FYI

Just in case anyone stumbles over here...I've moved over to LiveJournal for the time being. You can read all about what I'm up to at http://lepusdomesticus.livejournal.com

Careful! Those Words Are Loaded!

Many things to talk about, and I may run out of time, but here goes:

First, I haven't written yet today, though I did get in my 1500 yesterday. I'm getting a little bogged down in the story at the moment actually. I still like it and I'm becoming dangerously attached to a certain one of my characters, but the darn thing just keeps getting longer! This is good, because it looks like my story is definitely fully novel-length (always an issue for me, the queen of the 80-page novella...), but it's also bad because I'm trying to write quickly, so I don't give up or get distracted, but as each chapter blossoms into four or five chapters, I get the sense that I will never finish. I will be writing this book forever. At least I like it.

A brief note about some changes to my profile: I added more interests to help (theoretically) people find this who might like it. I don't spend a whole lot of time online, except to write these entries basically, so it takes a while for me to find new blogs/journals and very, very rarely comment on other people's entries. I should do that more often, actually. I also added a link. I will discuss why I've chosen those links in the future, I swear, just as soon as...Well, you know. I have a dream. My dream is that someday I will live in a little house in the country. I will have a studio where I can paint and sculpt and not have to worry about moving stuff off the table when company comes over, or you know, we have to eat. And I will have lots more time to do all the things I like to do, like read books, and sleep. Yeah. ; )

( Little Rant on RDR/WB Trial )

In other news, I went to hear Mary Oliver read last night. I bought two of her books two weeks ago, but I didn't want to write anything until after I'd heard her speak, as authors sometimes give insight into their work that changes the whole way you look at and think about it. And I liked hearing Ms. Oliver read her poems. She unconsciously ADDED PUNCTUATION where it BELONGED in the poem, so it was much easier to understand what she meant when she read it than when I read it. I still don't much care for any of her poems (OK, to be fair, there are one or two I kind of liked, but not in the profoundly passionate way I love the works of certain other poets. Actually, I usually detest the modern poems I read in literary journals, etc. I like Keats and Robert Browning, and even Shakespeare. I am starting to think there's really no hope I'll ever get any of my poems published...).

Somehow, hearing the awed and thoughtful "Hmm"s of the audience as she ended each piece only made them seem triter and less important to me. Somehow, I didn't hear anything new in her words. I don't know if, forty years ago, her poetry was new and important, but not only were there no really profound thoughts for me, her own profound thoughts never really changed over that whole long career. Her recent poems express the exact same feelings her earlier ones do. I actually find it kind of sad to think a person could live such a long time and not learn anything she hadn't learned by the time she was 25. Sigh. Someone who went with me suggested that I couldn't appreciate the insights she got from the little nature of New England, because I've been jaded by the grandeur that surrounds me every day. It's hard to have a small thought in a place like this. ; ) I did find it interesting that she saw a dipper once in Colorado fifty years ago and decided then to be a poet. Something kind of like that happened to me. ; )

Indeed, I was inspired to write two poems last night. And, on the way home, I saw a black (!!) fox, and a great horned owl. The fox was a red fox, of course, (Vulpes vulpes), but it was black with white specks, not at all unlike the black form of the yellow-bellied marmot I've seen around here sometimes, or even the black form of the fox squirrel. But I didn't know they came in that color! It wasn't the "cross fox"; it was just black. And the owls were calling outside my window all evening as the horned moon set behind the mountains...It's hard not to write poetry around here, come to think of it!

And, I was very happy this morning because my two favorite bloggers had new entries...but I think I've really run out of time, and space (I've run out of space-time!! Never mind...), to write about them. And I wanted so much to mention toilets in Australia...Yes, well, I'll talk about all these things eventually, I'm sure. Let me just add that everyone should have an Italian cousin with whom they can discuss art and tax shelters, and wasn't I going to write about the art museum? And didn't I say I'd talk about my future, as dictated by very bad fast food? And it's snowing again...actually mixed rain and snow. Well, there's always tomorrow. ; ) And now the sun has come out again. And a bunch of Cassin's finches (the first I've seen this spring!) are bathing in a puddle in the driveway. And we finally got the bat box hung this morning...

-Susie

The Bear Necessities of Life Will Come to You!

Bear 399 is the most photographed grizzly bear in Grand Teton National Park. And, finally, today, after three long years, I still did not take her picture. Some people near me did, though. : ) This is a very interesting bear for two reasons: one, she does not mind people too much (not necessarily a good thing, mind you! And she has the ear tags to prove it.), and two, she has successfully brought up three big healthy-looking cubs mostly in sight of the road. The cubs are entering their third year now, though they still are noticeably smaller than their mother. We watched them rest and play and fish (and swim when they fell through the thin ice!), and even, incredibly, saw 399 nurse her nearly full-grown cubs! I was amazed to see that--even after two winters with their mom, the cubs still get some comfort, and probably less nourishment, from their mother's milk. Of course it is wonderful to watch a mother bear nurse cubs (even three enormous ones as these), as they are a bit like humans in the way they behave. The mother sits up or rolls onto her back and pulls the cubs toward her with her forepaws and snoozes and nuzzles their heads. Indeed, it is amazing to see such a massive, powerful animal touch her babies so gently with paws ending in four inch claws! She also paused to play with the cubs a few times, even doing several somersaults in the snow.

All in all, it was a wonderful wildlife day--two pairs of common loons, five red-breasted mergansers (fascinating to see the young males, still mostly in female-like plumage, but with perfectly round green spectacles and goatees, and very messy "hair"), a young male common goldeneye, a Northern goshawk (my first positive ID of an adult!), pelicans, swans, ducks of all kinds, my first Northern rough-winged swallows of the year, and my first barn swallow of hte year, Audubon's and Myrtle warblers (both technically yellow-rumped warblers, but only the former breeds here), dueling sapsuckers (hee hee--by the way, kind of dirty joke: if a female is a hen sapsucker, what do you call a male?), bald eagles on a nest and an osprey dive-bombing them, turkey condors (I'll explain that someday I'm sure..."vultures" for those of you who are familiar with them), including one on an elk carcass (amazingly, the first time I've seen a "vulture" on a carcass! Though, he/she couldn't get anything out of it--I may explain that another day too...), muskrats (I do love muskrats...), ground-squirrels (I have a huge soft spot in my heart for squirrels...), and, the strangest thing I'd ever seen in just about my whole life: eleven beavers sitting in a huddle on the ice, with green leaves and twigs around them, snoozing against and on top of each other in broad daylight, completely exposed. I'm sorry they were too far away to get a picture of, though it was absolutely amazing. In one fell swoop it was more beavers than I'd ever seen in my life, and just sitting there! Apparently the bears had broken into their lodge and some coyotes had killed one or two. I guess they felt safer in the frigid air than in their breached fortress! They looked all right, though, just a little chilly and sleepy. They will rebuild when the ice melts, I'm sure. (Yes, amazingly, it's May, almost the second week of May, and the river is flowing, of course, but the lakes and oxbows are still frozen (though not solid), and there is still a large amount of snow on the ground. It snowed in the mountains today, but rained down here for the first time this year!) A picture of the snow (taken near String Lake) next to a scowling person for scale. (That's my dad, actually. No idea why he looks so annoyed!)

