Author: Trace

And then there was Pie (and sand)


I promised a photo! Thankfully, I took one because, as they say, a picture will last longer. It was GOOD pie. I confess that I ate almost half of the pie all by myself. So much for the low-carb diet.

The delay in posting of the promised pie photo is the result of my family’s long-awaited trip to Anna Maria Island, which was incredibly beautiful. The sky was this gorgeous azure, and the water was perfectly clear and aquamarine. There was a moment when the beauty of the water was overwhelming and unreal to my eyes, a solid thing, like a delicately colored piece of plexiglass. Absurd, right?

Unexpectedly, I shed tears when I first touched the water. The oil spill is on the mind of every person along the coast, even though they pretend, like our innkeeper did, that everything is wonderful as usual. I said some prayers, and we had a lovely time for the most part. Mr. B ran himself ragged and fell into bed at 9 PM every single night we were there. I wish I could figure out how to exhaust him that way at home.

The sea turtles were nesting at night, which was something I would have dearly loved to witness, but I was too tired. We did go out each night in the early evening and walk in the twilight. Every night, when the sun touched the horizon, an interesting thing happened. Every person on the beach stopped (except Mr. B, who never stops moving unless he is unconscious) and stared at the sun as it appeared to grow smaller and smaller, and then wink out below the horizon line. It occurred so rapidly, and I found this unceasingly amazing. I mean, Florida is flat, but I rarely see the completion of a sunset because we live in a tree city. I was caught up every night in that motion, startled by it each time. It made me feel very small. It’s easy to forget that we live on a enormous ball spinning in space, and then you glimpse it turning.

Blessed be, Gaia. Oshun. Yemaya.

Today is a Blue-fingered Day


Mr. B had a lucky day, according to reports. I arranged for him and some of his homeschool buds to go to a local blueberry farm, where they loaded up the yummy little gems. I think it’s safe to say Mr. B put more berries in his mouth than in his bucket, but he had a blast.

It was blazing hot, of course, a balmy 90 degrees. When I finally sat down in the shade after an hour or so, I was startled that it took so long (about as long as it took for me to get overheated) for me to consider the contrast between my choice of recreation (blueberry picking) and the misery of farmworker labor (blueberry picking). A woman with four children in tow, one just an infant, was picking berries for the company, albeit in a different area, and I never saw her sit down for a break, especially not after such a short time. Just a thought.


The berries are amazing, though, and it was satisfying to pick them myself. It doesn’t look like much, but there’s more than four pounds in there. I may attempt to bake some sort of pie with them on Friday. There could be pictures!

Sometimes Rejection is Nice

Or at least when it’s nicely worded. I sent off yet another story (actually the same one that keeps getting rejected all over town) to The Future Fire a short while back, and a few days ago, I got a very polite and encouraging response:

“This was a fascinating and well-written piece, with a dual plot arc of
Alice’s failing relationship and imploding scientific experiment
working well to offset each other. Apart from being a parable on
scientific catastrophe-making, however, there isn’t much
social/political content to the plot of this story, and in the end we
felt it didn’t quite fit what we are looking for in TFF at the moment.

We’d like to thank you again for thinking of us with this story, and
wish you the very best with your writing in the future.”

How refreshing to receive feedback beyond the typical form letter! It was also a gentle let-down as to the fit of the piece. I’ve gotten a few rejections in the past that seemed a little snarky, especially coming from amateur ‘zines.

In a way, I was also pleased that the placement of my lesbian protagonist doesn’t warrant classification as “social/political content.” A mute point someday, I hope? I’m a little ticked with myself that I missed out on the submission window for the theme of their previous issue, Queer Sci-fi, where it may have faired better. Just my luck, I guess.

BTW, the letter also stated that The Future Fire is on hiatus until 2011.

Disaster and Heartache

I’ve haven’t been able to form a response yet to the disaster in the Gulf. It’s easier to ignore disaster when it is taking place in some distant place. This is not so far, really, and it’s coming closer every moment.

Today, the outer edges of the spill hit the Louisiana coast, in some of the most pristine wildlife areas in the country, as this aerial photo from the AP shows.


My family plans to go to Anna Maria Island in a few weeks, and I’ll pray there at the edge of the Gulf. I wasn’t sure what I would say until I read this over at T. Thorn Coyle’s blog.

As a pagan (not to mention a human with a pulse) who reveres the earth and the ocean, I feel horrified, numb and angry. However, I’ve been taught to channel feelings like these into positive ends, whenever possible.

To keep from crying about it, I’m trying to DO something, which a feeble thing in the face of the trauma the earth is facing. There’s this effort you may have read about, where people are making these crazy-looking things called “hair booms” to soak up the oil. I’m just calling different salons and asking them to participate in the hair collection. One place so far said “yes,” the Fantastic Sam’s in my town. They have a designated collection bin for hair, so I took my Mr. B there to get his hair trimmed, and made sure he knows that his hair will go to help clean up the spill.

The crummy thing is, while salons all over the country are collecting the hair, BP hasn’t agreed to use them in the cleanup). These booms have been shown to work; why wouldn’t BP let the people help clean up this horrifying disaster?

Today, I channeled my inner crazy-lady and contacted the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, where a woman named Jody was very nice but couldn’t tell me why the governor’s office isn’t pressuring BP to approve the use of the booms, in spite of the fact that there aren’t enough of the ineffective plastic ones. It seems strange and outrageous to me that BP has so much control over the cleanup. I called the local paper in Houma, Louisiana, which has recently covered the story about hair collection, and asked a reporter there to pursue it further. We had a effusive conversation, and she agreed to follow up and press the issue (there’s a BP response center in Houma).

