Did you know there are towns in China that become hellscapes every fall to churn out products for American Christmas? I read a frightening article about it. Imagine forests choked by smoke churned out to create plastic trees with an estimated use span of one month. Imagine beating the planet Read more…
When Sir Ephraim asked me to be his squire in the SCA, in a charming and unexpected ceremony, one of the things he asked me was, “to be more yourself than you have ever been.” And I grimaced, like, ouch, that’s hard, but said I would. After swearing fealty and Read more…
We’re re-watching Gargoyles, a favorite cartoon from my childhood. In the most recent episode, Demona, the Bad Girl Gargoyle, is trying to show how humanity is evil, and one things she shows is a purse-snatching, and she stops her friend from going after the purse snatcher, telling him, “With human Read more…
Other writers frequently ask me how I get so much done, what my schedule or writing practice is like. I decided to actually track my activity for a week and see what it looked like so I was answering honestly. It was a little bit of a weird week, I Read more…
I was too young to babysit, and had no allowance, so all the money I had came from the sidewalk or from returning glass bottles to the corner store. The week of Mother’s Day I shook out my tootsie-roll shaped bank and found I had $1.18. The year before, I’d Read more…
I was in college, and hanging around Theta Chi fraternity was my major pass time. I had this belief these boys my own age were somehow older, wiser, more sophisticated than me, and I wanted to be like them. [Ah, past me, have more self-esteem!] It was a boy named Read more…
What to do about that. The title of this post is not entirely tongue-in-cheek. No one can feel another’s suffering, can know how it feels in your skin. No one has suffered exactly as you have, though we all suffer. But that doesn’t mean we’re alone. I remember the first Read more…