But the really exciting thing that happened was Tom Mangelsen took a picture with my camera!

Um...yeah. Well, on this scale, you see he does have an eye for framing and balancing light and dark. Of course the horizon is not straight and those four blurry brown dots on the snow are the bears. I guess even great photographers sometimes take terrible pictures. OR maybe it's the camera... ; D

Anyway, one of the reasons I love living here is you do run into people like Tom (and have nice long chats with them sometimes too). (Tangent: You should see the picture my dad took of Henry Holdsworth at the Swan Roundup last year...Oh yes...The Swan Roundup, another Wyoming kind of thing. I'll write about that probably after this year's happens in June. Yeah...taking candid pictures of professional photographers with stunningly beautiful young females in their laps is another perk of living here!) ANYWAY...Tom took a bunch of pictures of us (including one with him, although of course that was taken by his "assistant slash girlfriend" (Tom's words), who's also named Susie.). I don't think they'll be available for purchase at Images of Nature. At least I hope not! Today was also laundry day for me and I hadn't taken a shower...Of course Tom himself was pretty dishevelled, as they've been following 399 around for a week now. Tom is a great conservationist as well as artist and I wanted to share a few things he said (though I'm afraid I'm getting pretty tired. It's 10 already!).

I really appreciated his comment about wildlife in general. He said, "you can't hate wolves and love moose and elk. You can't pick some animals and call them 'good' and label the rest 'bad.' You have to take Nature in its entirety," because of course, that's what it is. There is no good and bad. Things, Life, People even, only ARE. (I was thinking about that yesterday too...How even actions you think are good will hurt somebody. How nothing exists in a vacuum; how nothing can thrive without something else declining. But that's for another day.) Tom also shared his version of the story behind "High Noon On the Oxbow Bend" which was even more amazing than the story I'd heard at the gallery. It's his story to share, though he thought I should write a book about a similar story my folks witnessed. It's a thought... : ) Anyway, the point of the story, I guess, is that great photographs, like so many other things, involve staying around when everyone else has given up and an extraordinary amount of luck. And I find that inspiring. I also find it inspiring to know that I'm not alone in the world in caring about animals and Nature and wilderness. And a lot of those people live here.

--Susie

P.S. No, I didn't write today! At least I did a lot yesterday, and I'll get some done tomorrow. But you know...it was Wednesday. : )

My brain is running on empty...

Did you know that Amazon only lets you post in their forums (fori?) if you're a customer? Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but if you have something to add and don't want to use, say your mother's account to post because it's the only one you know, not having one yourself...not that I would have tried such a thing...Did I say my mother? See, I have this friend...Really, totally, completely separate person from myself, in fact friend is a strong word--I hardly know myself, um, I mean, her... ANYWAY...It's just if you actually know some information that would help the other customers, doesn't it seem wrong to restrict you? Ah heck, maybe I should do it anyway...or not...Maybe I can use someone else's identity...I mean, um...I take the Fifth...

So, I actually did 2,436 words today! The weird thing about writing is that you are sitting at the computer the whole time, not doing any physical work really, yet you come away from it utterly exhausted. I am pretty tired of writing now, actually, and I don't know what to post about, but I didn't want to miss another day. : ) The weather has been changable today, but it's still warmish. It's starting to seem like spring. The daffodils are all exposed now and have buds, but no flowers. Weird. I'm beginning to think I'll have roses by the time they bloom! (Not really...but choke-cherries, perhaps...)

I was thinking a bit about my friends from high school since I found two online yesterday. Of the four of us girls who ate lunch together every day, two are graduate students working toward Big, Important Things, one is contemplating getting a graduate degree, and the fourth dropped out of college during Sophomore year. Three guesses which one I am, and whether or not my life is significantly worse than theirs because of it. I don't even know. I feel pretty happy, though the forum on Amazon I was reading was the Fantasy one and the writer (just yesterday! I really wish I could've replied!) was saying how hard it is to find fantasy books with a kind-of New Age kind of spin. Another poster mentioned the difficulty in getting such things published, as I know first hand. Not that I would describe my work as "New Age," though I've certainly been influenced by the movement. But seriously, who publishes environmentalist, feminist, pagan literature?? : ) All of the main characters in my current project are male--do you think that will make a difference? The women are not wall-flowers either, of course, I'm writing it after all! But this project has the added drawback of being particularly dark and having the sensibility of a Greek tragedy--the main character basically destroys his own life through the mis-use of magic, and his family and world suffer the consequences for generations. OK, it's a saga...it's looking a bit like Gabriel Garcia Marquez actually (One Hundred Years of Solitude, I mean...not that it'll merit a Nobel Prize...though that might be nice...). Oh dear. I should probably stop now.

--Susie

Ranting and Raving...and Resting

First of all, I guess I should apologize (to myself of course; nobody reads this. Except my fangirl Zibby. Yea for fangirls.) for not posting yesterday. I was around, but I was tired and I just didn't post. I know, I know. Anyway, some good news--I'm about a third of the way (or maybe less, as it keeps getting longer and longer) through my Current Project and have given the first six chapters to my first readers, namely my mom (who has always been the first to read all my writing since time immemorial) and, again, Zibby, my loyal fangirl. : ) In the last two days I wrote a total of only 2,798 words, most of them today. Today was a good day, writing-wise, and I would like to do a little bit more, but knowing me, I won't. The weather was gorgeous: sixties I expect--I wore a t-shirt all day and was very warm on my walk. The violet-green swallows are everywhere all of a sudden and flickers are displaying (and dying, unfortunately) outside (and on) my windows. I can see the wood pile on the North side of the house for the first time since January! It has collapsed under the weight of the snow.

A couple of things...first, my favorite blogger on Blogger has a nice post today on a topic I have wondered about ever since I first read Harry Potter. I also had fun reading about her childhood pronunciation of a certain Belgian detective's name, as I had literally just been talking about the same thing with my brother (and also my mom). Which of course reminds of a movie quote (so many things do...): "I'm a Belgie, not a Frenchie!" (From Murder By Death) It really made me think about the way I spell unusual words, actually. I agree with Lynneguist on yeah and yea (though Zibby, for example, does it differently), though eh has always been a source of confusion for me. I've only seen "eh" as in "how's it going, eh?" spelled, obviously, e-h. But how does one spell that sound that goes along with a shrug? I've seen "meh" which would rhyme with that word, and not sound like May. Hmmm...So, picture a recent invalid answering the question "how do you feel?" Eh, right? It's not uh, exactly, and certainly doesn't rhyme with day. It's a single-syllable equivalent of "come si, come ca" (except ca would be spelled correctly in an ideal world...), or even "it comes and goes," or "some days are diamonds, some days are stones." : ) Who knows?

