Necronomicon



Back from a weekend of dancing, singing, writing, reading, connecting, reconnecting, marketing, learning, and having a blast at the first science fiction convention I've attended in almost two decades....

Journal excerpt from last Wednesday (October 25), the night before Mary and I headed to Tampa:
Here’s why I need to leave my ego behind. This writing business is bigger than I am. The visions are bigger than I am. I’m here only to give them voice. Yes, I draw from my own experience, my own psychology, my own imagination. But those are tools. The characters are bigger than I am. Their stories are bigger than I am. I am here as their vessel and I am here to get them out into the world, and whether or not they are embraced by other people is beside the point. They need life.

So maybe I must take that attitude at Necronomicon. Be there as a participant, as a student, as a networker. I am not there for myself. I am there for the characters. Period. I must relinquish that ego, that control. I must trust in them and in the Muse....It isn’t about me. It never was.
I can be a ham on stage and articulate on paper or pixel, but pathologically shy when meeting people. This was a way for me to overcome my jitters on, oh, maybe the third pass. I came to "Necro" toting an envelope filled with pitch packages: query letters, synopses, return envelopes, stamps, self-address stickers, business cards. I carried that envelope everywhere, along with a flash drive in my pocket that has the entire trilogy on it.

As my workshop buddy Belea Keeney put it, "You feel as though you're bothering them. But it's a business." I need to have that phrase tattooed on the inside of my forehead. Belea was on the "fate of short fiction" panel. She's sold about 20 short stories over the past three years and just received a state grant for fiction (and has encouraged me to apply). She knew what I was talking about when I mentioned I was going beyond my comfort level in just going up to people and talking with them.

I've gotten some attention from that, though at this point nothing is definite. Stay tuned!

Underneath my name on my purple badge I wrote in ink, "Finalist, 1985 John W. Campbell Award" (given to the best new science fiction writer of the year as chosen by the reading public) and, underneath that, "Have trilogy, will travel!" Barely legible against the purple paper, but it served mainly as a form of self-encouragement.


Taken from inside our room at the Hyatt Regency Tampa. I thought I'd experiment with reflections and different exposures. I've posted a stereo shot here.

As one who is trying to re-break in and get up to speed with a rapidly-changing industry, I attended panels on "The business of writing," "Breaking in," "Genre poetry," "POD [print on demand]/self-publishing/e-publishing," "The fate of short fiction," and "Research for writers," as well as those on "Where do SF and F meet?" "Look what they've done to space" (after which I spoke briefly with one of the panelists, who like me had experience in the planetarium field), "How SF has changed since the 50s," and "Ethics and science." A couple of the folks on panels told me afterwards they were very glad I was there and speaking up. "You can tell you're an author," one said. "You sound as though you never stopped writing."


Pool reflection in windows, taken from inside our room.

At the genre poetry panel I got to meet folks from the Science Fiction Poetry Association, including people I knew through correspondence 20+ years ago when I edited its journal Star*Line. I hadn't been involved in the organization for years, having basically dropped off the face of the earth due to illness and an insane schedule. I learned that people had wondered what happened to me and wondered if they could get me to come back (yes!).

Most of my poetry nowadays is mainstream, but even the National Federation of State Poetry Associations contests have included a couple of categories that fall into the speculative realm. One, the Futuristic Award, asks for a poem "that is optimistic, sensitive and persuasive concerning 2057 AD." A past category, the Cecilia Parsons Miller Memorial Award, called for poetry of a fantastic and/or mythological nature. I've won honorable mentions in both. On my "to do" list is to write an article about the panel to submit to the newsletter of the Florida State Poets Association, in which I've been involved since I moved down here.

I also learned that I can potentially do more with an old, dusty draft than was previously possible, given certain changes in the industry.


A window reflection of Tampa

Friday night I attended the Fan Cabaret, where anyone could come up on stage and do just about anything: singing, dancing, telling jokes, skits. I belted out some a cappella scatting, completely extemporaneous, and got good feedback on that plus a 3rd place ribbon. Then I gyrated until midnight at the 25th anniversary dance, featuring music from 1982.

Prior to '83 I'd danced almost exclusively inside my head. After I left my marriage and when I started living on my own for the first time, one of my goals was to dance freely in the street -- which I fulfilled at a block party for the Grolier poetry book shop in Cambridge, MA. I haven't stopped dancing since.



Weaving by Loren Damewood, who also performed at the cabaret. "I make several of these a day at conventions," he said. He gifted me with this rope bracelet, which took him about 10 minutes to make. At the time he was wearing an extraordinary, diamond-patterned chainmail vest that had taken him 300 hours to produce. He runs Golden-Knots.com out of St. Petersburg, Florida: "Hand-crafted Knot Jewelry: Decorative Marlingspike Seamanship rendered in precious metal."

This was also Mary's first convention ("Unless you count some people selling Star Trek memorabilia in a church basement") and she had a great time as well. Before we headed home we took a brief walking tour of downtown Tampa -- most of my photos from the weekend are of the local architecture and window reflection play similar to what's above, plus some plant and wildlife shots. I'll post those photos in several installments. I was hoping to make it to the Masquerade -- what costumes I saw were terrific -- but by that time I was pretty much tuckered out.



Our drive back was a bit adventurous. I missed one scheduled turn due to Mary's excited shout of, "Billy goat!" (I didn't see it, was too busy watching the road.) I automatically assumed she was talking about road kill, but it turned out a live goat was cropping the grass by the side of the road. She informed a couple of cops parked outside a gas/convenience store, so that someone could be sent to corral it. Not long afterwards I spotted a gopher tortoise moseying across the 4-lane highway we were on. ("Tortoise!" I called out; this time she assumed it was road kill.) I was driving in the middle of the day and the highway was relatively empty, so we're hoping the tortoise made it safely across.

