Your Tuesday moment of zen.
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khaybee at the Stonehenge replica in the Columbia Gorge, 2007. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 5:34 am Tue April 12 2011 | Comments(0) |
Your Monday moment of zen.
tillyjane
at the Stonehenge replica in the Columbia Gorge, 2007. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 5:13 am Mon April 11 2011 | Comments(0) |
Video games: the addiction — Tom Bissell was an acclaimed, prize-winning young writer. Then he started playing the video game Grand Theft Auto. For three years he has been cocaine addicted, sleep deprived and barely able to write a word. Any regrets? Absolutely none. (Thanks to danjite.)
Speaking Up — The Outer Alliance with a summation of the Jessica Verday situation, with respect to a YA story being edited for same-sex content.
Darkness and Cherry Pie: David Lynch’s Map of Twin Peaks — For all you fans out there.
Central Tien Shan, China — Orbital photograph of some Chinese mountains. Stunning.
Japan Fears Nuclear Reactor Is Leaking Contaminated Water
Fission Products in Seattle Reveal Clues about Japan Nuclear Disaster — The first analysis of nuclear fission products in the atmosphere over Seattle provides a unique insight into the nature of the disaster.
Why we must defend Sarah Palin — Politics and women.
American Thought Police — Paul Krugman on the Republican party as champions of individual liberty and government non-interference.
The Right’s Selective Embrace of Religious Liberty — More intellectual consistency from the leading lights of America’s moral universe.
?otD: Have you ever given a rebel yell?
Posted: 5:22 am Mon March 28 2011 | Comments(0) |
Where I write: Jean M. Auel works late in her Southwest Portland condo
Top 10 trails in Columbia River Gorge — This is a big part of why I live where I do.
Lady Gaga, steampunk vampires, and fair weather painters — Art guru James Gurney is interesting on several levels.
Scientists finish a 53-year-old classic experiment on the origins of life
Every Revolution Is Revolutionary in Its Own Way
Losing Our Way — When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.
?otD: Mother do you think they’ll drop the Bomb?
Posted: 6:42 am Sun March 27 2011 | Comments(0) |
This past weekend, I was at Rainforest Writers Village, on the shores of scenic Lake Quinalt in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Had a lot of fun, took a few pictures. Sadly, none of the wildlife I saw was willing to pose at the appropriate moment.
A few photos of people and the place. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 6:33 am Tue March 08 2011 | Comments(1) |
I’m back. Didja miss me? Huh? Huh? Huh?
Just spent a long weekend at the Rainforest Writers Village retreat, at scenic Lake Quinalt in the Olympic Mountains of Washington State. Where it was cold. jimvanpelt offers a report here.
In the course of the weekend I wrote 19,500 words on Calamity of So Long a Life (a/k/a Sunspin book one), in the process passing the midpoint of the book as measured from the structure of the outline. The draft now stands at 91,300 words. One might reasonably assume the full first draft will be about 180,000 words. We shall see. I exceeded my goals on the book at the expense of my other writing goals for the weekend, so may need to reallocate priorities this week.
I also managed to walk every morning with various folks. And convinced kehrli to try to walk on water as I had done a previous year. And saw the most gorgeous night sky I’ve seen in the better part of a decade, including shooting stars. And saw a herd of elk. Three times. Once from about fifty feet away. And bald eagles. And a fox. And a very strange moonset. And partied. And talked. And thought. A lot.
One thing I’ll be posting about soon is some expanded thinking about my ongoing meme of being Consumers versus Producers. Some excellent conversation on that topic at several turns of the weekend. Doubtless other stuff will come bubbling up. Along with some photo posts.
For now, I am at the airport preparing to take to the skies and fly to Omaha, where it is cold.
I leave you with this photo.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Photo © 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 5:53 am Mon March 07 2011 | Comments(0) |
This afternoon I’m heading out for my annual gig as one of the attending pros at Rainforest Writers Village deep in the beautiful wilds of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Given the eccentricities of both cellphone service and Internet access at Lake Quinalt, I’m likely to be completely off the grid most of the time through Sunday evening.
While at Rainforest I expect to:
Also, next Monday I fly to Omaha for a week in the salubrious climes of the Midwest, engaging in Day Jobbery. Except for Sunday night, I’ll be away from Nuevo Rancho Lake for ten days.
Posted: 6:30 am Wed March 02 2011 | Comments(0) |
Whew. This weekend I:
the_child on preparing for her art showing next weekendBusy much?
The dreams last night were hilarious. As best as I can reconstruct them now, I was trying to arrange a social date for davidlevine. I stopped at the Philadelphia Zoo to sort out the details, borrowing a clipboard from their membership department.
