to tell me if it sucks or not, and also correct my grammar. I am excited to get some outside eyes on this project, because I am too blinded by love for it to be objective at all. I know we need some time apart, this book and I, so I’ll be reading some non-fiction so maybe I can perk up a few details, and also reading some fiction to cleanse my palette. I’ll also be working on some various and sundry fiction and creative non-fiction things, and I’m looking forward to reacquainting myself with short form since I can’t recall the last time I wrote a short story.

Additionally, I feel the need to mention that I just read what I believe might be one of the most racist stories ever written, and no, I’m not talking about that piece in the NYT about how Indians have taken over New Jersey (though it was, obviously, in the running). No, I speak instead of Robert E. Howard’s “The Vale of Lost Women,” which wasn’t published during his lifetime but still managed to find its way to the printed page several times. I know it’s pretty un-shocking to out Howard as a racist, but seriously. I give authors from the past so much leeway when it comes to the odd racist comment or sexist trope. I feel strongly that there’s a place and time for holding people accountable for their beliefs–and that people, both living and dead, should be held accountable for their beliefs–but that such accountability need not be the only way to consume and interpret stories written during a different time. This story, however, gets a big brown F in every way. It is hideous. Not only does it have Conan straight-up telling a girl he’d rape her if he felt like it (and, OK, whatever, I’d forgive that in isolation, it’s a Conan story), but the girl in question is a little white girl with blonde hair who was captured by black savages and raped by their hideous leader. Let’s just for a moment consider Howard’s description of the leader, a fellow by the name of Bajujh (FAIL, already):

On an ivory stool, flanked by giants in plumed headpieces and leopardskin girdles, sat a fat, squat shape, abysmal, repulsive, a toad-like chunk of blackness, reeking of the dank rotting jungle and the nighted swamps. The creature’s pudgy hands rested on the sleek arch of his belly; his nape was a roll of sooty fat that seemed to thrust his bullet-head forward. His eyes gleamed in the firelight, like live coals in a dead black stump.

Woah. Also, the rest of the language regarding Bajujh and his tribe hits all the notes–the black folks are compared to animals (“panther-like”) or demeaned for possessing native African-ish features (their hair is described as “kinky” and “wooly” as compared to Conan’s and the little white girls’ flowing tresses, among other crimes of wtf). The women are described uniformly as “wenches” (often “ribald wenches”) with white eyeballs rolling wickedly in their black faces or, by Conan himself, as “black sluts” who make him sick with their very appearance. Jesus. So, yeah. I don’t know why this struck me as being blog-worthy, I just. . . I’m making my way through my anthology of all the Conan stories, and up until now there’s been some serious-business Orientalism and some problematic white-dude-conquers-brown-people-for-good nonsense, but this was my first encounter with out and out WHAAAAAA?!?!?! in that book. I’ve read novels about slavery written by white English during the 18th century that were less racist and accorded more respect and humanity to black folks than “The Vale of Lost Women.” Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Finally, and most of all, sadly, I recently had to put my beloved cat Penelope to sleep. About a year ago, the vet noticed some of her liver values were elevated. Perhaps eight months ago, she was diagnosed with fatty liver disease, which is curable with effort and attention. We gave her the effort, we gave her the attention. Things were looking up for a time, she was steadily improving. Then, right before we went down to Florida for weddings and family visiting, her shape got kinda odd. At first it looked like maybe she’d just gotten a pot belly–she was eating more–but I took her in for a checkup before the vet had recommended anyways, to be sure. It turns out that her liver had failed, though her pathology wasn’t totally consistent with that or anything else. I believe now that a number of things just gave out at once. We did everything the vet recommended, but it wasn’t enough. The vet was frankly baffled she was even alive and as perky as she was toward the end. Most cats, apparently, would’ve succumbed to disease or depression far earlier. Penelope was a fighter, though–she loved her life, it was obvious she was trying every bit as hard as we were, but she started to decline after a few mild gains. A few days before we made the decision to have the vet come to the house and help her pass on, even though she was having trouble jumping, she got into bed with me, something she hadn’t done in years. Every day she meowed and purred and snugged and took a few little laps of tuna water or hummus, even though she was having a hard time keeping herself clean.

I miss her so much. Her favorite chair looks so empty now, the little bed next to mine that she slept in toward the end of things seems even smaller. I had been getting up in the middle of the night to pet her and check on her after the diagnosis/prognosis, and a few times I’ve woken up for that purpose only to realize that she is beyond being checked on any more. I am glad she is at peace, but twelve years wasn’t enough for me.