When we got home I was very glad I'd put out two litter boxes -- one filled with the cats' preferred clumping litter (which needs changing more often) and the other with Feline Pine (which doesn't need changing that often). Our sweeties had clearly gotten all that they could out of the clumping type and then huffed over to the Feline Pine. The first thing I did when we got inside -- before Mary turned the water back on and before we even thought of unloading the car -- was to clean their facilities. Mary made sure their food and water were still up to snuff (they were) and dispensed cat treats.

Daisy is on my lap as I'm typing this, with her diesel purr at full throttle. Last night we had Cuddles For All!

She would also like to wish you all a Happy Halloween.

Hubcap Nebula and Other Adventures



Under very high telescopic magnification, you can spot the Hubcap Nebula floating in the Lawn Sprinkler Galaxy. Close examination shows that the tire is still attached, so this phenomenon actually predates the Big Bang. Photographed at 1/1000th of a second at f/4.5....

Mary and I went on our "post office walk" during the day, this time. Our weather's been getting cooler, so our jackets have come out and we're not so concerned with waiting for the sun to set before our jaunts. Turkey vultures ride the updrafts again, and I heard (though did not see) a raptor as I stepped out the door.

We passed a neighbor's sprinklers and I liked the way they caught the late afternoon sun. My fastest shutter speed is 1/1000th of a second, so I wanted to see what droplets I could catch -- also at f/4.5.



I don't know what type of flower the red star is or what type of mushrooms are pictured below; neither appears in my field guide. The mushrooms are huge; I estimate their caps are at least 6 inches in diameter.


More detail is in the large view (click the magnifying glass for this and other large views).


Large view

We made a circuit around the yard when we returned home. I tell myself I should count the number of trees that have sprouted, but new ones keep coming up. Mary keeps putting down markers to warn me not to weed-whack the seedlings. In addition to the trees we'd actually planted, we have volunteer oaks and cherries now, along with a volunteer palm -- and saltbushes that are now tree-height.



We had hurricane shutters installed back in August, but I didn't take a photograph until now. Most of these aluminum panels are in our garage, but we have them up on a couple of windows. At the approach of a hurricane or tropical storm, we'll use wing nuts to screw the overlapping panels into tracks.

Several snails were hanging out on our back wall, and I thought one was particularly photogenic.


Large view

The shell is about 5mm in diameter. After I photographed this little one I thought the image worth manipulating. I removed the original snail portion of the shot, manipulated it differently than the rest, and then replaced the altered image.


Large view

Our walk had taken us to the "post office pond," which has almost dried up. I almost missed seeing this Little Blue Heron taking its slow stroll on the far side.


Large view

Egretta caerulea, Family Ardeidae. Also called the blue crane, levee walker, or little blue crane.

According to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, this bird ranges along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to Florida, but is most abundant along the Gulf of Mexico. It prefers inland, freshwater habitat and has a varied diet of fish, frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, crustaceans, aquatic insects and spiders, and grassland insects during dry conditions. This species is protected under the US Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Celestial Cuppa Tea, with Milky Way



Sagittarius was setting over my garage when I took this shot at 8:06 PM (EDT). My camera is not geared toward astrophotography -- I aimed blind through my viewfinder, took the shot using my maximum available aperture (2.8) and exposure (4 seconds), then increased brightness and contrast with some decrease in gamma to bring out the stars. Part of Sagittarius is best-known as the "Teapot," which I've labeled and outlined here. (Click the magnifying glass and then scroll right and down to read the text.)

When you look at this constellation, you're also looking toward the center of the Milky Way....

According to the National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky, "This is a large constellation that was probably first associated with Nergal, the arrow-shooting god of war, by Sumerian peoples of the Euphrates Valley. It was known by the Greeks as the archer, and later came to be identified as a satyr or centaur. There has been much debate over just who Sagittarius is, though it is generally agreed that he is a centaur -- half man, half horse.... It is difficult to recognize a centaur here, but a modern asterism called the Teapot is relatively easy to find within the larger constellation....Sagittarius lies in the same direction of the sky as our galaxy's center, and so the band of the Milky Way is brighest here."

I did volunteer work for five years in the planetarium field and gave shows, mostly to school children, narrating live. The shows included star and constellation ID, and I once made a blooper as I pointed out Sagittarius. As the field guide says, Sagittarius is most easily recognizable as a teapot, even though that's not what the ancients had in mind when they named it.

I told my audience, "This is Sagittarius, the Archer. Here is the handle, and here is the spout."

Tonight Mary and I took our walk under a chilly, beautifully clear sky. My camera can't catch the Milky Way but I could see it stretching overhead and could even see a bit of its Great Rift. As I stargazed I spotted the Okean O Rocket rising through Capricorn, and followed it until it faded away shortly after passing Cygnus. It's the brightest artificial satellite I've seen thus far. According to Heavens Above, tonight it was at magnitude 2.8. According to my old 1983 Observer's Handbook put out by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, that puts this satellite at the same visual magnitude as Kaus Borealis (λ Sagittarii) -- the star at the top of the "teapot" cover. (The teapot in this shot is angled down to the right, so it looks as though it's pouring onto my roof.)

Okean O (no longer active) was launched from Kazakhstan on July 17, 1999. Sponsored by the National Space Agency of Ukraine and to some extent by the Russian Space Agency, this satellite was part of a program to monitor ocean surfaces, measuring sea surface temperatures, wind speed, sea color, status of ice coverage, cloud coverage and precipitation. It follows a near-circular polar orbit. More information on the program is here. Some images sent by the satellite are here.