As I sat on some empty steps to make notes about this date, I was trampled by a crowd of zoo patrons rushing to see an IMAX showing of some nature movie. I was so discombobulated by this that I threw down my clipboard in frustration. That narrowly missed a manager from the zoo office.
The Zoo Police took me into custody for attempted assault. I was informed that as my alleged crimes had occurred on public property, I would be charged with terrorism related offenses under the Patriot Act, and that Homeland Security was being called in.
For some reason I still had the run of the zoo offices at that point. Various writers and editors kept wandering in. I pled my case to the trio of Gordon Van Gelder, Tim Pratt and Ben Rosenbaum. Gordon told me I should be more careful with my clipboard next time. Ben said fifteen years in prison was a small price to pay for a just and peaceful society.
I wound up in the IMAX auditorium still looking for someone who could help me out. At that point the Zoo Police decided I was trying to effect an escape from custody by hiding in the crowd. They started a panic sending in a SWAT team after me, while loudly telling everyone I was a violent criminal threatening further violence.
I woke up laughing at myself. All that so David Levine could have a date?
What did you dream last night?
Posted: 6:47 am Mon February 28 2011 | Comments(4) |
Yesterday, J, T and I headed up the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge for the relatively new Cape Horn trail. It’s a 6.8 mile loop with over 1,000 feet of elevation change. I wasn’t worried about the distance, but I was worried about the elevation, as I am still getting back into shape post-chemo. Walking up hills is no longer pathologically difficult for me, but continues fairly tough.
Boy did we not suss that one out quite right.
On arrival, we discovered a sign saying that part of the loop was closed through June to protect peregrine falcon nesting grounds. That’s hard to object to, so we figured on about a 5 mile out-and-back instead of the full loop. There was snow on the ground at the trailhead, while the track held about 1/2″ of fresh powder.
The trail went up.
And up.
And up.
Primitive trail, snow deepening to 3-4 inches, some pretty steep passages, and between the slip-and-grind of walking in fresh powder and the unremitting “up”, I really struggled hard. It took us an hour to make the summit at Fallen Tree viewpoint. That was 1.3 miles with 800 feet of elevation gain, us being mostly slowed by my dilatory pace and need for frequent breaks against the effort of climbing.
Still, I made the summit, damn it.
At that point, my incipient vertigo (a problem of aging, I didn’t used to experience this) incipiated like crazy. For one thing, we’d crossed a couple of knifeback ridges with the fresh, slippery snow on the trail. A misstep would have produced a fall of several hundred feet one side, and about fifty feet on the other. For another thing, several of the overlooks were just rock and air fifteen hundred feet over the depth of the Gorge. Amazingly beautiful.
Going back down those knifeback trail segments was a real experience, let me tell you. I still have some numbness in my feet from the chemotherapy, so my footing is a bit iffy at best. That was exacerbated by tromping along in snow. I enjoyed a real adrenaline rush with that ‘taking my life in my hands’ feeling.
Later on, away from the cliffs, we took a fork in the trail down we hadn’t followed coming up and found a long, steep section that I finally just had to buttslide downhill 80 or 100 feet on the snow rather than risk my footing.
We were out a little over two hours all told, making about 2.5 miles. Not exactly a land speed record, but it was a fun, tough, and very demanding (for me) hike.
Some photos… Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 6:33 am Mon February 28 2011 | Comments(0) |
Yesterday was the last day of RadCon. Usual morning stuff — exercise, brekkie with friends, packing out of the room, whatnot. I sit on a couple of excellent panels, both of which I wound up moderating.
The first was ‘Formidable Women’, with me and David Levine bookending Alma Alexander, Patty Briggs, M.J. Enghe, C.J. Cherryh and Jane Fancher. The questions under discussion were “What constitutes formidable?” and “What is a woman?” Wow, was that an amazing (and sometimes hilarious) 50 minutes.
The following panel was on the novel pitch, with some of the same players plus several new ones. And a lot of audience participation. And me riding roughshod with moderatorial privilege to keep it all on track. Still, I think it was rather productive.
The drive back was extremely pleasant, with much admiring of the ever-growing forest of wind power turbines dotting the eastern end of the Columbia gorge, and a brief visit with friends in Hood River. I managed some writing last night, and went to bed quite early to help myself sleep off the last of the weekend’s debauchery.
My next such event is Rainforest Writers Village in two weeks. Do you have a convention coming up?
Posted: 6:23 am Mon February 21 2011 | Comments(1) |