The Foothills Library War: An Introduction, Overview & Linkfest

When a library is endangered, I get concerned. The first book I remember reading, Space Cat, when I was six years old, came from the library. I've been a constant user of libraries since, no matter how many books I bought and still own. Any time Hilde and I have moved to a new city, one of the first things on our agenda has been to get a city library card.

Libraries are important. Not just to us personally, but to the public and to civilization at large. The growth of public libraries over the last 150 years or so has been one of the most progressive, beneficial, and praiseworthy accomplishments in American history. 

When it's my own local library that's endangered, I get very concerned.

Many people, even locally, haven't heard about this yet. I'm writing this post as an introduction to the issue, both for people affected locally and those people in the general public who care about libraries.

First, a little background. OK, a lot of background, but even this barely scratches the surface. :

I've been spending a lot of time the last few weeks here in Glendale, Arizona, where Hilde and I have lived since 1985, trying to help save our local library branch, Foothills, from having 80% of its books removed (about 140,000) and the remainder of the library's holdings moved from it's current 33,000 square-foot building and crammed into a 9,000-sqft space at a nearby city aquatics/recreation center. (Bad news for the rec center too, because they've been using those meeting rooms for classes and things like table tennis.)

The Foothills Branch Library serves the northern portions of Glendale. It opened in 1999, on land purchased from Midwestern University, a large osteopathic college located across the street. The purchase contract stipulated that MWU would be given first option to offer to buy the land and building at some future date.

Midwestern made such an offer in early 2014, for 5 million dollars. Knowledge of that offer only became public last month, when a proposal to accept the offer, downsize the library, and move the remainder to the recreation center was placed on the city council agenda. That triggered three public meetings earlier in February, before the various advisory committees for Recreation, Libraries, and Arts. (The Foothills library has a massive Dale Chihuly glass sculpture, valued at $400,000, hanging from its lobby ceiling. Midwestern's offer included the purchase of that, and other valuable public art, as part of the sale.)

At the meetings, the city's Recreation head, Eric Strunk, and the newly appointed Chief Librarian Michael Beck gave a Powerpoint presentation in support of the proposal. The Powerpoint presentation has been widely criticized for dubious and confusing numbers, highly lacking in hard data, the lack of any mention of negative impacts,  and using not-to-scale conceptual drawings of how the rec center space would be used. (The drawings also use false perspective to make the rec center's rooms appear larger than they actually are.) 

But what really sticks in people's craw is that this proposal to eviscerate and downsize the library is labelled "an expansion of library services". Yes, "expansion"; they really used that word. (The rationale is that digital offerings, and equipment to access them, will be expanded. By how much? How  quickly? Are there any guarantees the city will authorize an adequate budget -- in 2013, the average price a library paid per ebook was $63; the average cost for printed books in libraries that same year ranged from $6.17 to $27.78 -- to expand digital offerings? Vague answers, or none, to those and many other questions. Smoke and mirrors and bullshit.)

Besides the prospect of seeing their library gutted, residents are also upset about the $5 million dollar offer from MWU. The library's construction originally cost 7.8 million. A similar building constructed now would cost about $17 million. If Midwestern gets the library building for only $5 million, many Glendale residents would consider that to be, literally, a steal. (Two appraisals, one by MWU, one by the city, both came in under $5 million for the building's value. There have been questions raised about the city's appraisal process; the appraiser was paid $4,999; under the city's requirements, if he had asked for a single dollar more, $5,000, the appraisal would have had to be publicly posted for bids and the city council advised, instead of being kept hidden for nearly a year until it came to light.)

Why would the city of Glendale even consider this? Previous city administrations made high-risk investments in bringing sports venues to the city -- a football stadium, hockey arena, baseball training camp -- none of which have brought in the predicted revenue for the city, and have instead left Glendale saddled with massive and continuing debt and expenses. It was bad business deals that got us into this mess; why make yet another bad business deal that will only give partial and temporary relief? (If the entire $5M was used to service those debts, it would pay for less than four months of the hockey arena's expenses alone.)

The public has been extremely opposed to the sale, and the proposed move to the rec center. One poll noted 93% disapproval. At the three meetings, when members of the public were given a chance to speak, no one spoke in favor of the sale. Regardless, there's a great deal of concern that during the months between MWU's offer to buy and the public finally learning of the offer, there may have been a handshake-under-the-table deal between MWU and the city that the sale will be approved no matter how loudly Glendale citizens object.

The various advisory committees will meet again in March, to decide on a recommendation to the city council about the proposal. The city council will meet some time after that for a final decision.

This is way more than you probably want to know about local Arizona politics, but libraries, books, what make a city a good city, all those are important.

Links to various websites, news articles, blogs, and other commentary and information:

This page on Glendale Public Library's website provides links to the Powerpoint presentation, conceptual drawings, an updated FAQ sheet, the two appraisals of the library building, and a form on which to submit comments. I'll be making a later post about the FAQs -- some of the answers don't pass the smell test, and some of the information in the updated version is only there because too many people called foul on obvious BS -- and on portions of the city's appraisal.