I know I don’t usually talk about writing stuff too much here, but I’m a bit overwhelmed and maybe a little happysad that yesterday I finished the final chapter of the novel I’ve been working on. I wrote THE END, typed it like it was no big deal, and woahmigod. Now editing, which I’m generally better at/enjoy more than banging out rough drafts so I should really go do some of that.

This project was certainly whirlwindish, given that I believe I started the pre-planning for this manuscript around mid-April of this year. It’s a short novel (under 100k), but damn! It just took over my life–it wanted to be on the page. Sure, it needs work. Sure, it’s not totally internally consistent. But I love it, and that makes me pretty happy.

I am fucking sick and tired of hearing Tea Party nutjobs talking about slavery. It needs to stop, because it is clear that, like so much else, Tea Party rabble-rousers have no concept of history, politics, or reality in general. I saw this ad a while ago and it induced a bit of frothing at the mouth–Abraham Lincoln thinks the federal income tax is akin to slavery? Oh shit right, it’s not like the first federal income tax was approved during the Lincoln presidency oh fucking wait no that is completely wrong, he signed into law the first federal income tax! But hey, why not grandstand and posture? I’m really sure that since the Revenue Act was terminated and then reborn as several other ways of taxing folks before the 16th amendment was approved that just really makes the Tea Party case! Indeed, paying a federal income tax that pays for public services like roads and schools and libraries and stuff is exactly the same thing as when a person of one race is born into a “peculiar institution” that allows him or her to be bought and sold, whipped, raped, worked without compensation, and psychologically abused by a different race! OK! As a white person, that makes real good sense to me!

This kind of bullshit nonsense is why I am frankly baffled when people are all like *shock* omg *shock* when the Tea Party is called on its shit for being a bunch of xenophobic, racist white folks with no ethos other than generalized rage over not getting their way in Washington, and, I dunno, when papers dare to consider not publishing re-runs of “Peanuts.” Lord have mercy on my blood pressure.

Well! Upon further consideration, the whole shock factor is  probably because Tea Party rabble-rousers are also total cowards, given that the article I was just about to link, penned by one Mark Somebody over at MarkTalk.com (it’s not right or left, it’s right or wrong!) was taken down and covered up like a cat burying a particularly odious turd, likely because he realized that penning a fictional letter from the NAACP to Abraham Lincoln about how apparently affirmative action and welfare are measures supported by “colored people” who don’t really want to be free, but who just want the federal government to be “massa” is completely inappropriate and insane! True!

The fact that Mr. Mark took the offending post down shows two things. First, it demonstrates how little Tea Party grandstanders wish to actually induce critical thought in their audiences, but rather get people fightin’ mad and slink away into the self-satisfied darkness of their suburban homes. Also, it demonstrates that Tea Party sorts also just love to miss the point. This paragraph I’ll quote below is genuinely amazing:

I would suggest to those offended by the term “Colored People” (the phrase that made my article so controversial) please contact the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and join me in calling for an end to their use of the racial slur and that Mr. Jealous take me up on my offer to travel with me on the next Tea Party Express so that he may meet all of you in person.  His contact information is below.

First of all, hey! White folks don’t necessarily get to determine what’s a slur and what’s not, or how people of color refer to themselves! Secondly, the article in question wasn’t controversial because of the flippant, ignorant throwing-about of the term “colored people” (that part made it merely gratuitously inappropriate) but were, in reality, offended by his allegation that affirmative action is akin to black folks wanting to be under the protection of a kindly “massa” once more, since apparently in the minds of Tea Party wingnuts. . . slavery was just white folks taking care of black folks? Right, I forgot that Gone With the Wind was a perfectly accurate depiction of slavery in the American south. Gosh, it is just totally real American history that black folks really don’t know nuthin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies!

I will admit that I’m not as familiar with American slavery as slavery in the British West Indies, but damn it, I’m definitely familiar enough with American slavery and and its repercussions to say with all certainty that analogizing slavery to income tax or affirmative action or welfare is just about the most ignorant thing in the world and it needs to stop. And it needs to stop not because I’m some ivory tower liberal trying to silence free speech of salt of the earth Americans, but because it’s stupid and inaccurate.