The Muse Switches Gears

After 82 consecutive days of adding to the draft of Book #4 I broke my fiction streak on Friday -- to write two prize-winning poems on two hours sleep....

On Friday and Saturday I attended the annual convention of the Florida State Poets Association. The Sunshine Poets chapter here in Citrus County hosted the meeting, which drew poets from across the state. Last October I'd driven to Daytona Beach on the Atlantic coast. This year I drove about 4-1/2 miles from home -- all the more convenient because Saturday was also the last session of the course I teach at the art center.

Various other projects left me with a severe sleep deficit coming into Friday. The convention's opening presentation, "Poetry Through Nature," was a marvelous slide show of images taken by members of the local butterfly club (an affiliate of the North American Butterfly Association). We then had a few minutes to write a quick piece on butterflies for a contest of poetry written extemporaneously. I suspect my own photography and ensuing research helped me on this.

The second poem was for a contest announced a few weeks ago (accompanying the convention reservation form), but since I've been concentrating on fiction I dashed off a poem between the time I got home after 11PM Friday and the time I went to bed around 1AM Saturday. Length limit was 12-20 lines. I did what I call a parallel blank verse (I don't know if anyone else has done that, but what the heck). Blank verse is written in iambic pentameter (the same meter used in a sonnet) but has unrhymed lines. I wrote a 20-line poem in two 10-line sections and rhymed the corresponding lines in each section: 1 with 11, 2 with 12, 3 with 13, etc., all the way to 10 with 20.

Both poems won first place. I took home $10 and two books as prizes, including one that I could choose -- so I snatched a copy of Diane Ackerman's 1998 collection I Praise My Destroyer, because I loved her 1977 The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral. Not bad for two hours of sleep. :) Normally I enter the state contests, but I didn't this year because I was in full-fledged fiction mode.

I'll try to get the two poems published before I post them, since posting online constitutes publication and most places want previously unpublished material. I was also at the conference to distribute our 24th annual anthology, which I've produced for four years now and edited for two years (and will continue to do so). The poem I have in that book -- also written in iambic pentameter -- had won first prize in the 2004 "Save Our Earth Award" contest of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. It appears in the NFSPS anthology Encore for that year and now in Anthology 24:

First Things First

When water's worth surpasses that of gold
and breathing freely brings the keenest joy,
and all the waste that we have bought and sold
no longer find a place in our employ –

when we have learned that war is over land
and all that nature yields to let us live,
be it savannah, mountainside, or sand –

when we have learned that something's got to give
and what we've got to give becomes our fear,
accustomed to the task of wanting more
and wanting new, discarding every year
the very goods that we had craved before –

when we have given up economies
that run neither to logic nor to scale,
and blue chip stocks are worthless next to trees,
and we must be sustainable or fail –

when we become endangered as the beasts
whose DNA we treasure in our vaults
for times when our plundering will cease,
and finger-pointing, faulting upon faults
will come to rest at last upon us all –

when then we take responsibility
and stop, and listen to our bloodbeat call
and slow the progress of sterility –

then we will learn the wisdom of the grass
that knows the wind that carries every song
that tells of how our nature must surpass
the artifice we thought would make us strong --
when even ants are teachers and we take
the time to hear their sermons on the mound,
and we will walk the long way for the sake
of coaxing one more lake to stay around --
then no one needs to walk the path alone
as bound together, we behold our worth
and come at last to our ancestral home
as creatures nurturing this good, green earth.

--------------------------------

I was hoping to get around seven hours of sleep Friday into Saturday, but Daisy had other ideas. At around 5:45 she MEOWMEOWMEOWed me out of a dream and a sound sleep. Since I was now fully awake, I checked e-mail to coordinate with folks at the art center, since I'm also getting a newletter out this weekend and our graphics designer had last-minute changes. I answered another e-mail from a client (whose job I finished and sent off earlier today). I then popped over to the conference and our board meeting, which started at a groaning 8:30 AM -- or, more precisely, when the coffee was ready.

About an hour before I taught my class, my friend Loretta Rogers gave a presentation on critiquing that I thought would be perfect to share with my students. (Loretta is the critique coordinator for the Tampa Area Romance Authors, which is affiliated with Romance Writers of America.) I asked her if I could distribute her handout. She loved the idea, and an hour later my students loved her presentation.

Teaching meant I missed the luncheon, but I had a chance to mingle during the buffet dinner. I also took dozens of photos and have CDs of those ready to send to various folks. I managed to get to bed a little before 2 AM, about 20 hours after Daisy's Saturday serenade.

Fortunately for both of us, she let me sleep this morning.

Before Thursday's free-writing meeting at the art center I said hello to this little gal:



I think she's a Conocephalus (Lesser Meadow Katydid). That tail-like appendage is an ovipositor.



This Melonworm Moth was hanging out on the window of 2 Bakers after the meeting. Diaphania hyalinata, Family Crambidae (Crambid Snout Moths). I waved to Jason, one of the staffers, who by now is used to me climbing on a chair at one of the outside tables to photograph bugs.

According to Bugguide.Net, this moth is common in Florida, where its season lasts all year (though this is the first of its kind that I've seen. Nobody's tried to use it as an eraser; it really does have a rear like that). It's also found in the neotropics, and ranges throughout eastern North America. As the common name implies, larvae feed on cucumbers, melons, and squash.