Best Commentator To Date:

The best reportage on this has come from Joyce Clark, a former City Council member, who's been doing a continuing series of reports about the library issue on her blog,  Joyce Clark Unfiltered. Below is a list of posts so far:

• Jan 29th, An Idea Whose Time Has Not Come
• Jan 31st, Foothills Branch Library...see past the hype
• Feb 4th, Love Your Library... Work To Save it
• Feb 5th, Purchase Contract for Foothills library land
• Feb 6th, A bit of this...a bit of that
• Feb 10th, Foothills Library...why bother?  This particular post is a eloquent piece about the many benefits beyond lending books that a decently-supported library provides to its community. Well worth reading for its own sake.
• Feb 11th, The "Library War"...Round 2
• Feb 12th, Library War...Round Three
• Feb 13th, The library war...who wins?
• Feb 14th, Library War continues

Other Library Supporters:

Facebook: Save The Glendale Foothills Library

Twitter: Save The Library 

Twitter hashtags: #savethelibrary #stopthetrend

Facebook: Friends of the Glendale Public Library

Individuals speak out:

Shelley Mosley, retired Library Manager: Look Past The Hype

Valerie Burkhardt Betters: text of an outstanding speech given at 2/11 meeting; well worth reading, and I'm planning to highlight it in a separate post.

News Reports:

New York Times, 1/26: Albatross of debt weighs on super bowl city This recent NYT piece gives some background of Glendale's financial woes.

Your West Valley, 2/6: $5M deal would move Glendale's Foothills library to rec center

KTAR 12 News, 2/9: North Glendale residents not thrilled by library sale

Your West Valley, 2/11: Residents throw book at proposed north Glendale library sale

KTAR, 2/12: Arizona Coyotes subsidy prompts proposed sale of library branch: More background on the high-risk gambles Glendale made, and lost, on its sports venues investments.

Glendale Daily Planet, 2/12, Glendale Citizens Not Buying Sale of Foothills Library. This is the most through coverage of the Feb 11th meeting I've seen. (There's even a picture of me!) You have to scroll down to find the story; this local online paper is presented as a single very (very) long webpage, rather than providing links to separate presentation of each story.

I speak at the Feb 11th Foothills Relocation meeting.
Photo by Ed Sharpe, Glendale Daily Planet

arizona.newszap.com, 2/16, "Potential library relocation causes community concern"

Glendale Star, 2/17: Foothills patrons defend their library

Miscellaneous Documents:

factsheet on 2012 sales tax increase; In 2012, voters approved a city sales tax increase that was supposed to enable the city to deal with its debt problems and continue to provide public services. Among those services: "libraries".

Cholla Chats, Sept 2014: This City Council member's newsletter reported that MWU may be planning to build a seventh specialty college, one for Speech Pathology. There's been speculation that, if MWU succeeds in buying Foothills Library, they would use that as a wedge to buy the adjacent dog park and ballfields for the new college.


How To Help:

The Glendale City Council needs to understand that a good public library system is invaluable. It benefits the citizens, and it benefits the city. Downgrading the library system degrades the city as a whole; it affects business investments, the influx of new citizens, and the city's public reputation. Does the council really want Glendale to be perceived as "Detroit On The Desert"? That's the message passing this horrible proposal will send.

The "invisible benefits" predicted for the sports venues (growth of surrounding property, increased property values, etc) have never been met. The invisible benefits of public libraries, the benefits that come about when minds, particularly young minds, are used and exercised and given the widest possible opportunity to learn and grow, have been proven time and time again.

This is a list of email contacts for Glendale's mayor and council members,and a link to a map of the city's districts:

• Mayor Jerry Weirs: jweiers@glendaleaz.com
• Ian Hugh, Cactus District: ihugh@glendaleaz.com
• Bart Turner, Barrel District: bturner@glendaleaz.com
• Lauren Tolmachoff, Cholla District: ltolmachoff@glendaleaz.com
• Gary Sherwood, Sahuaro District: gsherwood@glendaleaz.com
• Sammy Chavira, Yucca District: schavira@glendaleaz.com
• Jamie Aldama, Ocotillo District: jaldama@glendaleaz.com
• Glendale District Map

Even if you're not a Glendale resident, letting the Mayor and Council know how important public libraries are, to individuals and cities and society at large, will help. Please write. 

"I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them. They belong in libraries, just as libraries have already become places you can go to get access to ebooks, and audiobooks and DVDs and web content." (Neil Gaiman, 2013)

Foothills Library: An Alternative Proposal

FOOTHILLS LIBRARY: 

AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSAL:

Midwestern University's proposal to purchase the Foothills Branch Library building from the city of Glendale is reportedly for use as a medical/dental library and study space.

Midwestern University, a large osteopathic educational institution, has been on a building frenzy for several years. The additions to their property surely must be several hundred thousand additional square feet by now.

If MWU takes over the Foothills Library building, resulting in the drastic downsizing of a widely-loved library (an 80% reduction in inventory and square footage, the remainder to be crammed into several meeting rooms of the Aquatic & Recreation Center, rooms the Aquatic Center would no longer be able to use), it will seriously downgrade Midwestern's reputation and regard in the community. 