Then I read that BP may be reconsidering, probably in a PR move.

Makes me want to holler, but maybe some good is coming.

EDIT: Later, when I tried to call the Coast Guard Gulf command office to confirm that BP is waiting for their approval (and to advocate for said approval), they just passed me off to BP Operational Command in Houston (read: nice PR ladies). They had no clue what I was talking about, even though it’s been in the news already that they’re considering the possibility.
image from www.matteroftrust.org, the organization behind the effort

Adventures in Parenting

Sometimes a little shutter clicks in my mind, saving a memory under the filename “What Homeschooling Looks Like.” It would make a great photo essay, if I’d really been taking photos during these moments when I was busy just living: Mr. B watching PBS in his underwear, Mr. B snoring on the floor of a dewy tent in a campground, Mr. B crouched in the hallway completing a math assignment (his favorite spot for doing homework), or Mr. B squatting on the sidewalk examining a dead lizard through a jeweler’s loupe.

Mostly, I trick him into learning stuff while trying hard to listen to a bunch of jabber about his current fixation without going crazy. Lately, it’s Ghostbusters, which is hilarious on some level. He’s constantly talking about ghosts and making up wacky scenarios about hauntings, drawing pictures, playing the videogame, and watching the movie (although that’s tapered off now, thank goodness). He even solicited a special project from my mom, the woman who can make damn near anything out of cardboard, and she constructed a proton pack that fastens to his back with straps she made out of USB lanyards. He wears it everywhere. Can you spot the intrepid heroes on the left, saving NYC?

However, sometimes I do take photos, usually after the fact, to remind myself that the frustration and sacrifice are (mostly) worth the payoff. Today, we made a bird feeding platform from a shelf that I picked up on the side of the road and an old terra cotta flowerpot dish. We installed it outside his window so he can watch birds (one of his Aspie obsessions –could be worse). He can see it from his bunk bed.


A couple of weeks ago, at Florida Pagan Gathering (happy Beltane, BTW), I took a deep breath and let Mr. B off the chain. He romped with his camp buddies and frequently disappeared from my sight, once for over an hour. I even let him participate in the so-called Celtic Games, where men and boys whack each other with boffers shaped like swords and toss big rocks. He took a beating and cheered and hollered himself hoarse, and it was probably the most fun he ever had.

Some days, it’s lots of fun being me.

Goodbye to You(s)


As they say in Jersey, see you(s) around. The term is over! I always feel a flood of relief when classes conclude. I no longer have all these groups of people depending on me to be energetic and helpful. Of course, I still have permanent people fixtures, known and loved, who require those qualities of me, but at least I don’t have to pour it out to strangers, for now.

This has been one of my best terms, honestly. I stayed on top of the workload, most of my students were engaged and hard-working (there are always a few who aggravate, wheedle and cheat), and I enjoyed my time with them. However, it’s incredibly draining for me, and a distraction from what I want to be doing. I’m glad to be done.

The truly excellent part of the fun is I have no plans to teach for the rest of the year. Summer is Clarion West, and fall is the time when I use all that knowledge I’ve hopefully gathered to make some magic happen. I also have a homeschooling responsibility that needs ramping up. Mr. B finally starting reading and writing independently this year, and he’s primed for big advances now that those building blocks are in place. Double excitement.

More Internet Amazement

Say what you will, the internet is an amazing place. So many resources exist to help a person do just about anything, from raising chickens to learning to knit. I am quite proud to say that the old series o’tubes has helped me learn, at least in the latter case.

New amazing thing I tried, thanks to my writing buddy Scott W. Baker, is a little thing called Duotrope’s Digest. For a newbie writer like me, finding appropriate semi-pro markets is a challenge, but the Digest makes it easy. I can search the database for exactly the type of market that’s best for my work.

Maybe I’ll figure out how to fit the widget below into my sidebar a bit later when hubbie is home to help with the code.

Duotrope's Digest: search for short fiction & poetry markets

I submitted a piece yesterday to The Future Fire, a paying semi-pro that specializes in political themes. I hope that my story can find a home there; I’m concerned that the story’s lesbian main character may not have been welcome at a couple other places I submitted to.

We shall see! It’s good to get back to the work that’s important to me, now that the term is coming to an end.

On Skimpy Blogging, and Cabbage


Not been much going on here lately, huh? I’ve been keeping super-busy with end-of-term preparations, homeschooling, Clarion fixations (such as ever-expanding reading and packing lists), and gardening.

I do love digging in the dirt. My black thumb syndrome has dramatically improved this past year, but I was beginning to think the spring window was going to zoom right by, and I wasn’t going to get enough new planting done.

However, last weekend I cleared out a lot of old growth and this weekend, I have been working to replant. One exciting aspect of this is the opportunity to eat up remaining foodstuffs that were grown by the earth in my front yard and cultivated by my own hands. It’s a thrill, if you’ve never done it.

Here, three heads of cabbage that came straight from the garden into the pot. It was peppery and delicious. I have a couple more to go before that particular bed can be replanted, but I put out a bunch of bell pepper seedlings and I’ll probably put in the hot pepper ones tomorrow. Yum!

Of course, I should be writing.

Can I Have a Bunker, too?

If I had $10 million, I could realize the post-apolocalyptic American Dream: the self-sufficient underground condo, for me and 200 friends!

Or maybe I could just write a story about it.

Read the article at NPR.