Includes such favorites as “pyke notte thyne errys nothyr thy nostrellys” and “spette not ovyr thy tabylle.”
Oh, and there’s some stuff by Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, i.e., Alice in Wonderland) and Axel Scheffler (The Gruffalo), among many others.
We’ve seen this before. Tragic romance framed by sci-fi fantasies. But now it may be possible to block the emotions the amydala associated with painful memories. Continue Reading
I should be finishing the SF novel I’ve been working on (and off) for the better part of four years now. Instead, I’ve found myself obsessed with letters recently found in my dearly departed mother‘s possessions…letters written from my grandmother’s first husband, John Hart, while he was in the US Army in the 1940s.
He died. This ain’t no story of heroic sacrifice or rah-rah patriotism. This is reality. Continue Reading
Hi, everyone. I guess I should have planned a little better — should have written a “new year’s post” and then saved it before the holiday season began, scheduled the post, and then enjoyed overeating, overdrinking, and sleeping in.
Except of course that’s not what actually happened. Continue Reading
The Witching Hour and Hallowe’en have come and passed, but there’s still time to think about family history…since, of course, it does involve witches. And ghosts.
We have two witches and one ghost in the family tree, on my mother’s side (my father’s side has pirates, kidnapped settlers, and Captains who start intercontinental wars, but more on that in another post). The witches, of course, were caught up in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693. Otherwise known as the Salem Witch Paranoia. Victims of insecure white men. So what’s new? Continue Reading
Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while. I know it’s been about two months. Summer was filled with fun family activities in Montreal. September was filled with trips to libraries and feeling sorry for myself. Got into a bit of a funk.
Now I’m back in Japan, back to the daily grind, and trying to find time to sort out all the stuff I mailed back from Montreal.
Rest assured, there’s lots of stuff to write about. Some of it even makes sense.
I’ll be writing a few quick posts about various cool science and space things in the upcoming days. Then maybe a couple of longish ones about weird family history. And maybe even an update on my SF novel.
Yeah. I still didn’t finish the first draft. Stuck on 70,000 words. But the end is in sight!
In February of 2017, a team of European astronomers announced the discovery
of a seven-planet system orbiting the nearby star TRAPPIST-1. Aside from
the fact that all seven planets were rocky, there was the added bonus of
three of them orbiting within TRAPPIST-1’s habitable zone. Since that time,
multiple studies have been conducted to determine whether or not any of
these planets could be habitable.
What’s up with the boring names?
I propose we call them Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta, and Gretl. The most habitable is Kurt, because he’s so magnetic.
On this day, June 10th, what would have been my mother’s 69th birthday had she not passed away suddenly last October, I am conflicted.
Do I have the right to write about family history yet again?
And yet without the past, it’s difficult to write about the future. They are connected, by both visible and invisible lines, threads of beliefs and behaviors, attitudes and antagonisms, odd coincidences and strangely fortunate happenings. Particularly in my family. Continue Reading
One minute I’m blogging along, the next minute…
No, I don’t mean Theresa May, I mean the actual May…er, May, as in the month of. I missed the entire month of blogging!
Right. Well, I have some catching up to do. A few more interesting science tidbits, more about family history and possible story ideas for historical fiction (and/or fictionalized history).
And there’s that SF novel I keep meaning to finish…