Glendale would have to replace a well-stocked, full-service library with an inferior Circle-K sized version, that might eventually be mostly digital. (What kind of budget would need to be appropriated to replace the lost printed books with digital versions? Especially since many publishers charge libraries substantially more for an e-book's licensing fees, sometimes three to four times more, than a printed book costs?)

Everyone loses with that deal.

I suggest, rather, that Midwestern either retrofits some of their recently-added space, or adds square footage to upcoming construction plans, and builds a nice compact mostly-digital library of their own.

Such a library, on Midwestern's current property, would have numerous advantages: It would be more convenient for MWU students to go to. If digital libraries are the wave of the future, surely Midwestern would want to get an early lead on such an upgrade. Culling outdated medical reference material from their current library, and moving to digitize much of the remaining material, would also free up space to use as study areas. And having a more centrally-located library on their current property would mean MWU students wouldn't have to go to the far corner and across the street from their current property to use the Foothills Library building.

And there's this: The remodeling and equipment purchases to install the reduced, mostly-digital, public library into the Aquatics Center space is estimated to cost about a million dollars. (That does not include any budget for increasing digital holdings.) If Midwestern spent triple that amount, three million dollars, to establish a similar mostly-digital library, MWU would still SAVE two million dollars over their five-million dollar offer for the Foothills Library building. Glendale citizens get to keep a full-service library, the Aquatics Center doesn't lose useful space.

If MWU builds its own digital library, everyone wins.

Since such an alternative proposal would save MWU several million dollars, I would like to suggest they make the grand gesture of donating one million dollars of that savings to the Glendale Public Libraries, for upgrades of equipment and providing a larger inventory of digital books. MWU would regain its "Good Neighbor" reputation again, and the MWU library would move towards the digital future. And Glendale's libraries would get to move towards that future along with it.

If that were to happen, everyone really wins.

(This is a slightly revised version of a flyer I handed out to a number of people after the February 11th Library Council meeting at Foothills Library. It's also a more expansive version of the remarks I made when speaking at that meeting.) (I'll be making more posts on this subject. This barely scratches the surface of how much is wrong and foolish about the proposed sale to Midwestern U. Google "Foothills library relocation" for more background. The best coverage on this has been coming from a continuing series of posts by Joyce Clark, a former Glendale City Council member, at joyceclarkunfiltered.com.)

A Kickstarter For "Mom & Pop Move Their Comic Shop"

While I stopped following comics a few years ago when the nearby comic shop closed down, I still get some info about the business by cultural osmosis. And I read and collected comics for enough years that I understand why so many people still do.

All About Books & Comics has been a leading comic shop in Phoenix for decades, but owners Alan & Marsha Giroux recently lost the lease on their long-time location. (The doctor next door offered the landlord more rent when the lease became due to expire; AAC's footage will be turned into a new waiting room.) Moving to a new location will cost about $33,000.

The 2008 recession hit a lot of comic shops hard; the store I shopped at wasn't the only one that folded in the years afterward. AAB&C has managed to be a survivor, and -- even though I've never shopped there -- I think it's worth contributing to, to let it continue its service to comics fandom. (Also, pretty cool t-shirts if you pledge $25 or more!)

Here's the Kickstarter page: Mom & Pop Move Their Comic Shop

More On Foothills Library -- Joyce Clark: "Foothills Library... Why Bother?", plus other links

Following up on the previous post's mention of the proposal to downsize/shrink/gut the local Foothills Branch Library here in Glendale, AZ:

Joyce Clark is a former Glendale City Council member who's been posting some of the most informative and useful commentary about the Foothills Library debacle. "Foothills Library... why bother?" is a eloquent piece about the many benefits beyond lending books that a decently-supported library provides to its community. A quote:

Today’s public libraries are part refuge and part community center. It would surprise you to know that many people who visit a public library don’t borrow a single book. For some it is a quiet sanctuary, warm and dry. You could sit there all day and not be bothered. It wards off the loneliness of life for others. Yet, in a fit of schizophrenia, it is a place of constant activities…you can take a class, participate in a book club discussion, hear a visiting musician or enjoy a lecture. Moms can take their little ones to story time to discover the wonderful, magical world of books.

It is a resource to those looking for a job, or needing to use a computer because they can’t afford one or the cost of the internet even if they had a computer. It is a place where a research librarian has helped countless numbers of children to do research for a writing assignment. 

Its wealth is beyond measure…books, magazines, newspapers, CDs, DVDs, movies.  You can use, read and borrow anything within its four walls…for free. Digital media is fine. I use it often, very often but there is something special about a book. The use of digital media is growing and should be encouraged but not as a replacement for the brick and mortar public library but as an enhancement to its offerings.

