Bombay Hook and Dancing Music Players

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I played hooky yesterday -- sometimes you just have to -- and went down to Bombay Hook, the saltwater marsh wildlife refuge in Delaware.  It's a beautiful place and although, inexplicably enough, there were no snow geese (come on, guys! it's migration time!) but there were all the usual ruddy ducks and shovelers and mute swans and harriers and so on.  Plus a few yellow bellied sapsuckers.

And, oh yeah, we saw a pair of bald eagles fly in low over one of the ponds, panicking the geese and avocets there.  One struck, and then carried away a warm avocet carcass, trailed by his or her mate, the two screaming at each other proudly, off to a romantic meal of warm avocet tartare.

Life doesn't get a lot better than that.

And because I've been far too serious of late . . .

Why didn't anybody ever tell me about the Sony Rolly?  It's a music player which . . .  Well, it rolls, see?  And it has a couple of lights which turn on and off and change color.  And flaps on the ends which . . .  It's kind of hard to explain. 

Which is why Sony discontinued it.  It's hard to sell a piece of electronics whose purpose you can't even explain.

Also, they priced it at $350.

Three hundred fifty dollars for a small (it fits neatly in one hand) and perfectly pointless item of electronica that serves no known purpose and for which there is no discernible market.  No wonder it went down.  About a year ago, Sony remaindered all its stock at $99 a pop.  And, oh, had I known, I would have run right out and bought one!

Unfortunately, the only way to get one now is on eBay or maybe an antiques shop . . . and the prices are clawing their way back up toward what they cost when they were originally released.

Anyway, here are a couples of videos.  There are plenty more on YouTube.  I would've posted the one with four different color Rollies (or is it Rollys?) dancing in unison, but it began with a commercial, and I figured watching a commercial as the price for watching a commercial was a bit much.

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God, I love that!  Livin' La Vida Loca -- one step closer to a future in which our machines have have all our fun for us.

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David Clay Jenkins 1926-2010

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Doctor David Clay Jenkins died last Thursday, after a long illness brought on by a stroke.   He joined the English Department at William & Mary in 1956 as an instructor in modern poetry and advanced and critical writing. He was a scholar of Alexander Pope and Dylan Thomas, but his academic passion was reserved for Owen Geronwy, an early American poet and teacher at W&M.

That's what the official record will tell you.  It misses the man, however, the eccentric goateed semi-bohemian academic, the writer who placed two stories in the New Yorker, the founder of the William and Mary Review which published not only me but Joanna Russ, the teacher who was never my official advisor but whom I always turned to when I needed advice because the advice he gave me was always practical.

I first met Dr. Jenkins in my freshman year when I asked permission to join his creative writing class, despite the fact that it was only available to sophomores and above.  He recognized my passion and let me in, and for two years I submitted terrible stories and fragments for his and the class's advice.  His suggestions were always good and invariably infuriated me, and I would rewrite the story in question from top to bottom in order to correct his criticisms without taking his suggestions.

I learned a tremendous amount about writing from him.

As a very small example, when I was writing "The Edge of the World," I remembered a story he had written in which a mugged cripple falls to the sidewalk with his arms extended, and Dr. Jenkins's explanation that this was a crucifixion image (which was a new and startling idea to my teenaged self), and so found the end of my story.  As a larger principle, I remember his mentioning in conversation that he was working simultaneously on two essays -- one serious on Dylan Thomas and the other frivolous on an obscene limerick found in the margin of one of Alexander Pope's manuscripts, proving that it was not written by him.  Ever since, I have sought to balance the serious with the frivolous, the light with the timeless.

Once, he told me that he'd liked something I'd written but it had "aggravated the hell out of" him.  I knew what he meant and was elated.  I was still years from publication, but he'd seen the virtue in what I was trying to do.  Not many people could have.