This moth is called The Wedgeling, which piques my interest because its name is not Wedgeling Moth but a definitive The Wedgeling. I don't know why. It was hanging out at the post office around 4:30 PM, right across from the Melonworm. Galgula partita, Family Noctuidae (Owlet moths). According to Bugguide.Net, this moth ranges through "most of North America but missing from Canadian prairie provinces; occurs south to Guatemala and islands of the Caribbean....adults fly from March to November in the south; May to September in the north." The black dotted subterminal line (ST) line indicates this one is a male.

(Figure 2.2 of this article provides a good guide to wing markings and what the abbreviations mean.)

Wood sorrel is the larvae's food of choice. It's also my favorite edible weed. This three-leafed clover grows wild around our house, but I was first introduced to it when I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Wood sorrel is rich in Vitamin C and will give you a great citrus burst of flavor after about a second of chewing. Botanical.com gives more information about the plant.



Male Grizzled Mantid, Gonatista grisea, Family Mantidae. Also called the Lichen Mimic Mantid. I saw this one high up on a column shortly after noon on Friday and couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was.

According to Bugguide.Net, this mantid's range includes South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. It's a male because its wings cover its entire abdomen and the sides of its abdomen are smooth rather than lobed.

Birthday Moon



The moon shown here is 12% of full. Time is EST. The shots in this series were all taken at f/4.5.

From top to bottom:
5:56 AM, 1/30-second exposure
5:55 AM, 1/20-second exposure
5:54 AM, 1/13-second exposure
5:49 AM, 2"5-second exposure
5:53 AM, 4-second exposure -- with Earthshine.
6:56 AM, 0"60-second exposure

And then the sunrise....



Photographed at 6:55 AM, using a 1/3-second exposure at f/3.2.

I don't always stay up for my birth-minute at 2:23 AM, but I managed to do it this time (complete with a serenade from Mary) . Then I stayed awake long enough to mosey onto the driveway and take these shots, followed by a few hours of shut-eye.

My other present to myself is an order of whole-bean Indian Malabar coffee (yet to arrive), which I haven't had in over a decade. It's a very pungent, heavy-bodied variety that people tend to love or hate. I used to be able to get it at Coffee Connection in Harvard Square, before the place became a Starbucks.

We were thinking of taking a day trip but decided to just stay in and relax, partly because tomorrow through Sunday will be jam-packed.

Today I plan to get started on (and maybe even finish) the last scene of my first draft. A lovely present indeed if I can pull it off!

High Rock, Low Rock, and Other Miscellany


Click here for the large view.

Sunday night Mary and I watched Game 4 of the NLCS, which made me happy because I grew up in Brooklyn and am a Mets fan (when I'm not a Red Sox fan). Granted,my Mets are the 1973 team, from the days of Tom Seaver, Tug "The Fireman" McGraw, Ed Kranepool, Bud Harrelson, Willie Mays, and a bunch of folks I don't remember. My mother was recovering from her first heart attack when they won the World Series in '69; hence I didn't pay attention until the year they won the pennant.

The connection the above photo has with baseball relates to a terrific moon shot Fox aired during Sunday night's game, around 9 PM as I recall. And I spluttered, "That moon's not up now! It won't rise until after midnight!"

I ran outside during the next set of commercials for confirmation. Then I checked the Old Farmer's Almanac. Sunday night, for our location, the moon didn't rise until 1:38 AM. There was no way that extraordinary shot was being taken during the game.

That didn't stop me from popping outside after 4:30 Monday morning and setting up my tripod....

The top right photo shows a hint of earthshine, while the full overexposure of the moon and clouds in the large image shows earthshine prominently. The moon was 28% of full and six days before New when I took the shots.

From left to right, all times EDT:
4:36 AM, 1/25-second exposure at f/4.5
4:39 AM, 1-second exposure at f/8
4:42 AM, 4-second exposure at f/8
I took the large bottom photo at 4:44 AM, a 4-second exposure at f/4.5

In earthshine, the moon reflects light from two different sources. The thin crescent is light reflected from the sun. But the larger, dimmer illumination, is reflected from the Earth, which itself is reflecting sunlight onto the moon. Hence the term "earthshine". That dimmer illuminated part of the moon is doubly-reflected light.

Says the University of Maryland Department of Astronomy, "Each time light reflects off a surface (like a planet), it gets dimmer because some of the light is absorbed by the reflecting surface. This means that earthshine is dimmer than moonlight because earthshine is sunlight that has been reflected twice and moonlight is sunlight that has been reflected only once (off the surface of the moon). In addition, the reflectivity of the moon (its 'albedo') is less than that of the Earth, which makes earthshine even dimmer. The moonlight of a full moon, for example, is so bright that, even if it were positioned correctly to reflect light back toward Earth, it would completely overpower earthshine."

The moon was also in conjunction with Saturn, but I saw only brief glimpses of the planet due to the cloud cover.

That took care of the high rock.


Click here for the large view.

This is another photographic angle of the same rock shown in close-ups in this entry. Just to the upper left (and still in shadow) of the spiral-shaped snail fossil near the bottom of the photo is where Mary thinks she sees a trilobite imprint. She was able to see two lobes and part of a third, and the "cross-hatching" marks shown on trilobite fossil photos.

When I told her, "I've never seen a trilobite image like that," she countered, "Well, they don't show you the duds!"

Trilobite fossils are found worldwide. They were water creatures and Florida is surrounded on three sides by water, ipso facto.

In my quest for trilobite info I found the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) and its call for volunteers to help out on a paleontological dig. I've always been curious about what it would be like to go on one of those. I loved dinosaurs as a kid (somewhere there's probably a kid who didn't, but I can't imagine who). Mary and I watch paleontology shows on channels like History and Discovery. I'd always thought I'd need to devote weeks out of my life and travel to far-off locales just to get a taste of it.