And now, a little rant. So, I entered Amazon.com's "Beedle the Bard Ballad Writing Contest." I am a poet. I know what a ballad is, so I thought it an exceedingly stupid name for the contest whose rules (OK, actually it was in the FAQ) explicitly stated that the entries did NOT have to be poems, but simply had to be in English and less that 100 words long. I know. I checked, because I was concerned, because, obviously, I wanted to win, darn it. So, I was rather surprised when almost all of the semi-finalists consisted of unmetered doggeral rhymed couplets. Yeah. Now, I don't mean to sound like a bad loser. I just mean that, in the words of another commenter, I feel "misled." I really enjoyed writing my entry, however, and I still would love to share it with the world, simply because I take joy and pride in my work. Really. As for the entries, I voted for the ones I liked, like a good sport, and I wish them both the best of luck. In the adult category, I thought only Laura H.'s entry was passable at all, and I rather liked it. The teen group was much better by far. I enjoyed several, but I chose Rhiannon of Australia's because it was sweet, it read very well, and it made me smile. So, good luck, ladies! I hope one of you gets to read this one-of-a-kind book! Actually, I'm not jealous about not getting to see the book (seriously!). I knew my chances there were miniscule. I had, however, started fantasizing about all the books I'd buy with that second prize! : D

So, here's what I wrote, and some background, through a link, because my posts are too long anyway...

( What song do wizards use to celebrate birthdays? )

So much more to say, as usual and so little time to say it. Anyway...back for more tomorrow I expect! Good night!

--Susie

P.S. I also found the livejournals of two old friends, who will either be happy I finally have a web presence so they can catch up with what I'm doing, or they will run away screaming and changing their online personae because I'm a crazy stalker... ; )

It's May! It's May! The...Busy...Month of May!

I know my last post was actualy on May 1st, but I didn't realize it at the time. Well, I got enough sleep last night for the first time in a week, though I also took another nap yesterday afternoon. It's almost becoming a habit. Anyway, many things to talk about, as usual, and very little time. I'm feeling like the White Rabbit lately, instead of my usual mad March hare. "Oh dear, oh dear! I shall be too late!" 1,016 words today. Unfortunately, they were for a different project than the one I'm nominally working on! I think I'll get back to that this evening, however. It was a beautiful warm spring day. The violet-green swallows are back around the house after two days of snow. They should be nesting soon.

So, yesterday I spent the whole day wading in a creek counting cutthroat trout redds. There's a crossword puzzle word for you, along with lek and furcula. A redd is basically a trout nest--a depression in the rocks on the bottom of the stream wherein she lays her eggs. (Actually, the eggs are distributed in the "tail spill," a lump of rocks just behind the depression.) It was actually easier than it sounds. The day was overcast and chilly, but the water was crystal clear. There aren't really any other fish in our creeks besides the trout and not much disturbs the bottom. The redds are easy enough to find because the fish carefully clear away all the algae and sediment from the rocks, so the first thing you notice is a patch of clean grey and white rocks amidst the surrounding dirty brown. Glimpsed many fine birds, though I purposefully left my binoculars in the car (gasp! I know. How could I?), because I knew if I had them, I'd spend the day looking at birds and not in the water! Still--Cooper's hawk, swallows, cinnamon teals, red-winged blackbirds, snipes, and a Canada goose on her nest, watching us warily as we walked around her with her neck stretched out and down and her beak slightly open, silent and very still. And we counted about 60 redds. So, it was a fun, though tiring day.

But it wasn't over yet! After a shower and a brief nap, which was seemingly involuntary (I don't even remember lying down!), we went out to hear the author Joanne Harris (Chocolat, among many others). She was a very good speaker--funny and interesting. She seemed very tired by the end of the evening (and a number of quite stupid questions from some members of the audience), but was friendly and engaging. She said a few things that particularly interested me, the first was that she seems to work a bit like I do--no fixed schedule, though she writes whenever she can, and she also has several projects going at once. I particularly loved her theory of inspiration. Apparently, goblins come out at night and give you the ideas while you're sleeping. As she says, "It must be true. No one's ever disproven it!" She also described her birthplace as "twelve miles from Wuthering Heights," that is, near Leeds, the largest city in Yorkshire.*

She had a few things to say about "our Jo" as well. She said she'd met J.K. Rowling "several" times, and offered the following about Harry Potter: first, that it was wonderful for getting boys to read (much agreement from the audience), and second, that it was so popular for two reasons: (Hmmm...my sentence construction is starting to look a bit like Deathly Hallows) that is was simply a good story and not "a book about issues" (her example of an "issue" was a crackhouse in Glasgow), and also that "it doesn't take people too far out of their comfort zone." I agree wholeheartedly with the first point (although HP raises a number a issues, it doesn't really resolve them; they are mostly just set-dressing, unfortunately), and partly with the second. Yes, Harry Potter relies heavily on familiar fairy tale and (later) Biblical themes and conventions, but it also challenges what a children's book is and can be about, and pushes a little bit into the idea of Death not being Evil, which I appreciate a lot, certainly.

Ms. Harris was mostly talking about the sequel to Chocolat, The Girl With No Shadow. I haven't started it yet (as I'm working on a few other things currently that I'd like to finish first!), but it sounds fun, and perhaps better than the first one, which I read quickly, but joined my very short list of "books whose movies I liked better" along with The Black Stallion and, amazingly enough, Sense and Sensibility (the 1995 version), even though they changed a number of things from the novels.

She also told us a bit about her experience teaching at Leeds Grammar School (she didn't say which years exactly), where she was the only female permanent member of staff at the historically (and then) all-boys school. She also has a book either about or inspired by those same years...Actually, all in all, although I was not hugely fond of Chocolat, after hearing her speak, I am very interested in reading more of her work. Several audience members praised Five Quarters of the Orange as some of the best writing they'd ever read. That is enough to tempt me, certainly! : )

This morning I got a chance to rest a little. (In fact I made waffles while my favorite neighbor Ethel M. (more about her another day!) ruminated in the yard outside the kitchen window...) Then, this afternoon I went to see a play by a local playwright, Bob Berky, called The Fourth Nail. I heartily do not recommend it. On the one hand, I was happy to support the local theater and a writer, and the actors were all good (including Mr. Berky himself), but, on the other hand, the play was terrible. I was surprised, as Alexandra Fuller (herself a wonderful writer!) gave it a rave review in the weekly paper...(Yes, yes, I know. I live in a tiny town. We have a weekly paper. I have to drive ten miles to the Post Office on Wednesdays to get it. And yet, this tiny Wyoming town is filled to the trout gills with writers and artists and culture. Ask me about our art museum...Another post...) I guess I'll never trust "Bo's" opinion again... ; D

In the first minute or so, my thought was (I'm not sure what exactly this says about me, actually...) "I've written better plays than this!" My second thought was about the historical inaccuracies. You see, the play was not really about the Crusades (it was set in 1099), but nor was it a fully grown satire of our own time (as some reviewers had said). No, in the end it wasn't really about anything. It was a set of mostly unrealized ideas hinting at profundity, but never really coalescing or imparting any truth or wisdom. The play had a lot of promise: it featured an alchemist, a wise fool, a blind king, and two inept knightly con-men, and the first act had some humor and was interesting enough (except for the scenes featuring the alchemist and fool together), but the second half was flat, dull, and utterly meaningless, with an entirely unsatisfying ending, that the author clearly thought was strong. I kept thinking that such a premise in other hands would have been wonderful. I will also add that it pains me to pan something, because I love the theater and acting and writing, and I too have written many things, including a few that weren't nearly as wonderful as I thought they were at the time. But I think I was not alone. The applause at the end (by the audience of 15 for the Saturday matinee--very sad in and of itself, as I think it's really special that we have theater in this little town, in this big empty state mostly filled with ignorance and superstition) could only be described as polite.