More from Joyce Clark here, with some background for the whole mess: Love Your Library... Work To Save it.

azcentral.com, the website for local newspaper The Arizona Republic and Channel 12 news, has a news story and video: "North Glendale residents not thrilled by library sale"

Googling around on the subject of digital libraries, I found this photo from one of the all-digital BiblioTech libraries in San Antonio, TX:

Good God. Being crammed in nearly elbow-to-elbow at long rows of sterile workstations is not anything like my idea of what a library should be. This looks more like a commercial call-center than anything else. I find it ghastly and horrifying. Is that really supposed to be the future of libraries?

There'll be another public hearing on the  proposal tonight, February 11th at 6:00 PM, at the Foothills Library in the Roadrunner Room. If you're local, and can attend, please do. I'd suggest getting there early; over 400 people on Facebook have indicated they're planning to come, plus any non-Facebookers like me, and I'm not sure the Roadrunner Room can hold that many.

Slow Adapter Adapts, Slowly

I guess it would help to actually let people know about this:

Bruce Arthurs ‏@BruceArthursAZ   3m3 minutes ago3 minutes ago I have succumbed to the concise side of the Force, and signed up for Twitter.

But you still can't make me sign up for Facebook.  There are limits.

I've been following a few people's Twitter accounts manually, but the final push to sign up came from the city of Glendale (Arizona; there are a lot of Glendales) proposing what they call an "expansion of library services".

This "expansion" involves selling off the Foothills Branch Library building (the one Hilde and I use) at a substantial loss, gutting the book collection by 140,000 books, and shoving the remainder into an 80% smaller space at a nearby recreation center.  There's much, much more to the story, mostly enraging, and it's still developing. A lot of people are very upset, myself included, and Twitter is one of the primary venues for coordinating and communicating. I'll probably have a lot more to say about it after a public meeting tomorrow evening.

0 replies0 retweets0 favorites

Come With Me Now - Kongos Cover by Korbe Canida

Korbe Canida is a rising local musician in Phoenix with a helluva voice. 

Other YouTube videos are here. She was recently profiled in the local New Times paper. ("...when she starts to sing, her powerhouse vocals captivate. Her sweet gaze, which she holds with each intent listener, keeps audience members transfixed and brings some to tears.") A recent Kickstarter for her first EP successfully funded; the EP should be out in the next month or two.

The "nerd glasses" isn't an affectation; she plays D&D. (Hey, this is ostensibly a science fiction blog; I gotta make a connection somewhere.)

Weekly Links, 2-5-2015

Writing/Publishing Links:
Kameron Hurley on how "writing every day" doesn't work best for everyone: Life on 10,000 Words A Day.

Alex Shvartsman on The Art and Science of Anthology Editing.

Deborah Ross on How To Succeed As A Writer In 2015.

(I've posted my own comments on the last two.)

Last minute addition: Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Business Musings: Following The Crowd.



World/Political Links:
This story has, rather appropriately, gone viral already, but hey: GOP Senator: Don't Force Employees To Wash Hands After Using Toilet. This is the triumph of ideology over sanity. The GOP's tolerance and endorsement of extremists and public menaces like Senator Tillis is a major reason why I haven't voted for a Republican office-seeker in years.


Related to the above: The Sepsis Alliance is an organization promoting awareness and prevention of sepsis (aka "blood poisoning"), runaway infections that are the third-leading cause of death in the US and leave large numbers of survivors with physical and mental impairments. A primary cause of early infections developing into full-blown sepsis is insufficient education and enforcement of sanitary procedures.


Food/Cooking Links:

Cooking Will Be Suddenly Awesome If You Buy Any of These 19 Products. (Pictured: The Defensive Swordsman.) [via Cascata Nerina]

Modern Farmer gives an interesting overview of The New Food Police.

Oh dang, I missed National Chocolate Cake Day on January 27th! To make up for it, here's baking-savant Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Double Chocolate Marble Cake.


Art Links:

Here, Kitty, Kitty....  Because nothing says "Sci-Fi" like a Cowboy Space Bear riding Rocket Sharks in pursuit of a Space Cat With A Jetpack. Doing it in black-velvet-painting style is a bonus. (Design by Cory Freeman and chazwick31. I liked it so much I bought the t-shirt!)


Zim & Zou are the team of Lucie Thomas and Thibault Zimmerman, French artists who work in paper, leather, and other materials. The image at left is a sample of their work. The link above goes to a large list of other projects they've posted on behance.net.

Weekly (Kinda) Links, 1/23/15

So, how's that "weekly" link-collection thing working out so far, Bruce?

Heh. I didn't say which kind of calendar I'd use to define "week", did I? Or from which planet?

On to actual links:

Writing and Publishing Links:

Walter Jon Williams announced his Dread Empire's Fall trilogy, a kick-ass space opera I highly recommend, is finally available in audiobook form.  (The books would also make for one helluva great series for HBO or other quality TV producers. That's a goddamn hint, Hollywood.)

World-At-Large Links (News & Politics):

The Rude Pundit, discussing the recent American Sniper film, reminds us in no uncertain terms what the Irag War really meant: "We're supposed to feel proud that men like Kyle defend us.  We should instead feel intensely angry that they died in vain."