Surprise!

The dig site is only about 60 miles from where I live. Volunteers (no prior experience needed!) can come for a day (or just a shift within a day) so long as the day still has volunteer positions available -- and as of their October 10 list there are many days that still have room. Volunteers work alongside museum staff and University of Florida graduate students.

I signed up for November 8 and today received confirmation. I plan to sign up for more unless I decide the experience is not for me. But I suspect I'll love it.

This particular dig, the Tapir Challenge, goes through most of December and is geared toward tapir fossils. Tapirs, according to the museum, "are hoofed, plant-eating mammals distantly related to horses and rhinos." Modern tapirs exist, living in southern Central and South America and southeastern Asia; but their ancient cousins disappeared from Florida about 11,000 years ago. Says FLMNH, "More fossils of Tapirus have been found in Florida than any other region of the world."

The site has also yielded fossil bones and teeth of about 35 different kinds of freshwater and land animals. Frankly, I don't care what I'd be looking for. I don't care that the animal isn't a dinosaur or that it still exists somewhere in the modern world. The fossils at this particular site are from the Pliocene Epoch. If I found anything it would be an estimated two million years old. That thought alone thrills me. Heck, even seeing cycads on our "post office walks" thrills me, because those plants trace their ancestry directly back to the early Mesozoic era (Source: Floridata.com). In other words, 248 to 65 million years ago: the time of the dinosaurs.


(Dioon edule, Family Zamiaceae (coontie family), photographed back in May.)

And then to have a dig site virtually in my own back yard! How cool is that?

Mary plans to stay home, more for health than for other reasons. She's not enamored of squatting in a limestone quarry under even a post-summer Florida sun. Hiking the Grand Canyon was different because even when no shade was available we were still moving. Water and electrolytes will be provided, but I'll have food and proper clothing on hand. My broad-brimmed hat -- the one I wore during our 20 miles of hiking to and from the bottom of the GC -- will stay on my head.

Part of the reason I was still up at 4:30 Monday morning had to do with the newsletter I edit for the Art Center. We're changing its format, so I was doing some creative fiddling. I also received some terrific graphics from one of our members, who's a designer.

I created some of my own as well, including one that accompanies my "Please bear with us" newsletter renovation message for our one-color publication.



First I spread out a towel and borrowed a few of Mary's tools. I converted the original photo at upper left to black & white, then used MS Photo Editor's "Edge" function to produce the image at lower left. A few rounds of the "Transparency" function eliminated most but not all of the towel. I brought the image into MS Paint to clean up the image manually, then returned it to Photo Editor and increased the contrast.

After I finally went to bed and got in a decent sleep, I teamed with Mary to escort a Red-waisted Florella moth back outside.



Almost a year ago I photographed this Syngamia florella on the outside wall of our house. This year the one above decided to hang out on our dining room wall just beneath the ceiling. I set up a series of crates, popped up the flash, and got this slightly different angle that includes its hind legs.

I couldn't get a ruler in place before it flew away but I'm guessing this one's wingspan is 15-20mm. Climbing on crates and then our dining table (otherwise known as our elevated horizontal filing system, not to be confused with our filing systems down on the floor), Mary managed to trap it inside a plastic container. Our guest loitered inside the container after I brought it onto the front porch, but took off as soon as I stuck my lens in to try to get a head shot.

This weekend is the annual convention of the Florida State Poets Association. In addition to producing the Art Center newsletter, I edit and produce the FSPA's annual poetry anthology, which I'll be distributing to folks who placed their orders. This year the convention is local to me and will be held a few blocks away from where I'll be teaching the final class of my creative writing course on Saturday. This week's schedule also includes writing meetings on Thursday and Friday along with freelance work.

I'm about halfway through the next-to-last scene of Book #4. After I finish the first draft I'll let that rest for a while -- and I'll rest for a while -- before I hunker down for the rewrite.

Inspiration and Expiration


This and the two photos below were taken of a single rock. The rock, which Mary had picked up off the street, is about the size of a golf ball.

Wednesday morning, I think within the context of the Treaty of Versailles (we watch a lot of History Channel programs), Mary opened a conversation with the concept that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That led to a discussion of heaven and hell -- how we can make our own heaven and hell on Earth. I expanded on the energies one puts out into the world -- how, for instance, we are still influenced by the cave paintings at Lascaux. How the energies expended in creating the Bible have been twisted in all sorts of directions. The intermingling of forces and influences.

At one point Mary said, "If you knew when you were going to die, I suppose that would make it easier for you to go into battle."

That got my cogwheels turning something fierce....

I deal with foreknowledge of one's death in my short story "Moments of Clarity" (Full Spectrum, Bantam Books, 1988), so philosophical meanderings in that direction aren't new to me. I almost died when I was seven. "Moments of Clarity" is one of two published stories that draw from memories of the car accident that had almost killed me. (My website has the other story, "Cog," which was originally published in Tales of The Unanticipated, Fall/Winter 1988.)

My mother died just after she turned 57. Next week I turn 48: four years older than she had been when she almost died after suffering her first heart attack (in 1969; I was just under 11). When I was growing up in the tumultuous 1960s I was pretty well convinced I wouldn't live past my 20s, sure that I would die a violent death.

Some years back I transcribed a lecture in which the speaker discussed what she called "the immortals": young people who engage in reckless behavior, as though they are and forever will be invincible. To those unlucky enough not to be invincible at a crucial moment, death comes as a complete surprise. This personality type fell opposite to my own. I grew up being a pretty scared kid.