As usual, I would love to stay and say more, but time is short, and I need to write a scene introducing the queen...Actually, she's just the mother of the future king, but I'm not going to give it away. I have five days worth of writing I missed and will never make up, though tomorrow is an empty day otherwise, and I plan to work through most of it. So, here's hoping I do!

-Susie

*Oddly enough, we were discussing the use of miles versus kilometers and Imperial versus metric measures while counting redds. My understanding is that, colloquially, some English people still use miles to measure distance. Of course, Ms. Harris has a French mother, and likely tailors her talks some for an American audience. Anyone have any insight on that?

I also could say many things about both Wuthering Heights and Yorkshire, but I will refrain for now. Interestingly, Ms. Harris spoke French at home, despite living in Yorkshire, and learned English in school, at age seven. She also dropped her Yorkshire accent somewhere along the way and now speaks with a very clear English accent, such as one often hears in the movies. Rather a pity, really. ; )

Also, trivia and a question...Matt Lewis (Neville in the Potter films) is from Leeds. Can anyone tell me what the deal is with the golden owls? (In Leeds. I know about the owls in Harry Potter!) : )

A Miscellany

It's been a long time since I've posted! I got along just fine without blogging for years, and now I seem a little addicted...I have so much I want to talk about, but most of it will have to wait. I'll try not to let this get too long. First, some corrections: I've lived here for more than three years now; I'm entering my fourth year in this valley. I swear, I was always good at math! Since I left school, though, the years really seem to just run together. It's a little embarrassing. I still haven't gotten used to my new age. I'll blame that. ; D

So, this week's crossword (see this post for an explanation of why I do the Sunday New York Times Crossword on Wednesdays). Well, the whole thing was lost on me. I have always been a terrible speller (I'm sure it's because I don't read enough). I tried rewriting all the words several ways, and I couldn't even always tell what was the correct way to spell the word. I knew that "supercede" was wrong because I'd just used it in a blog post! So I guess doing this is useful after all, and I still often think the puzzle is exceedingly stupid. This one was very quick, though.

I spent the last four (was it only four?) days out of town and busy with houseguests and then slowly recovering. I've been trying to rearrange my schedule so I can get everything done I want to do each day in a timely manner. So far it has not been working, though this week should be much less busy than last week. I have not written today yet (though I absolutely will, darn it! It's very bad of me, I know...), and yesterday I was so tired and uninspired I only wrote 600 words, and those were not even directly related to my Current Project. I'm a bit superstitious about my work. I told our friends a little about the story, and they thought it sounded very intriguing and wanted to hear more...and I haven't written a word since I told them about it. Gaah! I will force myself back into writing this evening though (it's already after 3!), and next week should be more normal. (Ha! As if my life is ever normal!)

On a related note (what I've been up to), I got up at 4:45 a.m. on Saturday to go to the sage grouse lek. It had snowed several inches overnight making for a pleasant walk out into the sage (no roots to trip over--the snow was still unbelievably, unusually deep), but the temperature was around 9 degrees F and only about fifteen male grouse were out dancing. One female flew in late (nearly 7:00 a.m.), but didn't stay long. Then we say two females by the side of the road near the airport. It was a great wildlife day in all, with 25 moose, many deer, some elk and bison, as well as a snipe and a Northern shrike and many ducks, including what I thought might be a female red-breasted merganser. In the afternoon I napped for more than two hours (a very rare occurance for me--I've almost never been able to nap since I was three years old), then I had to rush to make some bread (a really delicious white yeast bread made with orange juice and zest and eaten with a mixture of butter and orange marmalade) before heading out to dinner. I had to finish the bread after dinner, actually (I let it go through its final rise in the refrigerator while we were out, which worked beautifully), then got up early again (7:00 a.m. this time) because:

The West entrance to Yellowstone National Park (at West Yellowstone, Montana) opened last week, I believe, but our convenient South entrance isn't scheduled to open until May 9 (assuming all the snow is gone!). So, we drove over Teton Pass into Idaho and up to West Yellowstone. On the way, we saw a pair of white-faced ibises (yea!), many snipes, yellow-headed blackbirds and more and arrived at the Park for lunch. We spent one night in Gardiner, MT and two half-days driving along the Northern tier road in the Madison, Gardner (not misspelled), Yellowstone, and Lamar River valleys. We saw only one grizzly bear on the first afternoon (eating an elk carcass). She had a radio collar and two ear tags, often a sign of past run-ins with human beings, unfortunately. We saw several coyotes, scattered elk, but depressingly few bison (don't get me started on that again. Sigh.), no wolves and no black bears. There was still a huge amount of snow in the Lamar Valley. Two years ago at this time, it was filled with animals, including a number of pronghorns. I was actually disappointed by the trip on the whole, animal-wise, though we saw some wonderful things, including the bear, which was the closest I've ever been to a grizzly in the Park.

Exciting birds included red-breasted mergansers in the Madison River. Actually, that's about it. We saw one distant immature golden eagle, some bald eagles singing and a willet at Blacktail Ponds, buffleheads (a sure sign of spring perhaps?), two species of goldeneyes (common and Barrow's), a pair of blue-winged teals, ospreys...The Uinta ground-squirrels are also awake at last and chirruping, and we saw a white-tailed deer on the banks of the Yellowstone River. I'd never seen one in the Park before, though they've been around for decades. Also numerous baby bison, which I'll talk about another day--two sad and long stories about that, actually.

Yesterday was altogether more satisfying bird-wise (and that's an understatement!). I've heard the kingfishers on our local backyard pond, but haven't seen them yet, the wood ducks are back, and on our pond have been four pelicans, a loon (!), a horned grebe (! And a first for me), a lone male canvasback, a pair or three individual red-breasted mergansers (I guess I didn't have to drive so far to see them after all...). Someone else has seen other grebes and cormorants, but I haven't yet. The loon was gorgeous. They are some of my very favorite birds and rarely seen out here, though I did worry that this one might be lonely all by herself. Maybe she (he?) has a mate waiting somewhere. I just love their tortoiseshell patterned black and white backs and their saber-like bills and their pearl necklaces. : )

Also, cinnamon teals are back on Flat Creek, and many green-winged teals and gadwalls. No blue-winged teals down here yet for me, but I did see a lone (no kidding!) solitary sandpiper in the mud by the side of the highway. They are common migrants or vagrants I believe. I've seen them a few times in the region only, and my birdbook is marked with two exclamation points next to the picture (I have a very elaborate series of symbols I use to mark species I've seen in my birdbook...Very cryptic...) ; ) and it was familiar enough to recognize almost immediately upon viewing it, without looking it up. (I checked the book later, of course, but they're pretty unmistakeable in the region)