Art Links:

Badass Cartoon Heroes

Muddy Colors, an outstanding artists blog,  recently featured "Journeys Begun: A Look Back At Two Years of SmART School" by Todd Lockwood, providing some striking examples of the jumps in quality achieved when motivated art students learn from capable instructors.

Food Links, Jackfruit Edition:

It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken, a charming vegan recipe site, provides a Pulled Jackfruit Sandwich recipe that looks delicious (and even a lot like real pulled pork!) and sounds good. It's been a long time since I've had jackfruit; I recall that the flavor was on the mild side, and the fruit a bit resistant to easy chewing; as a meat substitute, it probably works well in this recipe. I'll have to pick up some canned jackfruit next time I'm at the local Asian grocery, and give it a try.

If it's available and you want to use fresh jackfruit, here's a useful YouTube video.  The skin and rind of jackfruit produce a very sticky latex sap, especially when under-ripe, so take seriously the recommendation to oil your knives, cutting board, hands, and anything else you don't want to spend time and foul language on trying to clean up.

Dick Tracy Gets Funky

The long-long-long-running daily comic strip DICK TRACY  has recently been featuring crossovers with characters from other comic strips (Daddy Warbucks from LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE is one recent crossover character). But the crossover character in the most recent story arc is...

FUNKY WINKERBEAN!

Wait, what? Sad-sack schmoe Funky Winkerbean? Really? Did Mike Curtis, the Tracy strip's current writer, lose a bar bet?

Well, actually, it does make a kind of sense.

Considering that Dick Tracy has encountered villains with names like Pinkie, Bookie, Junky, Laffy, Shaky, Itchy, Wormy, Pantsy, Spready, Tapsy, Hairy, Bulky, Lispy, Bony, and more, should anyone really be surprised that Tracy would eventually run into someone named “Funky”?

Jerkitude or Politeness? Whether To Let A Writer Know About Your Negative Review of Their Work

Ann Leckie wrote this tweet recently:

Ann Leckie‏@ann_leckie

Hey, kids! @-ing a writer a link to your negative review of their work serves no purpose. Unless you mean to be annoying, of course.

• RETWEETS42
• FAVORITES70
• 

3:27 PM - 20 Jan 2015

Hmm. I'm not so sure about that. There have been occasions in the past where I've been lambasted pretty harshly because I wrote about someone or their work and didn't notify them or send them a copy. So notifying or not notifying seems like a no-win situation. If you let them know you didn't like their book, it's rude. If you don't let them know you didn't like their book, it's rude.

Personally, I'd want to be notified, even about a negative review. Discovering such things by Googling my own name -- yes, I Google myself once or twice a year, and, admit it now, you Google yourself too -- feels a little over-egotistic. 

I suppose it depends on the tone and content of the negative review. When I don't like a book, I try to be valid, specific and constructive about the problems I had with the book. I also try to be phrase my words politely and as painlessly as I can.  (Sometimes this is difficult. Some of the books I've reviewed on this blog have been *ahem* very poorly written.) If someone discusses my own writing with a similar approach, I'm (probably) not going to be annoyed.

There's a reviewer on Goodreads who writes about quite a few YA titles, and whenever I see her name heading a review, I can be pretty certain she'll be going at that book (and its author) with all guns blazing and foul language rampant.  She goes at books and their authors with ax and chainsaw, gasoline and matches, and then finishes by pissing on the smoking ashes. As performance art, it's kind of impressive in a stunned, jaw-dropping way. As book reviews, any valid criticisms she makes (she does make some) tend to be vastly overshadowed by the ugly invective and inappropriate rage she brings to her reviews.  That may be the kind of "negative review" Ann Leckie's tweet is referencing.

(Ann Leckie's kind of a special case. ANCILLARY JUSTICE, and its sequel ANCILLARY SWORD, have been some of the most widely discussed and reviewed books that have come out in the past several years. If she read all the reviews and opinions people have written about her work, it'd probably be at least a part-time job on top of her normal life.) (Not a problem in my own case, certainly, with my most-recent published story way back in 2006. Self-Googling generally catches only one or two fresh comments a year about my old stories, usually "Death and the Ugly Woman" from 1986. Another reason, I suppose, to hope some of the new fiction I've been writing sells and gets out there to be read.)

So... if I write a review of your book, even a critical or negative review, I'll probably let you know about it. (That actually depends on how organized or time-pressed I am on any particular day; that varies, well, a lot, and usually not on the side of efficiency.)



[I suppose if I'm going to write about people's Twitter posts, I should actually sign up for Twitter, to be able to respond directly to their tweets.  I think I went a little over 140 characters with this post, though.]