On turning 30, a friend my age had lamented (I paraphrase here), "At least if I had died in my 20s, people would have said I died a young woman."

I won't even get into the fact that where I live now, my friend would be called "a young woman" at twice-30. When I turned 30 I was ecstatic because I was still alive, period. Everything from then on in has been gravy for me.

Do I still, at the tender young cusp-of-48 and in good health (knock on wood, kenahora), feel my mortality? You better believe it. I hold onto various superstitions that I fully recognize as such ("but what if..."). I've lost people my age and younger. I have things I want to accomplish before I die, visions I want to get from my soul onto paper and out into the world, and that need/passion/ambition drives me.

Before I awoke on Friday I dreamt that I was experiencing the last day of my life. An odd and somber dream. I was resigned to the fact that I was living my last day. I wasn't frightened but I was a little sad. Wistful. I had a white plastic pump attached to my left arm. It had no other external attachment but I could control whatever it was delivering by pressing down on its mechanism, which looked a little like a soup spoon. I was indoors, it was nighttime. I think a television was on but I don't know what it was tuned to. I think Mary was with me, but I'm not entirely sure; I think I was showing her how the pump worked. If anything the location and what feeling I had of time reminded me of New Year's Eve in Brooklyn back in the early 70s. Back then I sat on my family's living room couch, watching the televised broadcast of the ball dropping in Times Square.



Mary's statement Wednesday morning, "If you knew when you were going to die..." started me on a thinking jag that's another variation on a theme that's probably been around at least as long as humanity has. One can do all sorts of things with the concept, and I've been scribbling journal notes toward world-building.

My current series also deals with mortality. (Of my 12 published stories I'd say four deal directly with that concept.) In addition to individual deaths, the writing addresses species extinction: mortality in a big way.

I experience the interplay of at least three levels. There's the personal level, which gets back to my own experiences and superstitions. There's the macro-level/world-view/Zeitgeist, conveyed in such programs as the Weather Channel's It Could Happen Tomorrow, Forecast: Earth, and similar ilk across the TV basic cable band. Global warming, pandemics, asteroidal impact, nuclear war, what have you.

The world was coming to an end back in the 70s, too. Environmental degradation, population explosion, nuclear annihilation and the domino theory as personified in the Vietnam and Cold Wars were a few of the headline-grabbers then. A research project for another novel (drafted) had me poring through New York Times microfilms from that era. Journalistic language that I had taken for granted in the 70s struck me (in the early 90s) as being particularly strident. No wonder I'd been so scared.

I'd escaped into Star Trek. Mary had escaped into Chaucer and other classics.

Added to the personal level and the Zeitgeist is the level of story. My characters deal with death on a micro (personal) and macro (species) scale. Some are in denial. Some embrace their demise and seek to take others with them. Some try to save themselves and/or save others, both heroically and destructively. Some seek to transcend the inevitable. I draw my drama from the struggles among those different types, and from the struggle to survive and to love even though it may all be for naught.

In short, to a great degree my protagonists undergo the same blind faith that I do. Their journey is my own. My journey generates theirs. At some point the Muse/Divine takes over, the lines blur, and the interplay among personal/Zeitgeist/story whirls me around in a metaphysical centrifuge.

I am finally into the last chapter/denouement of Book #4. My early structural problems plus a shift in my main theme will produce a first draft of around 150,000 words by the time I'm done. That's a serious verbal bloat that I should be able to trim significantly in the rewrite. Telling the story has given me insights into what it really is about (or so I hope), but I've had to undergo that process of discovery first. In some ways I feel like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, being lectured by the Good Witch of the North: "You wouldn't have believed me. You had to find out for yourself!" Book #4 marks the transitional point in the series: from one generation to the next and from one set of coping mechanisms to the next. It's the major bend in the road. While the first four volumes cover a period of under two years, #5 will make a temporal jump, when the children have matured and are ready to take the reins.

Shine On, Harvest Moon!



Another bleary-eyed Driveway Moment....

Photographed today at 2:37 AM (EDT), or about 3-1/2 hours after Full (11 PM EDT on 10/6, or 3 AM Universal Time on 10/7). At 10 AM EDT on 10/6 the Moon also reached perigee, or its closest monthly approach to the Earth.

This was a 1/640-second exposure at f/5.6. It may actually be one of my freehand shots -- after a while I realized that with that kind of shutter speed I didn't need to use my tripod.

In other years this could be called the Full Hunter's Moon, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac. "The Harvest Moon is always the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox," says the OFA. "If the Harvest Moon occurs in October, the September full Moon is usually called the Corn Moon."

Back on October 4 I found this photo op during our post office walk:



Unlike the shot above, this one was an overexposure of the Moon so that I could get the foliage. Photographed at 9:01 PM (EDT), a 4-second exposure at f/4, sharpened afterwards.

Earlier that evening I got my lucky shot of the week:



That object to the middle left is a plane. This one is best viewed large (click the magnifying glass). This was a 1/1000-second exposure at f/4.5, taken at 6:49 PM (EDT).

10/7 = 70 days

Today marks my 70th consecutive day of adding to the draft of Book #4. It is now quite bloated in verbiage, not least because I’ve realized that my main theme has had to change. Eventually I’ll trim the excess – today’s tweaking in addition to writing has started that process – but for now I’m inserting backfill.

Old theme: “Time is running out.”
New theme: “Hate destroys but love survives.”

The old theme is still valid, but it isn’t the primary theme. It encompasses my two dramatic threads, but the new theme both encompasses and differentiates them. A major component of the whole series is love in the midst of death.

