Susan W.

My muse has provided me with plot bunnies for two series both involving interaction between European and Asian cultures circa 1800. One is the type of fantasy where every nation has an obvious real-world equivalent (think Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series), the other is straight historical adventure fiction. I really, really love both ideas, and I've never liked to limit myself to writing what I already know, but I'm aware that crosscultural stories, particularly by white authors, are often packed with offensive stereotypes.

So...given that I'm not planning to tackle either idea for a few years yet, any recommendations of authors who do such stories well? Obviously I'll do plenty of proper nonfiction research, but good fiction is a useful inspiration, too.

Annabel, responding to something on TV: A story about a cowboy?

Me: Why not? I've even seen a story about space cowboys.

Annabel: What would space cowboys do?

Me (realizing the futility of explaining Firefly's set-up to AB): Herd cows in space, I guess.

Annabel: Well, that would just be the cow that jumped over the moon.

I started a food/cooking blog about my efforts to follow the eating plan from Mark Bittman's Food Matters:

http://susansfoodmatters.blogspot.com/

I'm still finding my feet writing on a new-to-me topic, but I'm hoping to focus on how to cook and eat more vegetables and whole grains and less processed food despite having a busy lifestyle and not being a particularly gifted cook.

Apparently the good people at Liberty Counsel (which is affiliated with Jerry Falwell's Liberty University) are selling a card with a colonial minuteman logo on it. This card claims that the 18th century version of a right-wing extremist was a minuteman!

::head.desk::

Yeah, RIGHT. The American Revolution was all about a bunch of conservatives trying to escape the tyrannical grip of that lefty pinko hippie, George III.

::rolls eyes forever::

Um, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but insofar as you can map the political divisions of the 18th century to today (which only works to a point, naturally), it was the Loyalists who were the conservatives. The patriots/revolutionaries and their sympathizes in Britain were on the left. And George III and the British system in general? NSM tyrannical by 18th century standards--which is of course a big reason why the American Revolution WORKED and produced a stable constitutional republic, because the people already had considerable experience of self-government and therefore didn't, oh, descend into chaos and end up getting taken over by an opportunistic and militaristic dictator within a decade or two, like certain other 18th century revolutionary nations I could name.

None of this is rocket science, or even particularly complex and obscure history. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised so many people don't get it. At least when I was growing up, history wasn't taught well in schools. And this morning one of my conservative cousins on Facebook was all upset because Obama is returning to some of the counter-terrorism policies of the Clinton administration (mainly treating it as a law enforcement issue rather than primarily a military one). It was all I could do to walk away without replying something to the effect of, "Oh, really? You mean when we took the threat seriously and didn't ignore warnings a month before an attack that led to 3000 people dying on US soil and then engage in a war of choice against a nation with no connection to the attack? About damn time." I didn't, because I knew it'd just be starting a fight to no purpose. So if people are so blinded by their ideology they can't even accurately assess what's happened in the past 20 years, I know it's hopeless to expect them to understand events from more than 200 years ago. But it STILL frustrates me. History MATTERS, dammit.

Your results:
You are Worf

Worf 80% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 80% Will Riker 70% Uhura 65% James T. Kirk (Captain) 55% Chekov 55% Mr. Sulu 55% Jean-Luc Picard 55% Beverly Crusher 40% Geordi LaForge 40% Deanna Troi 40% Spock 37% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 35% Data 34% Mr. Scott 25%

You are trained in the art of combat and are usually intimidating.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...

I've written here on occasion about my choir friend and fellow alto Maxine, who was diagnosed with cancer not quite a year ago.

She stayed away from the choir while undergoing chemo but came back for Lent and Easter, after finishing the chemo but discovering it had been ineffective. She had a fair amount of energy then, and she and her husband, Gary, our director, hoped to travel to Europe and to Kenya (where our church has ongoing ties because of Kenyans who've worshipped with us while studying in Seattle, and where Gary and Maxine have been on several previous occasions) after Easter. But then that very week she started experiencing severe pain, and they canceled that trip and hoped instead to spend some time on their beloved Oregon Coast. We had a potluck for them about a week later, and then I saw them again the next Sunday and briefly spoke to Maxine, but didn't want to linger, because I was very sneezy and wasn't sure whether it was a cold or allergies.