Weekly Links, 1/1/2015

For 2015, I'm going to try and do a regular weekly feature of  links to items I found of interest:

Writing-and-Publishing Links:
Kameron Hurley wrote about 2014: Some (Honest) Publishing Numbers, and (Almost) Throwing In The Towel.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch had a December trio of interesting "Business Musings" posts about lessons learned in 2014 by traditional publishers, independent writers, and Rusch herself:

• What Traditional Publishing Learned In 2014
• Things Indie Writers Learned In 2014
• Things I Learned (or Relearned) In 2014

Via James Davis Nicoll's review of Niven & Pournelle's 1974 space epic The Mote In God's Eye, I learned Robert Heinlein saw an early draft of TMIGE and responded with a long critique and suggestions for revision and improvement. Heinlein's letter to Niven & Pournelle is an excellent example of what a knowledgeable book editor (or a writer approaching a manuscript with an editor's perspective) can do for a manuscript. It covers not only "big picture" issues and suggests major cuts and revisions, but narrows in on character and background matters, and a number of minor but telling details. The letter also mentions that Heinlein used three to five working days to write such an in-depth critique. I mention that last because I occasionally see indie-authors who've paid for a book critique complain about the cost (the range for a book critique is pretty wide; I've seen figures from a couple of hundred dollars to about fifteen hundred); if they manage to find an editor-for-hire half as perceptive and detailed as Heinlein was for Niven and Pournelle, they're almost certainly getting their money's worth.

World-At-Large Links (news and politics):
Frank Serpico on The Police Are Still Out of Control


Food Links:
31 Days of Pie: The Matt Bites blog spent the month of December baking and photographing (Matt Amendariz is a professional food photographer) a wide assortment of pies, savory as well as sweet. (The Gumbo Hand Pies sound delicious!)

And while we're on the subject of pies, check out the Modern Farmer Pie Chart of Pies.





Art Links:
Japanese artist Kimiya Masago produced a 2008 art book depicting the 108 heroes of the Chinese epic The Water Margin (aka Outlaws of the Marsh). Some selections are pictured at this link; really spectacular work.

Good Omens on Radio

The BBC's radio adaptation of Gaiman & Pratchett's humorous fantasy novel GOOD OMENS can now be listened to online at the BBC website. Available for four weeks, until January 24th.

The Arm: Two Years On

December 10, 2012 was the morning I took a hard fall onto a harder sidewalk at work, badly breaking the upper arm bone and messing up a lot of the shoulder, and ending up with an artificial joint and lasting after-effects. I've written about the accident and the recovery (such as it's been) over a series of posts.

So how I'm doing, two years later?

I had an exam and evaluation by an independent (i.e., picked by Workman's Comp) orthopedic surgeon several months ago, and got the results about a month ago. I've been put into a "stable without full recovery" status, which lets WC put my case into an Inactive category, and the doctor rated my right arm as 40% disabled.

That sounds about right. The range of motion, the strength, and the stamina of that arm are all compromised significantly, and look to be for the rest of my life. The good news is that the pain, so long as I remember to take my aspirin/tylenol tablets regularly, is (most of the time) down to a mild ache.

Besides the actual physical limitations of that arm, I find myself continually annoyed by a sense of trepidation in using it. If I want to do something that requires use at the outside of the arm's new parameters, I find myself hesitating and asking myself: Will I be able to do this? Will I need to ask for help? Will it hurt? How much will it hurt? How long will it hurt afterwards?

Annoyance and frustration on an every-damned-day basis. The possibility's been raised of doing a revision of the joint replacement, replacing the standard-model arthroscopy with a "reverse-shoulder arthroscopy". But there's no guarantee of improvement, and a possibility the new joint would be less useful and more painful.  I can continue to live with the current status quo, even if I'm not pleased about it.

I'm fortunate in that I'm still able to perform my current job's work tasks within those new limitations. If I was still working my old job as a letter carrier, involving reaching and stretching and lifting that arm thousands of times per day, I would be completely screwed; for that job, the disability would be 100%.

So that's where I'm at, and where I'll probably be for the foreseeable future.

(Hmmph, this sure is a grumpy post to make a few days before Christmas.)

Assorted Stuff of Interest

Playboy has a big honking list, ranking all episodes of all Star Trek series ever: "Clues", my episode, is #115 out of almost 700. Not too shabby a number.

- - - - -

Speaking of big lists, among the plethora/tsunami of "Best Books of 2014" lists, the 250-title list from National Public Radio is pretty impressive. The full list can be filtered by various categories for more manageable results.

- - - - -



ASU's "jetpack" may be the jetpack we'll get, not the jetpack we want.

This is more of a "jet-assist" invention, being developed to let troops move more quickly in combat situations while carrying a shitload of weaponry and gear.


Any true believer, though, knows that a real jetpack will allow you to fly, dammit!




- - - - -

David Laferierre, an illustrator from Massachusetts, has been drawing on his kids' sandwich bags for their lunchboxes since 2008, and posting photos on Flickr.  One of his common subjects is rocketships. Here are a few:

- - - - -

And, to finish off this post, South Africa's MUTI (I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a name or a company) has designed an impressive poster for Jules Verne's fantastic fictions, Voyages Extraordinaires, incorporating numerous icons for a variety of separate works.  The full poster, and separate renditions of the icons, are on display at behance.net. Below is the icon for From The Earth To The Moon:

My Day In Court

Spent today downtown at Superior Court for a jury summons. There were about 44 people in the jurors pool for the particular trial in question; I was #16, so I actually got to sit in one of the the jury box seats (pretty comfy, actually) while the judge asked everyone if they had any problems or conflicts about being a juror. 