Whew! And then, yesterday I listened to PotterCast, as I do every week and Melissa especially, but also John and Sue, brought up something that I've been thinking about a lot. It relates to my last post, and gets at something I've been trying to say. I know my posts are long and thoughtful and sometimes meloncholy, but I'm actually doing it on purpose. Part of my deciding to talk about the things I talk about has to do with my disgust for the current short attention spans of modern humans these days. My loathing of Newsweek (see the first link on this post) is directly related to this, and I never read popular magazines, if such they can be called. What can a thoughtful, intelligent, discerning adult read these days? Good luck trying to get a balanced and accurate account of the news today! I stopped watching the "news" on TV when I was a child, or perhaps young teen because I was already disgusted by it. And don't get me started on purveyors (That took a while to find! Dictionaries are only useful when you know the first four or five letters of a word for sure...) of so-called popular science. The culture of "infotainment" is pervasive and (I believe) destructive. I have seen first hand how influenced subconsciously I am by what I read, so reading things that are simply wrong, misinformed, or incomplete can indeed have a detrimental effect on one's understanding of a situation and the world in general.

So, that is why I write long, thoughtful posts on varied subjects. I have wide interests already, but everything is more interesting when it can be studied in depth. Not watching television and spending as much time as I can observing nature has lengthened my attention span considerably. I can sit and watch a flock of juncos for an hour, and in so doing, learn so much about the world I live in, and through that understanding, come to better understand myself. And shouldn't that be the goal? (I've also learned that linking between your posts can increase visitors to your blog, journal, or website. Can you tell?) : )

So much more to talk about: art, language, fortune cookies...but they will just all have to wait for another day. It's good to be home and blogging again!

-Susie

Sighs of Spring

It is currently snowing. A lot. We have about two inches now at 7:40 p.m. and it shows no sign of letting up any time soon. It is starting to stick to the road and has already thoroughly covered all the ground that was bare two days ago. Two years ago (three Aprils) at this time, we had heavy rains for about a month and incredible flowers by the end of May. Last year the daffodils were already finishing, the ground was completely bare and the mule deer fawn (picture) was still very fuzzy as he competed with rosy-finches for birdseed in some friends' yard. Who knows what this weather will bring. Three years ago (four Aprils) there were snow flurries on Memorial Day. As I enter my third full year living here, I feel like I really don't know this place at all, even though I know it very well. I was thinking this morning about connectedness with nature. Human beings have a tendency to take familiar things with them when they travel, including outmoded attitudes toward living. Resources that seemed inexhaustible in one place are treated as such in the next until they are, indeed, exhausted. Animals that have been feared and hated continue to be so, even in the very last place on Earth they still exist. I came here seeking wilderness, beauty and contentment in nature. Naively, probably, I thought this place could be a place where I could be perfectly happy. And I did find all those things I was looking for, and a little less than I'd hoped for. But I've also seen deeper prejudices and ignorance and pure idiocy than I expected. I don't want to get into this now, but I will just say that dogs and cats and humans may exist happily anywhere, while wolves and bison and grizzly bears literally have no place else to be and no room left to roam.

Only 1200 and some words today, but I did come up with some names for my characters that needed names and I think I've finally established what my story is about, that is to say its theme, its moral even. And I like it. And I cleaned out my desk finally, because an organized workspace is helpful to an organized mind. And just as fresh snow leaves room for fresh tracks (marten this morning), it also gives room to fresh thoughts. So, despite my nagging self-doubt and my sadness over the continuing loss of wild things and wild places, I am content this evening, in my work and in myself. Darn it! Snow makes me philosophical, too. And the snow is slowing down now and the sky is looking a little bluer...Hmm...maybe it's Spring after all...

The Birds of Spring

So, I'm finally going to talk about wildlife. Huzzah! But first, my word count so far today is 2,099. It was "housekeeping" kind of writing I'm afraid, though--I finally figured out where the novel is going and made an outline with detailed summaries of what each chapter will contain. I'm trying to convince myself that it counts as work, as it's an important part of the writing process. I may go back and fill in the rest of a chapter or two later. This should help the writing go faster, however, which must be a good thing, right?

Technically it is spring here. Last night it snowed and it's cold and wintry today, but the birds are coming back in ever larger numbers. During the winter, we have mostly black, white, and black and white birds on the hill here: ravens, magpies, Clark's nutcrackers, trumpeter swans, and both mountain and black-capped chickadees, as well as the occasional bald eagle or hairy--or, less often, downy--woodpecker. But yesterday a new color was added! Yes. We have brown birds now, too! : )

Two days ago, some guys were doing something on the house next door (still three tenths of a mile away). When I went for my walk I head them hammering something. I also heard the calls of a distressed woodpecker, answering their hammering with his territorial call. Yesterday I saw two male red-naped sapsuckers (one of which was likely the same aforementioned bird) fighting hotly over a prime nesting area. These are mostly black and white birds too, but compared to all the bare trees and snow I've seen for the last five months, they were a positive rainbow of beautiful tones--the bright red of their heads and throats and the soft creamy-yellow of their bellies. Their mates should be close behind them somewhere, arriving soon to tap into the bushes and trees around the yard and get ready to nest. The dark-eyed juncos are also starting to sing--a nondescript kind of trill.

When I finally had some time to myself yesterday, but was, as yet, unable to get on the computer and work on my Current Project, I sat in a chair and looked out the window, where I was immediately distracted by a flock of juncos pecking at the old dry grass seeds that the melting of the snow has revealed. I would describe myself as an avid birder, but, although I keep a "life list," I am not one of those birders who is obsessed with seeing only the newest species. I enjoy observing even the common and drab birds that I know best, so I can get to know them better. House sparrows, for example, have a highly complex social structure that even a casual observer can see something of, if she just takes a few minutes to watch.

Juncos spend a lot of their time on the ground, where they hop around foraging and scratching the dirt (like most buntings AKA emberizids AKA "sparrows" here in North America) with both feet at once. Being small and brownish-grey and long-tailed and having their white bellies hidden when they're on the ground, they look a lot like mice moving around. The dark-eyed junco has an almost endless array of plumage variation, so much so that it was once divided into four or five separate species. The variety that breeds here is called the pink-sided junco, though it is pretty close to the Oregon junco, which also passes through here in the spring and fall (and some of them winter here as well) to and from its breeding grounds in British Columbia, Idaho, Washington, and, of course, Oregon.

Juncos are friendly and fearless and quite common. Most varieties winter in the U.S. and they can be seen in every state and most of Canada for at least part of the year. This particular flock consisted of about thirty pink-sided. Theoretically, one can tell male and female juncos apart by plumage. Theoretically. Among pink-sideds, the males have slightly darker and greyer heads with a cleaner break between the grey nape and the brown back. And at close range (some hopped right under the window), I could indeed see that some were browner. Ahem. Yes, I couldn't swear that those were all female, though. Anyway, they fed for a very long time, occasionally and seeminly for no reason at all, viciously fighting with each other--lifting their wings as they faced off over a seed, or screeching and spatting with claws and beaks for a few seconds. Then they would go back to pecking as though nothing had happened. I think it would be wrong to see such behavior and conclude that birds have short memories or (heaven forbid!) that they are stupid. I think, in fact, having watched them before at less lean times of the year, that they are just really hungry. And it's not hard to see why with it the end of April and six to eight inches still on the ground in most places.