I’ve begun re-reading for craft, so that I can dissect what other authors have done and see what I can learn from them. Sometimes I can step back during a first read and scribble a quote I love, followed by the reasons why I love it. But a re-read lets me really stop and smell the metaphors (or the syntax, or the plot devices, etc.).

I’ve also realized that the two threads serve as a kind of figure/ground. The “figure” thread is one that I’ve basically finished drafting. It embodied the main conflict and is the simpler of the two, with its villain and victims, its dupes and its antiheroes. It possesses a story arc that moves from Point A to Point B.

The “ground” thread currently claims my attention. It contains its own conflicts, but each resolution builds on the one that came before. Its antagonists are also heroic. It represents a struggle for coexistence -- unlike the "figure" thread, which represents a struggle toward destruction. The "ground" thread sets the stage and is where I've been inserting backfill. Working on the backfill also lets me play around with a number of props, which take on different meanings and functions at different times and in different places.

It’s taken me more than 400 pages of drafted manuscript to recognize this figure/ground dynamic. I never claimed to be particularly quick.

Persimmons Plus Indoor Safari



Tweaked with watercolor and other effects. After my free-writing group let out at around 4PM, I spotted a couple of members bent over by a tree on the art center property. When I went over to investigate they offered me a wonderfully sweet fruit....

Persimmons are astringent when picked off the tree, but the ones on the ground are simply delicious. I took a couple home for Mary (who has plans for the seeds) and almost drove off before I realized I could make good use of my camera.

Diospyros virginiana, Family Ebenaceae (ebony family). Says Floridata.com, "Persimmon is native to eastern North America from New England, west to Kansas, and south to Texas and Florida. It is one of the most widely-adapted of trees, growing naturally in bottomland swamps, along stream banks, in upland forests, in fields, piney woods, and even dry scrub lands."







"Wilderness" was one writing prompt that came up during the meeting. My somewhat edited scribblings follow:

The other night my desk was the wandering ground for an intrepid Surinam cockroach.

She was cautious. She was slow, half-in half-out of an envelope. "She" because in the U.S. the Surinam cockroaches are all female, reproducing by parthenogenesis and bearing live young, who emerge from an internal egg case.

I didn't know that part until this morning, thanks to Bugguide.Net and the University of Florida.

Mary opened the studio door to ask me something and I told her, camera in hand, that I was in the middle of a session with my model. Normally Mary kills the roaches who venture indoors, but this time I was on a mission.

I talked to the roach. I leaned in, had her pose for her close-ups. I coaxed her into the open with a folded phone bill, expecting her to bolt and leave me with a new problem, when I would screech and rely on Mary's lethal hands.

But the roach only moseyed. I maneuvered a plastic container into position, since I prefer a catch-and-release program to outright killing in most cases, and especially one where I am trying to overcome my own terror. (My entry "A Night With Max" has more detail on my roach phobia.)

With a knife I flipped her into the jar and snapped the lid shut. This was the most dangerous moment of all. The lid was iffy and if the roach acted as I expected roaches to act she would have scrambled for her life and might have even -- horror of horrors -- touched me.

But she was caught, and the lid was down, and I watched her circling the bottom of the see-through jar, around and around and around, until she got bored with her surroundings or tired. I didn't and still don't know if she was carrying young, or if she'd already deposited them. At the time I didn't know my prisoner was a "she".

I exulted to Mary, "You're going to be so proud of me!" Mary, who kills roaches with her bare hands despite her allergy to them. Mary, roach huntress extraordinaire. I stood before her, holding out my prize and a reflective lamp that I proceeded to plug into an outlet strip for more photo ops of the great beast subdued.

Afterwards I got dressed, having already given myself bonus points for going up against the roach naked. I turned on the porch light, stepped outside, and freed the Surinam into the wilderness of my front yard, where she plopped somewhere in among the Aztec grass and cedar mulch.

In Europe and Malaysia there are male Surinam cockroaches, but the males don't make it to the States. I had granted my visitor another girl's night out in her meanderings. To further address my phobia I tweaked one of the head-on photos, cropping and trimming a shot of Mary's broad-brimmed straw hat.

My photographic roach now wears the hat, tilted engagingly to the side. Because the nights are getting cooler in my front yard wilderness. And I, feeling braver and more than a little smug, can return to my paper wilderness for another day.



I've posted a non-hatted image of Pycnoscelus surinamensis (Family Blaberidae) at Bugguide here. Thanks go to deadmike (Journal of the Plague Year) for steering me toward the ID.

Denizens of Autumn


Click here for the large view.

It's official: Gulf Fritillaries love the white, six-petaled pusley that folks who don't know any better call a weed. This morning I saw seven of the butterflies in the area near our front door. I have no idea how many flitted over the rest of the yard.

(Edited from initial post: Video added in permalink.)

I told Mary, "They have a special migration song, you know. It's kind of like a hiking song. If you listen closely you can hear it really well."

I actually had her going for a moment. She wondered if it was something my camera had picked up while I was taking a video (yet to be uploaded). I demonstrated by singing in a high, tiny voice:

It's a long way for Fritillaries --
It's a long way to go....

(to the tune of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary")....

Then she asked if they really migrated -- which they do, according to Floridata.com. According to Bugguide.Net,this species frequents the south but occasionally strays northward. Agraulis vanillae, Family Nymphalidae (Brushfooted Butterflies), Subfamily Heliconiinae (Heliconians and Fritillaries).

Right now these butterflies are everywhere in our area -- and they love our yard.