Meanwhile, choir resumed. Gary started a sabbatical after Easter, so we got a substitute director, and this Sunday was the first time we've sung since Easter. At the prayer time during the 9:00 service, the prayer leader requested special prayers for Gary and Maxine, which made me think something was up, and between services Anthony, our substitute director, told us that the reason Karin wasn't there is that Gary had called to request that someone bring them communion asap.

So I wasn't entirely surprised to get an email from Gary about an hour ago saying Maxine had died around 9:30 this morning. I'm sad. I'm angry that she and Gary had so few years together, and that her decline was so rapid they didn't get to say goodbye to the Oregon Coast, much less Kenya. And I'm wistful, because though I liked Maxine tremendously and have known her ever since I joined the choir, I never got to know her as well as I would've liked. Because until she got cancer I thought there would be more time, and I'm busy, and my house is too much of a mess to invite people over, and I'm always shy about making overtures to go from friendly to friends, because what if the person doesn't want more friends or doesn't think you're as interesting as you think they are...and...no good reasons there, just life clutter that gets in the way of living.

This morning, a little before 9:30, the choir was singing the day's anthem, an arrangement of the old hymn "I Will Arise and Go to Jesus." I know not everyone reading this journal is a Christian, but Maxine of course was, and I like to think that maybe somehow she connected to the words we were singing...

I will arise and go to Jesus
He will embrace me in his arms
In the arms of my dear Savior
Oh, there are ten thousand charms.

We had a planning meeting yesterday evening for my daughter's preschool graduation. The overall theme is "Yes we can" with a side of "Oh, the Places You'll Go," but the center director really wants to celebrate the ethnic and cultural diversity of the class. The kids are going to make flags reflecting their heritage, wear ethnic costumes under their caps and gowns, etc. (This wasn't my idea and I have mixed feelings about. I think it's great for the kids to learn about their heritages and celebrate them, but I see a lot of scope for cheese and stereotype in the way it's being handled.)

So. Annabel is the only kid in the class who's basically a plain-vanilla American. All of her ancestors were here by 1900, and she's a melting pot stew of Western European and Native American. Specifically, that I know of she's English, Swedish, Cherokee, Scottish (both Highland and Scots-Irish), Creek, German, French, Welsh, Swiss, and I think Choctaw. She's a member of the Cherokee Nation (or will be when we get around to submitting her registration paperwork). I think if you added all the English, Welsh, and Scottish bits together she might be close to half British, but she's basically just American.

So my first idea was to get her a red, white, and blue dress and let her carry either the American flag or the state flag of her choice between WA (our home), AL (where I grew up), and OK (DH's home state). But I'm concerned she might feel left out if she's the only one who doesn't have a costume. Now I'm thinking of finding a few affordable options from that blend above and letting her choose between them. My question is whether or not that's a cheesey thing to do, and specifically whether it'd be OK to let her wear a generic Native American costume and carry the Cherokee flag. I've looked into getting her a Cherokee tear dress, but they're prohibitively expensive for something she'd only wear once or twice before outgrowing it. I don't want to be one of those obnoxious white people who acts like all N.A. cultures are the same--the kind of person who names her kid Cheyenne or Dakota to honor her great-great-grandmother the Cherokee princess--but I also want my daughter to have fun at her graduation and not feel left out.

I've been continuing to play with Access both at home and at work. I've put together two functional databases, straightforward stuff, and I'm working on a third that's simple as can be on the back end, but it's to be used by our whole department, and designing a user-friendly form is giving me FITS, FITS, I tell you.