I wouldn't have stayed with the juncos as long as I did, I suppose, except there were two other birds with them. One was readily identifyable as a white-crowned sparrow, which is significantly larger than a junco and one of the most visible and distinctive sparrows we have. I was still surprised to see it, not only with a flock of juncos, but on our hill, as I usually associate white-crowned sparrows with water--I see them along ponds and streams in willows or cottonwoods. And there was another, very small brown bird there too. It was fifteen minutes before I was brave enough to run for my binoculars, convinced the whole flock would be gone by the time I returned. They were very hungry, however, and outside my window was some of the only snow-free ground in quite a distance, so they were all still there. The LBB turned out to be a Brewer's sparrow, which surprised me much more than the white-crowned, as I've only ever seen Brewer's sparrows in the sage brush and other open country (though I'm notoriously bad at identifying sparrows, preferring large charismatic birds like ostriches, etc.).

Oddly, the adult Brewer's sparrow is a distinctive and easily identifyable sparrow, not because of the markings it has, but because of the markings it doesn't have. It is a plain grey-brown bird, mostly unmarked except for faint stripes on their heads and back, which are universal to all buntings ("sparrows"--the naming thing is fascinating and deserves a post of its own later). This one had a clear white semi-circle under its eye and a very clean grey collar around the sides of its neck. According to The Sibley Guide to Birds, this means it's of the population that breeds in the Yukon and part of Alaska. I haven't really studied sparrows, (indeed, I'll admit right here I often dismiss them all as "little brown birds" and therefore unidentifiable), so it would be interesting to know more about this regional variation and what kind breed around here. As for relative size of this bird to the juncos--it was clearly smaller, but it was also all fluffed out (which brings up the wonder of feathers--they are not fixed you see, and a bird's appearance can change enormously just by how it's holding its feathers), perhaps to make it look bigger to all the louder and larger birds around it.

This post is already longer than I intended, so I'll just conclude by saying I watched with great interest the birds' reaction to various raptors that flew over head including (twice) a pair of red tailed hawks I'll definitely mention again, a Cooper's hawk and a small falcon (probably a kestrel, though I wasn't positive). Apparently, the white-crowned sparrow, at least, proved its worth to the flock, as its greater height seems to have allowed it to spot the Cooper's hawk first, and the flock's attentiveness seems to have discouraged the predator. They also ignored the red taileds very quickly after spotting them, as they posed no threat. And I ended the day by seeing an osprey, which, although it is black and white, is most definitely a bird of the Summer.

And this morning I woke up to fresh snow and the first Swainson's thrush of the year hopping along my walk looking for worms, as well as a little frozen corpse of a junco who probably flew into the window and died. So, it's bittersweet living so close to nature. I can enjoy watching the birds and being close to them and the warmth escaping from the house helps melt the snow around the walkway, but my human presence can be destructive too.

-Susie

We Are Not Amused

I wanted to write about birds today, but other things got in the way. First things first: the weather is cloudy and the evening sky has that lovely lavender-bluish tint it gets around here. There was some wind earlier and I hate to say, I stayed inside the whole time, which is not (happily) to say that I didn't see any wildlife. Gosh I love living here! Anyway, I was very busy all day, as I often am on Wednesdays and didn't have a chance to sit down and write until six! As I often do in such a situation, I said to myself, "Oh it's so late, I can't possibly work now! I don't want to!" but then I thought of what I'd say here, and the shame if I missed a day blogging/journaling because I didn't have a respectable wordcount. And I think a lot of what I wrote today was rather crappy, but I resisted the urge to edit and just forced myself to pound out the story. And the result? 1,708 words! I guess discipline can be taught!

Now, a few rants have gotten in my way this evening, I'm afraid. Firstly, the New York Times Sunday Crossword. Humpf. (Perhaps now would be a good time to explain that we get the NYT Sunday puzzle on Wednesday. After driving 10 miles to the post office. Yeah. Rural Wyoming. What can I say?) The puzzle was pretty easy, though some clues left me wondering about the mental health of the author, and I thought it was nice that they had all the planets in order. Well, almost all...All eight planets... To me, though, Pluto will always be a planet. So there! : )
Onto other rants. So, normally, I wouldn't admit to reading Newsweek, but two things stood out that I had to share (I'm sorry!). The first was a little "articlet" in the back about the Rowling/WB/RDR suit. Besides getting some facts wrong (My understanding is that the author of the Lexicon, Steve Vander Ark is not a defendant, but was a witness, also JK Rowling is co-plaintif with Warner Brothers.), and being unnecessarily inflamatory--and I'm taking the bait, the irony is not lost on me--("Harry Potter Author Makes Fan Cry"), it also brings up one of The Things I Hate Most In The Entire World which is "the Evil Rich Argument." Grr! Without incriminating myself (Why yes, I am a millionaire. How else do you think I can afford to write poetry?), I'd just like to say, rich people are not inherently bad. You may quote me on this. ; D
The fact is that fame has not made Jo greedy. In fact, people who try to paint this suit as about money are willfully ignorant, destructive and/or just total morons. Believe me, the idea that the Lexicon could unfairly or harmfully compete with "The Scottish Book" or hurt the movie franchise is absolutely and utterly ridiculous. And having been an avid fan of PotterCast since near the beginning, I'd like to give Steve the benefit of the doubt and bet that he wasn't just interested in grabbing a buck (or thousands) off the fandom, either. After all, the website is still up. (However, that doesn't excuse the fact that a librarian who's written about copyright law before should have known better, and it also says nothing about RDR Books who seem to have been misguided throughout the whole process, and who of course would make more money off the book than the author anyway.) The fact is that copyright infringment is WRONG, damn it! It is always wrong. That Jo is rich does NOT make her less entitled to sue over it. The fact that she's now rich only means that she can afford to sue over it! And I, for one, am grateful!
The other thing in Newsweek was the following quote from (ahem) our dear Vice President: "I have no doubt that we are in the midst of a global warming. Or, as I like to call it, Spring." Antipodeans are not amused. Neither am I really, but I understand physics...and astronomy, and natural science, and geography, and things like that. But maybe I'm just too educated to be a real American. And please, nobody write in and tell me he's from Wyoming and people in Wyoming don't know any better. My Mom already told me. : P

Sigh. Well, I feel better getting that off my chest. Plus I have fresh, warm, homemade chocolate-chip cookies...Oh well. I'll write about the birds tomorrow.
-Susie

The Power of Positive...Blogging?