When I failed to graduate on schedule and was estranged from my family and had no way of earning any money, Dr. Jenkins heard me out and then offered to hire me by the hour to plant tulip bulbs in his yard.  He pointed out that I could perform similar services in the neighborhood and in short order I was supporting myself.  Which gave me a platform from which to launch myself out into the world.

Many years later, I returned to William & Mary to thank him for all he'd done for me and meant to me.  We had dinner at the King's Arms Tavern and, overruling my objections, he paid.

Dr. Jenkins was instrumental in bringing Avram Davidson to W&M as a writer in residence and published one of his Dr. Esterhazy stories as a chapbook.  Rather than focus on such safe academic perennials as Pope and Thomas, he put his best efforts into the reclamation of the 17th century poet "Black Owen" Geronwy, the first serious intellectual (in a series that would later include Thomas Jefferson, James Branch Cabell, and almost but not quite me) who was violently ousted from the College of William and Mary.  He chose to devote his life to promoting a writer who could benefit from his work rather than those who could advance his career.

Along the way, he helped me.

God bless you, Dr. Jenkins.  Wherever you are, Black Owen owes you a drink.

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A Chance to Own a Bit of Fun Home

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I was wandering through Alison Bechdel's website (here) and took a look at the Art for Sale section (here) where I discovered that she was selling original art pages from her graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.

Here's what she has to say.  I couldn't post the picture she referred to, for reasons of copyright, so the picture above is of the book's cover:

I have lots of pages from Fun Home available for sale. The originals don’t look exactly like what you see in the book because I worked on separate layers and did the lettering in Photoshop. For each page, there’s a black and white drawing on 11 x 14 Bristol board, and a 9 x 12 sheet of watercolor paper with the ink wash shading on it. In this photo, I’ve also included a print of the way the finished page looks in the book, including the text.

If you buy a page, I’ll give you these three components. And if you like, I can also hand letter the drawing.

The prices for the pages vary based on how interesting they are. This one (page 137) is medium-interest, and I’m asking $375 for it. Click here for a little closer look at the individual pages.

The prices are not exactly cheap (and you'll have to fork out good money to have them matted and framed, too) -- unless you consider what you're getting.  Fun Home is a brilliant and trail-breaking work of graphic literature.  Getting to own a page of it is akin to owning a page of the original manuscript of Catcher in the Rye. 

So if you've got lots of money and a sweetheart of a literary bent . . . well, Christmas is coming.

And if you haven't read Fun Home yet, rush right out and nab yourself a copy.  I've been reading comic books and comix and graphic novels all my life, but before reading this I had no idea how good the form could be.  And, yes, I have read Maus.  

Which gives me the opportunity to tell my only Alison Bechdel story . . .

Years ago, I discovered it was possible to buy the original art for Aliscon Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For strip.  I wrote to her asking for the price for a particular strip and in between the query and the reply, my car's transmission died, sticking me with a very big repair bill.

For a time I thought I wouldn't be able to afford the artwork (but later some royalties came in, so I could and did buy it) and wrote to Ms Bechdel apologizing for having wasted her time.

She wrote back, beginning with the sentence, "Michael Swanwick isn't rich?"  Then she explained that this was a joke, that a great many people assumed that because she was famous she must necessarily be rich, and were terribly disillusioned to find out otherwise.

And I stood there, looking at those words and feeling a terrible sense of the inherent wrongness of this world.  Aloud, I said, "Alison Bechdel isn't rich?"

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Sir Terry's Armoreal Bearings

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You probably know this already, but what the heck.  Pictured above are the Armorial Bearings granted to Sir Terry Pratchett.

Quoting the College of Arms via Dave Langford's Ansible, "The Arms are blazoned:  Sable an ankh between four Roundels in saltire each issuing Argent.  The Crest is Upon a Helm with a Wreath Argent and Sable On Water Barry wavy Sable Argent and Sable an Owl affronty wings displayed and inverted Or supporting thereby two closed Books erect Gules."