I mentioned a few things like my graveyard-shift work schedule and being Hilde's primary caregiver, but what probably got me eliminated from the pool was my having worked as a legal secretary for a year, way back when in 1977. Attorneys really hate having jurors who've worked in the legal profession, even that long ago.  (That year working in law offices left me with what I hope is a healthy cynicism about the legal profession.) After a jurors' break during which the judge and attorneys privately discussed our responses, I and a number of others were told we wouldn't be needed, and we could go home.

So I got back to the juror parking garage about 4:15, then had to wait until 5:40 for AAA to arrive and change the flat tire on the car. *sigh*

I feel a mingled relief (it would have been a major hassle to try and juggle what was expected to be about a week's trial AND still try to carry as many hours at work as possible AND give Hilde as much time as possible AND get as much sleep as possible; I suspect all of those would have come up short in the end) and disappointment. I've always kind of wanted to serve on a jury; this was about the fifth time I've been called over the years, and about the closest I've actually come to being impaneled. 


("The Jury" illustration by Charles Dana Gibson, 1894, via the NYPL Digital Gallery)

No Nano For You!

I thought about taking part in Nanowrimo this year, but this cat kept hogging the keyboard.

No, it's not a weak excuse. Tyr weighs 18 pounds, and has an attitude. Nothing weak about that excuse at all.

(Among the Rules of Life, one of the most important is: Blame Society. If you can't blame Society, Blame The Cat.)

A Few Quotes About Books

I habitually browse the book giveaway listings on Goodreads. Sometimes you can tell if a book's worth entering a giveaway for by how well-written is the blurb for it.  If the blurb's well-written, the odds of the book being well-written increase.  If the blurb's kinda sucky, the book is likely to be sucky too.

And then you occasionally get something like this, where an author quoted part of a review for his book:

"...like the best of Tolkien crossed with a great Dean Koontz thriller."

The idea of which put an expression on my face something like this:

"What the... I can't even...."

Really, I can't imagine how anyone could put Tolkien and Koontz together in the same sentence. One an obsessive academician who spent many years building a detailed world with a deep history, even its own languages, and the other a writer of rush-and-rumble thrillers who drives his keyboard fast and loose, sometimes too fast and too loose.  That's not a combination I find appetizing.

- - - - -

Here's a different quote I liked a lot better.  I've been reading Matthew Hughes' To Hell And Back trilogy, and came across this slightly tongue-in-cheek, but perceptive, description of too many popular best-sellers:

"He began a new career as an author of fat-spined novels in which men and women of power intrigued against each other's interests and interfered with each other's bodies. His characters had unending appetites for sexual encounters and a predisposition to solve disputes with unrestrained violence, His books were hugely popular, and sold by the truckload through Wal-Mart and discount stores." -- Matthew Hughes, Costume Not Included

Yeah-h-h-h, that  may have come out of a work of fiction, but it's a shoe that fits quite a lot of popular writers.

- - - - -

(photo via The Commons on Flickr)

National Day of Overeating 2014

We had a small household Thanksgiving this year, with a smaller dinner as well. In years past when we had larger gatherings, I'd cook and bake a dozen or more dishes and desserts. This year, skipped the dressing and the green bean casserole, and only made three desserts: a raspberry/peach trifle, a key lime pie (store-bought, tho' I've made them from scratch plenty of times), and a cranberry-pear pie, pictured below:

Cranberry-Pear Pie

The pie was a new offering this year, from a recipe on the Tillamook Cheese company's website. (I made an entry in one of their macaroni-&-cheese contests about five years ago, and they still send me emails.)  I don't think I've ever used pears before; never got any thrill, or disgust, out of them the few times I tried them growing up. (Mostly in fruit cocktail, which is pictured in the dictionary next to the entry on "meh".) When I saw a magazine article positing pears as The Most Mediocre Fruit, I found myself in agreement, and haven't had them in the at-least-several decades since. (I couldn't Google up that old article, but here's a similar list putting pears solidly in the undistinguished middle of the fruit index.)

But I've been eating a lot more fruit lately (a subject for another post), and have been looking to expand beyond my usual bananas/grapes/citrus horizons. The addition of cranberries seemed to hold promise for a more distinctive flavor from the Tillamook recipe, so I picked up some red pears at the local Sprouts (my top choice for produce) and made the pie for Thanksgiving.

Overall judgment?  Pretty damned good.  Most of the flavor came from the pears and cinnamon (there may be foods that aren't improved by cinnamon, but I can't think of any offhand, except maybe broccoli), punctuated by tart bursts from the whole cranberries scattered throughout.

A few quibbles with the recipe: You can tell from the photo above that the pie produced a lot of juice, so if I make this again (I probably will), I'll add an extra spoonful or two of flour to thicken the juice more. Next time, I'll chop the sliced pears into smaller pieces, and might try a rough chop on the cranberries as well, to produce a more blended flavor. The egg wash on the lattice top used a whole egg; I'll probably use an egg white wash instead. And I'll probably add another five minutes to the cook time; the bottom crust was cooked through, but only just; I like my pie crust to be, umm, more cooked.