If I have one really serious fault as a writer, it's that I lack discipline. This Journal is supposed to help with that. See, even if no one reads it, by writing it down, I some how have made it real. This is called intention and is one of the easiest and most surprisingly effective forms of magic. So, last night, I decided that if I could write down my word count every day in here, then I couldn't cheat or procrastinate as much, because anyone could see that I had been irresponsible. Behold the power of public shame!! So, each entry from now on will start with a brief note about the weather (because it's interesting around here, really) and my day's word count. This will also discourage me from blogging or playing around on my favorite websites before I've gotten my work done for the day. My goal is to write at least 1500 words a day, with an absolute minimum of 1,000. This is a fairly modest goal for me, as I generally write that much in an hour or two. But it's already working! This morning I sat down at the computer and opened my Current Project and said to myself, "Oh! I so do not feel like writing today!!" But, after only ten minutes of procrastinating, I forced myself to open the file and just start writing. And lo and behold I wrote 1,754 words. Huzzah! So:
Tuesday, April 22, 2008. The weather is warm and Springy, with uncertain clouds and lots of thin golden sunshine. The foxes have been very active in the East yard and I expect the female to make a den around there soon. I hope to see her with her kits again this year, though the coyotes have been back on the hill since March. No daffodils yet, though there's some short little green grass where the snow has melted and almost all of the aspens have visible red leaf buds. I plan to go for my walk right after I post this. Word Count: 1,754.
Yeah. That works. Anyway, it looks like I'm going to be getting a lot busier soon (Eeek!). I'm not entirely sure how that will be possible, but no matter what, I'm going to keep up my current progress on the book and keep posting here too. I can do that. I don't need sleep. More fun stuff to come, but now I need to get outside before I run out of time. Sigh. Adulthood is just not all it's cracked up to be.
-Susie Haberfeld (trying to boost search results...)

We have a view!

"To be great is to be misunderstood." I don't feel misunderstood at the moment, actually, nor do I feel great, but I do feel pretty good. Firstly, I've been reading Emerson. I hadn't really before and I don't really know why, because I really like his view of the world. It is similar to mine, in that I believe that everything is connected, "beauty is its own excuse for being," the search for truth is the greatest search of all, and the individual is important, not only for its own sake, but because it is a part of a perfect whole. And yes, over all I think the Universe is as it should be. Certainly, we can do a lot in our own lives to make them and the world around us better, but I really do believe the system works, if that makes sense. For example, I like gravity. I think gravity's a good idea. And I like life. I think living is a good idea, too. I think squirrels are just as important as mountains and God encompases all things, positive and negative, great and small, good and bad, such as they exist. I'll probably talk about all this again, because I spend a lot of time, well, thinking. What can I say? I'm a writer. It's not as if I have a life.
Because of whatever strange involuntary process by which my brain functions, whenever I hear the name Emerson, I think first of the word "transcendental," which immediately causes me to start humming "All My Exes Live in Texas." Verily, the mind is a strange place...Since I've been reading some of Emerson's writings, however, I have been struck by a thought which must be extremely obvious to everyone else in the world--that Emerson is undoubtedly the direct inspiration for the wonderful characters of Mr. Emerson and Mr. George Emerson in E.M. Forster's magnificent A Room With a View. I love Forster too, though I've only read three of his novels (though I expect they're his three best. The other two are Howards End and A Passage to India. The former totally changed my way of thinking about the world and the latter I just loved, but they and their author deserve a post of their own). And all this makes me think of George in the fabulous 1985 movie version climbing in a shrubby tree "yelling his creed." And that always makes me smile.
Anyway, I'm especially at peace with myself this evening because of my own writing. First, I've been working for two days on my latest project (which has very rudely superseded the other two novels I've been working on--ideas do that to me sometimes, but this one I'm determined to finish rapidly) and already have more than 5,000 words. So, I should have 50,000 words in only eighteen more days, right? Ha! I wrote two chapters yesterday and only one today, and I'm not going to be able to get any work done for a few days next week, plus I'm fairly certain this project will be much more than 50,000 words--after all, The Splitting of the World is 90-some thousand and this project is looking like a trilogy...Sigh. Oh well. But, as I often do when I've just started a project, I think this one has real potential. : )
The other thing was a poem. I've been working on it for a contest since the first week of April and have two very different versions of it now. I think I've decided on the version I like better and have perfected it now, though I think I'll wait to send it in until tomorrow. I will definitely post the version I didn't choose and discuss it in more detail when the contest is finished. So, that's something to look forward to...
Meanwhile, going by the dictionary definition alone, Transcendental Idealism sounds related to Monism...Here are some more quotes from Emerson for you: "character is higher than intellect," "the office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances" (I think Cala would like this Emerson guy...), "We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more," and my favorite "the soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose."
And also the wonderful new verb: "to Shakspearize" (he spelled it that way). I do that sometimes...
-Susie

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers...