The Ankh, obviously, is a reference to Ankh-Morpork, as is the owl.  A morepork, it turns out, is an Australian spotted owl.  Which neatly answers a question -- where that name came from -- that I'd always been too lazy to ask.  The Latin slogan translates very precisely as "Don't Fear the Reaper."

And isn't "affronty" the absolute best word you've learned all day?


So can I craft a tortuous connection between myself and Sir Terry using this coat of arms?

Indeed, I can.  The armorial bearings were issued by the College of Arms.  The Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary at the College of Arms was formerly Count Robin Ian Evelyn Stuart de la Lanne Mirrlees.  The great fantasy writer Hope Mirrlees was Count Robin's aunt.  I wrote a brief biography of Hope Mirrlees, for which I consulted Robin.  So I have a Kevin Bacon number of four with Sir Terry.

I also met him once, at a Hugo ceremony, but since that didn't result in any funny anecdotes to relate, I'm going to ignore that inconvenient fact.

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Coming Soon

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Still working on The Stone of Loneliness.  With luck, I'll be able to put it into the pie closet, to cool down for a few weeks, later today.  And while I was sleeping last night I came up with the final paragraph for The Dala Horse.  So I return to that story next.

Meanwhile, because I haven't been out and about and doing things, I don't have any news to report.  So I'll simply give you a short list of forthcoming stories, in my best guess as to the order in which they'll appear:

The Trains That Climb the Winter Tree (with Eileen Gunn) at Tor.Com

An Empty House with Many Doors in Asimov’s Science Fiction

The Man in Grey in Eclipse 4

Pushkin the American in Postscripts

Meanwhile, I'm researching the next novel.  So things are going pretty well here.  Even if Marianne does think I really ought to go to bed and try to sleep off this ague or elf-shot or whatever it is.  

Marianne's right, of course.  She almost always is.  But I think I'll finish the one story and then take a nap and get better this afternoon.  I really do want to see how it comes out.

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Sick Day

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There are a lot of positive aspects to being gainfully self-employed.  I have the freedom to sleep as late as I want, there are no meetings, and if I feel like gallavanting off to (say) Russia, I can.

There's only one downside.  No sick leave.  So when I come down with something, I'm not only sick, I'm losing money.  You have no idea how treacly self-pity can be until you find yourself in that situation.

But I'm not very sick.  Only a little.  I'll be up and about tomorrow.

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Thirty Years of Glory

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Today is my thirtieth wedding anniversary.  When Marianne and I told our friends we were getting married, the old married hands warned us, "Someday soon you're going to wake up thinking, 'Oh my God, what have I done?'" but assured us it was a natural thing and we'd soon get over it.

I'm still waiting.

Actually, no, I'm not.  After thirty years in which I have never once regretted marrying this woman, I'm pretty confident that day of doubt will never come.  For all the mistakes I've made, opportunities missed, and stupidities performed, this one thing I got right.  And as far as I'm concerned, one good decision pays for all.

Yesterday afternoon, Marianne and I celebrated thirty years of glory by throwing a party and inviting all our closest friends.  Then, just after the last guest left, the trick-or-treaters started to arrive.  For odd micro-demographic reasons, we never get very many kids on Halloween.  But yesterday we did.  So many that we had to raid the refrigerator for cans of soda and dip into our emergency backup stash of candy to treat them all.  But we had enough to be generous to each and every young costumed visitor.

So it was a particularly good day for me.

And I'll bet you're wondering about the pendant above . . .

As an anniversary present for Marianne, I commissioned a one-of-a-kind pendant from Janet Kofoed.  It's a representation of the Southern Cross (which is part of our private romantic mythology) with two rubies, a diamond, and a pair of sapphires representing the constellation's stars, as glimpsed through a silver twig.

Janet is a wonderful jeweler and for the quality of work she does, she doesn't charge enough.  I always tell her so, immediately after writing the check.  You can check out her work here.

Commissioning an original piece of jewelry is such an adult pleasure.  It makes you feel like you've gotten somewhere in your life.  Like you're a person of substance.

Which, of course, you are.

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