For many years I’ve been critical of the tactic used in the animal rights movement to analogize industrial animal agriculture to rape. I hate it more than anything, and while I won’t get off topic by addressing my issues with that particular mental exercise, I find the Tea Party lust to imagine themselves enslaved and oppressed to be similarly disturbing and misguided. A terrible thing (or a perceived terrible thing) is not always exactly or even vaguely the same as some different terrible thing, and I think that making crackpot analogies merely serves to draw attention away from the real issues that could perhaps be discussed in rational ways should people wish to do so.

What the fuck am I even saying? Obviously it is better to nonsensically spout off dreck about how being a rich white dude in America these days is like so totally the same as being Big Jim out in the cotton fields. Bread and circuses worked for the Romans for a good long while, so why not?

Inspired by the insane gorgeousness that is Colorado, the project I’m finishing up is set in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park. This is awesome for me, because whenever I lose my way with the writing, I can just take a drive up into the mountains and find what I need to press on. RMNP is, frankly, the most beautiful national park I’ve ever been lucky enough to visit, and its proximity to Boulder means I can really get to know what’s there–the grassy, river-cut valleys freckled by elk herds, the little hiking trails that become waterfalls during the snowmelt, the glacial peaks. I love it. It is one of the places that I feel completely at rest, even while I scramble, cursing, up a scree-strewn incline, or pick my way down a steep, flooded descent.

Last Friday, Jesse and I decided to drive over the continental divide. I can report that it is, indeed, fucking awesome. The road takes you up past the montane ecosystem through subalpine into the true alpine regions, so you really get a sense of the distinct environments in mountainous regions. The day we went, it was rainy and misty, which was fine by me. While we didn’t get to appreciate the views down the sides of the mountains, it was amazing to see clouds–giant, fluffy clouds, like you see from the ground–chasing us up and eventually enfolding us as we drove. The two times we got out to hike, we’d see wisps just drifting in front of our faces and alongside us as if it was no big deal to the clouds to occasionally take a day off and, you know, go on a hike with some people.

With the craziness that is the Gulf, the writerly people I’m fortunate enough to know have been talking about the environment quite a bit, and those posts, as well as the news cycle in general, have really gotten me thinking. Among the many notable things I’ve read, my dawgg John Glover speaks eloquently about BP, the spill, and responsibility; Jeff VanderMeer has also commented on the situation. I think what affected me the most, though, was not Jeff’s idea that we put all the BP execs in a raft and make them eat nothing but the oily flesh of dying animals (not that such a sentiment doesn’t match my own feelings on the situation), but rather, a quieter, more personal post he made, using quotes from Thoreau and discussing a favorite hike over at St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge.

The gallows humor found in the notion of taking a long drive to enjoy the environment is not lost on me by any means. All the same, I feel inspired to discuss the overwhelming wonder I felt when I was able to, via man’s genius and shame, the automobile, ascend in only a few hours up to the top of the world and hike through an alpine tundra. Taking the drive over the divide was an experience as transcendent as it was depressing. These alpine regions, which we documented below, are delicate, sensitive ecosystems which will likely be devastated by unchecked climate change; the pristine forests, which in some ways look like they did a hundred, or hundreds of years ago, are being eaten alive by the pine bark beetle–a beetle that, were the winters as cold as they once were, would not be anywhere near as able to destroy tree after tree after tree after tree after tree.

The rest below the cut–large pictures follow:

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Woo! Running with the Pack just got a starred review from Publishers Weekly!

Running with the Pack
Edited by Ekaterina Sedia, Prime (www.prime-books.com), $14.95 paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-60701-219-1

Sedia (Paper Cities) collects 22 tales that look at werewolves from a multitude of different angles. Steve Duffy’s chilling dental thriller “Side-Effects May Include” examines how far a man will go to end his pain. A damaged alpha gains the trust of a homeless woman in Maria V. Snyder’s “Mongrel.” Murderous soccer moms eat cheaters in Samantha Henderson’s “Skin in the Game.” A woman accidentally turned wolf struggles against her dual nature before learning to accept it in Erzebet YellowBoy’s powerful “Inside Out.” The origin of T.J. from Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville series is told in “Wild Ride,” and Mike Resnick’s preacher/con-artist Lucifer Jones makes an appearance in the hilarious “Royal Bloodlines.” The stories veer from comedy to horror and from tragic love story to coming-of-age tale, showing the richness inherent in the idea of shifting shapes and animal strength. (July)