Video: Gulf Fritillaries (3:05)



Signs of seasonal change are all around. Our evening walks have been cooler. The Fritillaries take their turn in the parade of local wildlife, along with the turkey vultures who have begun their return to the skies. And likely to the streets for a meal -- the young squirrels are out, and the possums. I recently got my first-ever in-person view of an armadillo, but it was an ex-armadillo broken by the side of the road. Our lows dip below 70 degrees and our highs begin to shy away from 90. During a recent spate of glorious weather the humidity dropped, making 90 degrees feel like 88. Truly a treat -- not long ago the heat indices were in the triple digits.

Before we took our walk on October 1 I set my tripod up in the driveway and got in a Moon shot:



Photographed at 9:33 PM (EDT), with a 1/160-second exposure at f/4.5. The Moon here is nine days old.

On our way back home we swung by a relatively new apartment complex, whose lit sign provided a hangout for several types of bugs, including the cousin of a childhood friend. I wrote the passage below several years ago.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I am at first surprised by the pinpricks it leaves on my skin, as it makes its way up my arm slowly. Majestically.

We are by the Rose of Sharon tree in the back yard, by violets and tiger lilies. Summer is warm and sweet, and I have recently learned to write my name with 4th of July sparklers, my identity glowing before me in the nighttime air.

The sparklers are not yet outlawed, the mantises not yet gone.

This praying mantis is friend, companion. It trusts my large form enough to rest on my arm. I trust it not to be too bug-like. In other words, not to frighten me.

And, in fact, it moves too slowly on me to inspire fear. Instead I am awe-struck by its beauty, honored by its confidence as it takes its measured, regal steps from the Rose of Sharon onto the flesh that I've rested beside the branch. Its vibrant green body, kelly bright in the sun. Its small triangular head with large, wise eyes. The mild, prickly feeling left on me by its long, dancer's legs.

It remains nameless through the years of our ritual, is only the praying mantis. I do not know, or care, whether it is always the same one who keeps me company in the back yard during the summer. The only thing that matters is that we share a private, intimate time and space.

Carole, my friend down the street and four years my senior, has taught me about Rose of Sharon nectar. I feed like a bee on the flowers, share with the mantis the secrets of our tree. Together we engage in magic. I cannot hope to absorb its wisdom, or its grace -- can only bask in its attitude of prayer, in its unmistakable touch.

It will vanish about the same time as the fireflies, whose ethereal lights I chase. Pretty lights, more decorative than sacred in my child's lexicon. Like saints, the fireflies will achieve their sanctity only after they are gone.

My mother explains it to me as we sit on the front step: that the praying mantis has become rare enough that it is now illegal to kill one. She does not mention pesticides, DDT. All I know is that the absence of my small, majestic friend leaves an ache in my chest that to this day remains.

As I pedal down a bike path decades later, near dusk, a light flashes from within shadowed brush. It is the first firefly that I have seen in 20 years, perhaps more. One, where before I had seen dozens in a small, urban yard, flitting amidst the lilies, roses, hyacinth, in the summers of the mantis.

With reverence and sorrow, I give thanks that something has survived. And remember the light, prickly pinch on my arm, as if to awaken me from a dream -- the embrace of an old, dear friend, whose disappearance remained a mystery until I was aware enough to know.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I'd written the above while I still lived in Massachusetts. I hadn't seen any mantises there, but I have seen them down here. Each time I do, they give me a thrill.



I think this is a male Carolina Mantis. Stagmomantis carolina, Family Mantidae. According to Bugguide.Net, this mantis ranges Virginia to Florida, west to Mexico and California, northeast to Indiana, and is the state insect of South Carolina. Feeds on "butterflies, moths, flies, small wasps and bees, true bugs and caterpillars. Often considered beneficial, mantids will eat just anything they can catch and therefore do not differentiate whether their meal is beneficial to man or not. Eggs overwinter and hatch in early spring. Adults are mature by late summer and usually die by winter, however there have been cases of them living longer in Florida (Price 1984, Prete et al. 1999)."

Near the mantis was a Velvetbean Caterpillar Moth.



Anticarsia gemmatalis. Ranges through much of North America September through November. "Variable, wings heavily mottled or mostly unmarked with weak stripe and prominent spots," says Bugguide.

I squeezed off a few shots in front of our local library on October 2, before our monthly camera club meeting.



Beach Sunflower. Helianthus debilis, Family Compositae/Asteraceae (daisy/aster). Two subspecies exist. This one is probably H. debilis subsp. cucumerifolius (Cucumber-leaf sunflower), which "is erect and occurs along the northern Gulf Coast of Florida, west to Texas, and inland, especially in disturbed sites," according to Floridata.com.



American Beautyberry. Callicarpa americana, Family Verbenaceae (verbena or vervain). Also called French mulberry. Says Floridata, "American beautyberry occurs naturally from Maryland, south to Florida, and southwesterly into Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. It also grows in Mexico, Bermuda, the Bahamas and Cuba. It inhabits relatively open, well drained, rich woodlands and dry hammocks."

Floridata adds, "The colorful berries last long into winter and are eaten by a variety of birds. They don't seem to be the most delicious food source around, though; at my place in North Florida they tend not to be eaten until late winter when they are all shriveled into beautyberry raisins!"
Now That's What I Call Perigee!



I didn't mean for this to be a stereogram, but when I looked at these shots side by side I liked the effect -- especially since the Moon seems to be floating closer than some of the clouds. Actual perigee (the Moon's closest approach to the Earth) doesn't occur until Friday. View with eyes crossed, relaxing your gaze as you focus on the "center" image.

I've finished drafting the next-to-last chapter in Book #4, but am working on tweaking and some backfill before I move on to the denouement. I've also been "reading for craft" as part of gearing up for the redrafting process.
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