Today is a momentous day in my life as a blogger. I have a fangirl. Yes, yes. zibbycomix is my fangirl and she is a great fangirl to have. : )
In other news...I know this is only my second day, but already I'm inspired to write about Harry Potter. OK, this isn't exactly about Harry Potter. As you might be able to guess from the subject line, it's about J.K. Rowling's lawsuit, currently in between the closing arguments and the decision. I thought I'd just mention this today for two reasons, one, everybody else is blogging about it and if everyone else jumped off a bridge I would sure as heck join them because I don't know how to grow wheat or mill flour and I wouldn't survive very long without bread...or cake...or brioche even. Two, both MuggleCast and PotterCast discussed the trial in their podcasts this week. I would urge anyone who doesn't know what's going on to go over to The Leaky Cauldron and read their excellent and very professional and responsible coverage of the whole case and listen to their commentary on it this week. I found it both informative and edifying.
Now, I am not a lawyer, and like Shakespeare, whose birthday is coming up on Wednesday (which I know because it's the same day as the birth of my littlest nepot), I never much cared for the profession. However, I have two (Wow! Count 'em! Two!) personal connections to the issue which I think might be of interest to readers. The first, of course, is that I am an artist, and a starving one at that, and copyright/fair use, etc. are important issues to me. I think it's pretty obvious that, in general, I side with original authors. Now, as I said, I have not been trained in the law and have not seen all the evidence in this case, but it seems pretty clear to me that Jo and Warner Bros. should win here, even though the fair use law is disturbingly vague.
Why is it disturbingly vague? Well, this relates to another of my favorite subjects and one I think about especially on my birthday, and that is America. For those of you who don't know, April 19 is Patriots' Day, because on that day in 1775 the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought. To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn", "By the rude bridge that arched the flood,/their flag to April's breeze unfurled;/here once the embattled farmers stood;/and fired the shot heard round the world." This date has been celebrated in many forms here in America (see Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," which is my birthday poem, and which I have read (and lately recited) on my birthday for about sixteen years), along with December 16, 1773 (National Checking Account Marketing Day, but that's for another post). Some of you may have already noticed that the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place more than a year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. But no one ever mentions that in school (at least I never heard it there). Is this a classic case of the victor rewriting history? Perhaps, by my point (I usually do have one...) is that The Law has always been a sticky subject for Americans.
The reason for this, I think, is that America's ideology owes a huge amount to John Locke who wrote that human beings have the natural right to live in a free society and that if they find themselves burdened by unjust laws they have not only the right, but the duty to overturn said laws and (as the American experiment proved) even to depose their king (but perhaps not dispose of their king a la les francais). (See New Hampshire's motto: "Live Free or Die.") The idea of self-reliance and self-governence has therefore always been a strongly held tenet of the American people. The classic American heroes (think cowboys and even outlaws in the Old West...or currently, here in Wyoming...) are those men and women who did what they felt was right, or even did whatever they pleased, with conviction. As Mark Twain said, "America has no native criminal class...except congress." In other words, in America, unlike in most countries worldwide, any idiot can be a criminal. This is what makes America great. Really.
We also love the idea of the underdog, having convinced ourselves that we were once underdogs too. But the underdog is not just the weaker of two parties. The true underdog is the person who stands on his own against injustice, who fights on principle alone. And that's the crux of my argument. The person who seems to be standing on principle alone in this case is J.K. Rowling. She is protecting her intellectual property in the name of all current and future authors and all of the diverse and wonderful people who make up this thing called fandom. Now, I'm not saying an encyclopedia of an existing work of literature is a bad idea, but this particular one, as it quotes numerous passages of the original work without citations or scholarly merit must be stopped for the benefit of future works by other authors, but more on that in a second.
First, I want to go to my anecdote. I am sorry this case went to court and that a lawsuit occurred at all. This is a very sad situation for reasons I'll list at the end. My father invented something called "Totally Free Checking." You've probably seen banks across the country advertizing "totally free checking." Most of those are not "in" with my father's program (wherein the checking is actually, you know, totally free, unlike in most banks which say they have "free checking" but really don't). Why is this? My father copyrighted the phrase and the concept. It is his intellectual property. The reason is, when the first infringement occurred, he had to make a decision: "Do I keep on selling my product as best I can and help my clients, or do I spend the rest of my life in a series of lawsuits fighting every single instance of infringement?" Now, before you cry "exaggeration," know that many people have done exactly that. My father chose the former with the consequence that he didn't throw away all our money on lawyers' fees and bank customers have to hear a lot of false advertizing when looking for a friendly neighborhood bank within five miles of their home or business. ; )
So, my point is that the fair use law is vague, therefore precedence becomes immensely important as precedence is a legally binding factor in the courts of America. So, although Jo would not lose any money over "The Harry Potter Lexicon," other authors could lose everything over similar products (related to their work) in the future. Personally, I have never bought any "guide" books to Harry Potter and have no intention of doing so for two reasons: one, I can think for myself, thank you, and two, I doubt they'd say anything meaningful I didn't already know or learned for free elsewhere. But, I am concerned that well-meaning but ignorant relatives buy anything with a particular brand name on it for kids they know without thinking about the money trails or who might be getting hurt. Not that there's anything wrong with that, well-meaning relatives! But, it's something that I think about and therefore matters enormously to me.
Unfortunately, I think that no matter who wins this case, the consequences for my favorite fandom will be profound. If Jo delays her own companion book to the series because of this, or worse, abandons the project entirely, in the words of The Princess Bride, "I shall be very put out." Either way, I think we can say goodbye to Jo's fansite awards, and say hello to a less open and more bitter and disillusioned fan base. Over all it's just a sad business that probably could have been resolved in another way. On a final note: just remember that before the Fall of Rome, philosophers were complaining about frivilous lawsuits and a surfeit of lawyers.
-Susie

The Tangled Interwebs We Weave...

Today is my birthday. I am 24. It seems to me this year should be going better for me than it has been so far, after all, it is my year, i.e. the Year of the Rat. I am (proudly) a rat. Perhaps your year is not the year when everything goes right for you. Perhaps it's just when all the hidden parts of your personality become most apparent. In that case, then, it seems logical that this year I would be filled with self-doubt, which is I think Rat's greatest fault. And I am. So I decided, as a motivation I suppose, to start a blog on my birthday and continue to keep it for a year. The hope is that here I will record my thoughts and progress and by the time my next birthday comes around, when I will be a quarter of a century old, I will have achieved the goals I lay out here today, namely to get my next book in the secure grasp of a publisher--a real publisher--and feel I have finally earned the right to call myself an author, even though I've been a writer for many years. Because, you see, I think the difference between an author and a writer is more than just verb tense. A writer writes. An author wrote. But, like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest unwatched by human eyes, if a writer's work goes unread, has she been utterly wasting her time?
I hope to post some of my writing here in the future, although that is a sticky thing to do, as technically, any writing posted online is essentially published, even if nobody reads it. I will try to put up some previously published poems and I actually have a little short story in mind that would be inappropriate to post anywhere else, but more on that some other day.
So. Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I live? Firstly, I am a writer. That is my vocation. It is the only thing in the world I have really enjoyed doing and that has given meaning to my life. I do not write anything lightly, and hope that my view of the world is sufficiently different and interesting as to be important to others. In the meantime, I hope that my thoughts here will amuse you and give you something to think about that you might not have thought about before. My interests are wide and varied, and I hope to explore them all here as time goes by. I will keep all my entries public for the simple reason that the internet is never as private as some believe and if something is so personal I only want to share it with my real-life friends, I will tell them by other means. I will not be afraid to bare my soul here, though, as that's what writers really do.
Why is my name here Lepus domesticus? Because it's obscure. That's all. I am a sucker for bad puns, word games, and esoterica. It is scientific Latin meaning a domestic, or tame, hare. I got that from W.B. Yeats' poem "Two Songs of a Fool" whose first line is "A speckled cat and a tame hare." It is not my favorite poem of his, though he is my favorite poet, but I chose it because I have often felt like The Fool, but I relate more to the hare than to the cat. The speckled cat will wander out of the house away from the hearth and have his adventures and then return and sit smugly by the fire as cats are wont to do. The hare on the other hand, desperate to stretch her long, long legs will dash out into the woods, leaping and pirouetting as hares are wont to do, and may find herself at last on the table of the hunter, which neither cat nor fool will ever do. The hare's position is the most perilous, and she therefore represents life. We may be as secure as we like before the fire on the worn rug that has adorned our home for centuries, but eventually, we have to go out into the woods, we have to leap, and then we are in danger. So I'm leaping.
Where am I? My home is my center and very much defines me. It is a lovely cloudy day today and I will talk about the weather and my wild neighbors often on this blog. Today, however, I will only say this: Last year for my birthday I had daffodils. This year, there is too much snow. I saw some swallows floating by around noon, however, and a butterfly beat its sharp dark wings against my window. The nutcrackers are hoarsely chattering in the douglas-firs on the hill, protecting their new nest from the deep brown dark phase redtail and her mate, who like to perch up there and catch the wind. And the ravens are always soaring overhead and calling. As you can probably tell by my picture, ravens are very important to me, and to see them floating effortlessly and to hear their throaty rasps and caws and to watch them tumbling over and over in the high wind like so many black feathered clouds, always brings joy to my heart.
Happy birthday to me! Here's to a good year and all it brings!! And here's to all the things I bring to you who read here!