Oh, and one important tip: Peeled pears are extremely slippery. I peeled the pears over the kitchen trash can to catch the peelings, and every one of the pears went flying out of my hand, and had to be picked out of the trash can and rinsed off, once I reached a point where I was trying to grab actual pear and not pear-skin.

War and Freedom: Centennial and Semicentennial

In 1914, one hundred years ago, World War I began.

This has been noted many times, in many media, over the last several months.  But I wanted to do a signal boost for two particularly noteworthy, and ongoing, radio drama series about World War I, the BBC Radio4's Tommies and Home Front.

Tommies is a weekly dramatization, based on private diaries and other records, of the experiences of British officer Mickey Bliss and his fellow signallers, from the Lahore Division of the British Indian Army, on the battlefields of France.  It gets pretty intense, both from a military-history viewpoint and in the clashes and interactions between the varied characters and personalities who took part. It's messy and chaotic and Things Going Wrong. There's even kind of an SF element to it, with Bliss and his men responsible for one of the first field radio units, an affair with equipment weighing hundreds of pounds, difficult to set up and maintain, and delicate and cranky enough to frequently fail to work without frantic MacGyvering with spit and tin foil.

Home Front is the same war, only, well, back on the Home Front in the British Isles itself.  There's the same messiness and sense of depth, deeper than usually presented in historical dramas in the period. The large cast of characters even includes a German national stranded in Britain at the war's outbreak. The plan for the series is to eventually provide a day-to-day drama covering the entire course of the war.

Both dramas provide a closer, more intimate eye on the issues and lives of participants in World War I, rather than the sweeping, epic, pieces-on-a-gameboard overview more commonly presented.

Episodes of Tommies can be listened to here, available until December 11th. Home Front, which is presented in shorter 15-minute episodes five times a week, can be found here; there are also "Omnibus" editions of Home Front, collecting an entire week's episodes in one bundle for download and podcasts, available here.  The Home Front episodes are available for listening "indefinitely", both directly online and via download; the Tommies episodes are only available until December 11th (no podcasts or downloads, alas).

- - - - -

The other anniversary of note happened fifty years ago, rather than a century. That was the founding of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB for short) in 1964.

The FSM  gets little note in most histories nowadays. It seems to be remembered more as a "wanting to be able to use dirty words" thing than anything else.  It was quite a bit more than that, and it was the originating point for later, larger, more widespread protests against the Vietnam War.

UCB had been the site for numerous advocacy committees and organizations setting up tables and passing out literature for various causes (anti-death penalty, pro-civil rights, and early anti-Vietnam activity, etc.). In November 1964, the UCB administration attempted to enforce a complete ban on such activity.

Mario Savio speaking
 from the top of the
 police car, Oct 1, 1964.
Credit: Steve Marcus, courtesy
of UC Berekeley,
 The Bancroft Library 

When several groups continued to post tables on UCB property, police attempted to arrest Jack Weinberg, who refused to produce ID. Student reaction was surprisingly strong and quick; the police car the man had been put into was surrounded by a large crowd, preventing the police from leaving with their arrestee. The standoff lasted for 32 hours, and was the beginning of months of confrontation, including a student occupation of a UCB building and an eventual large-scale raid by police that arrested 800 students.

The Free Speech Movement was the progenitor of a lot of later, more widespread social protest, including the anti-war movement protesting America's involvement in Vietnam. It was a strong influence on civil rights and feminist activity as well. Being primarily a reaction against attempts to quell political discussion and activity, it's kind of odd that it seems to be remembered as mostly a "pro-obscenity" movement, when it's remembered at all.  (I was about twelve when things blew up at UCB, not an age when I was paying much attention to current events, but even I remember the FSM's actions got quite a bit of news coverage at the time.)

Berkeley has produced a website about the FSM era that provides a lot of the history and background for those events and the persons involved in them.  A useful timeline can be found here.

A Trip To The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum [Photos]

Hilde and I go to TusCon, a small convention held in Tucson every year. Usually it's a Friday-Saturday trip, driving back to Phoenix Sunday afternoon. This year I wasn't able to get off work Friday night, so we made it a Saturday-Sunday trip, staying over until Monday morning, and using the opportunity to visit the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum out west of Tucson.

The ASDM presents both plant and animal life of the Sonoran Desert/Baja California area of the Southwest US and Mexico. I took a lot of cellphone pictures, with mixed success; a fair number of the animals were moving too quickly to catch a good shot with the cellphone's slow shutter speed. (The river otter was pretty much a blur.) What follows are some of the best of the batch.

The big handsome mountain lion over there was one of my best shots. The mountain lion habitat is two-sided, with one side having a wide moat and high walls separating viewers from the artifical cliff-side area where the big kitty resides. At the back of a cave up on the cliff, there's a wide and thick glass viewing window to a second path for visitors. Sometimes the mountain lion comes right up to the window to check out his visitors. This was one of those times, and I caught it at an angle that minimized reflections from the window.

More photos below the break.