So I'm getting to a point where I need to figure out Next Steps. I still have only the vaguest idea of the Big Picture WRT this field. I feel like I'm stumbling through a maze of acronyms, like I'm coming into this backwards. I get the impression the "normal" career path would be for someone who's already a techie to decide to add databases to their existing knowledge base, while I'm a non-techie who seems to have a natural flair for how information should be organized relationally. What I need to pick up is the tech piece, but so far I haven't found a person/book/website who'll give me the techspeak-to-English translations I'm longing for. I know I can do this--aced the logic part of the GRE lo these many years ago, got an A in the one programming class I took back in 1995 or so (C++, but I don't remember any of it). But I need some kind of entry point, whether it's a book, a curriculum, or just someone willing to explain things and not look at me like I'm an idiot when I don't know some term or concept a typical techie would know.

I'm getting the impression I need to learn both SQL and Visual Basic if I'm going to be employable. Does that sound right? And keep hammering away at Access just because it's a way to play with the basic concepts while I learn to speak techie?

If I were to decide to do a certificate program, I'm wondering if this one would be better than the community college ones, both in terms of what I'd learn and of looking shiny on my resume:

http://extension.washington.edu/ext/certificates/dmo/dmo_gen.asp

At least it's all online, so it'd be easier to fit it into my life.

I just last night saw the Susan Boyle video on YouTube. Here's an article with more about her:

http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2501746.0.the_beauty_that_matters_is_always_on_the_inside.php

http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166329.asp

Describes the disappearing books/rankings as an "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error."

If I go Easter skirt instead of dress...

I'd get the turquoise and pair it with white, turquoise, or navy

this could change my mind about floral prints!

I've always loved a nice flowy tiered skirt

I'm kinda surprised to find myself picking so much off the JC Penney site, but whatever. I'm a bit old to care where I'm shopping as long as I'm happy with how it looks, you know?

My husband is Geek of the Week (in the not-long-for-this-world Seattle PI)!

http://www.seattlepi.com/tech/geekoftheweek/index.asp?geekID=24

And he gives me credit for outing him...

I've been sitting on this for nearly two weeks, but now it's all official. The following just appeared on the Publishers Marketplace deals page:

Rose Lerner's IN FOR A PENNY, in which a dashing and feckless Lord enters a marriage of convenience with the lovely and practical daughter of a wealthy merchant in an effort to salvage the family fortune, and they find themselves unprepared for the challenges they face; scandal, revolting tenants, a menacing neighbor and in the end a love that is neither convenient nor practical but entirely heartfelt and enduring, to Leah Hultenschmidt at Dorchester, for publication in Spring 2010, by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency (World).

Rose, who is one of my critique partners, writes some of the most intelligent, witty, and thoughtful Regency romances I've ever read. While she very much has her own voice, her writing has shades of Loretta Chase and even Georgette Heyer, and I recommend her book without hesitation to fans of the genre. (And will come back and do so again as soon as her book is available for preorder on Amazon!)

In this economy, I'm always excited to hear about a debut non-celebrity author selling a book even when it's something I have no interest in reading myself, just because it's proof that publishers are still buying and the industry isn't wholly dead. But to have a good friend of mine sell a book that I can personally attest is wonderful? That's just SO FRICKIN' AWESOME!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/401698_newspapers27.html

He's a bit frustrated that the article doesn't clarify why he didn't want discussion of microcredits--basically, he and others involved in this event don't think it's a workable option, and yet it's all that's being discussed at most of these events, so they wanted to push discussion toward other options.

Annabel asked me one too many questions about the cartoon she's watching, and I said, "You know, Annabel, I really don't know. You're asking me to explain the reasons behind a story I didn't write, so all I can really do is guess."

She replied, "Well, why don't YOU write a story and have them put it on TV?"

Me: "It's not quite as easy as that..."

Just posting this to help me keep track...

83,284 / 100,000 (83.3%)

1:18 PM me: I'm starting to think of Obama as President Ctrl-Z.
In a good way, mind you

1:19 PM Dylan: I'm hoping it's more of a Ctrl-Alt-Del

1:20 PM me: good point