Catching the Celestial Dance

I've been spending the past few days transcribing, but I've also kept my alarm set so that I can catch the coolness outside. And here in balmy Florida, I'm not talking about the temperature....(continued)

I spent much of Tuesday, November 25, at the Homosassa Public Library. The sun had set by the time I left, leaving me a brightly-lit parking lot fronting a tennis court and a pair of planets hanging in the western sky.



Jupiter is near the top center of this photo. Venus is the brighter object below and to the right (in the 5 o'clock position if Jupiter were the center of a clock face). The other spots are light distortions. That fenced-in area is the tennis court.

According to this article at Space.com, Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon are headed for a closely-knit celestial gathering come December 1. Writes Joe Rao, "The two planets will appear a similar distance apart on both the evenings of Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. They will be so close you'll be able to stretch your arm out and, with your thumb, blot both of them out."

Rao continues, "After Dec. 1, like two celestial ships passing in the night, the planets will slowly separate, but there will still be one more eye-catching sight to see. For on that very same evening, those who gaze toward the south-southwest sky for up to about two hours after sunset arise will be treated to a spectacular sight as Venus, Jupiter and the crescent moon cluster closely together. The trio will form a wide isosceles triangle, with Venus at the vertex."

Half the fun of taking these shots is watching how clearly the planets are moving with respect to each other, night after night. After the light-drenched parking lot I took to my driveway:



Here are the planets on Wednesday, November 26. Brighter planet Venus is 4.7 degrees to the lower right of Jupiter. According to the Abrams Planetarium Night Sky Notes, the two planets will be within 5 degrees of each other until December 5, 2008.



I've tweaked the balance on this shot from the same night, so as to bring out the tree silhouettes. My neighbor's holiday lights are at lower left.

I watched the planets start to jockey for position on the following night.



Suddenly Venus has moved directly below Jupiter on Thursday, November 27! The two planets are now less than 4 degrees apart. I took this shot from the road by my house.



I returned to my driveway for these shots on Friday, November 28. Venus and Jupiter are now just 3 degrees apart. In the left-hand photo I've altered the balance so as to bring out tree and roof silhouettes. My neighbor's lights are at lower left. The right-hand, zoomed-in photo is unaltered except for cropping. Venus, the lower and brighter planet, seems very close to a star in Sagittarius. The star is just below and to the left of Venus in the zoomed shot, particularly in the large view.

That brings me to Saturday, November 29. Clouds have begun to move in and storms are predicted in my area for tomorrow and Monday. That may make this my last night for photographing the dance -- but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we might have a break in the weather.



Jupiter is now above and to the right of Venus -- and the two planets are now 2.4 degrees apart. Tomorrow night they will reach their closest approach, only 2 degrees distant from each other as viewed from the Earth. A pink-tinged cloud from sunset is still visible in this shot, which is unaltered except for cropping.

I altered the balance in this next shot to bring out more silhouettes and the encroaching clouds.



As luck would have it, a short jog to the middle of the road gave me a sight line closer to the horizon and let me catch Jupiter, Venus, and a sliver of waxing crescent Moon only 5 percent of full!



The Moon is just above and to the right of my neighbor's holiday lights. Here's a larger view:



Tomorrow night, a slightly larger crescent will near the pair, when Jupiter and Venus make their closest approach to each other. "Venus and Jupiter won't be closer to each other until February 2010 at which time they'll be lower into the twilight glow," according to the Abrams Planetarium site. Then, on Monday night, the Moon will be above and to the left of the planets. "The three brightest objects in the night sky are within 4 degrees for this spectacular gathering," says the site.

I'll continue to hope for clear skies, but whether or not I get them I've had a blast following these wanderers* around.

* Our word "planet" comes from the Greek word planetes, meaning "wanderer."

Happy skygazing!

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, BuyAustralian.com, DEAstore, eCampus.com, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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News Bits and Reminiscences

Writing news



My latest contributor's copy has arrived. December 1 is the release date for Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, but the anthology can be pre-ordered here. Click here for author interviews and here to learn more about the collection. My story "Memento Mori" is inside.

Thanks to Glenda Finkelstein for this Nov. 2 review of Covenant, in which she writes:

"This book is a must read for any literary enthusiast. Elissa does a wonderful job in creating this world where the Masari and Yata live in this symbiotic relationship that is based upon ritualistic cannibalism (hence the term Covenant). In spite of the subject matter the novel is not some horrific blood bath, but a thoughtful look into the relationship between these two people groups. This balance that was created by the Covenant to preserve both races is threatened by forces from outside and within their own hearts to free themselves of this enslavement to their DNA and ecology, but may lose their societies should it be successfully destroyed. As heart wrenching as the Covenant is, extinction is worse. Join this journey of faith, doubts, heroic actions, and questionable ethics as this saga is played out upon the backdrop of this primordial world where anything can happen..."

More various and sundries follow...(continued)

Plant news

The Agave americana ("century plant") in my neighborhood has had a blessed event. I took these photos (fifth set in the longitudinal series) on November 20:



Compare with the absence of this offshoot in this photo from July 14.

"Century plant" is a misnomer. According to the San Diego Zoo, "The Agave americana is often called the century plant because was reputed to bloom only once in 100 years, but that's an exaggeration. It does only bloom once in its lifetime, but usually between 7 and 20 years. The main plant then dies, but most species produce shoots that will take over and grow to maturity."

The bud stalk has gained girth since the summer, its green seed pods have turned brown, and its leaning has increased.



Compare with this July 14 photo.



Here's the bud stalk rundown:
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008

Bird news

On Friday, November 21, I happened upon this gull convention:



There must have been hundreds of gulls in this parking lot. It looked like a scene out of Hitchcock.



The lot is about 20 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico and several miles from a series of lakes, but it's fairly close to the county landfill.



Some reminiscing...

Also on Friday I saw this sign:



I took this shot through the windshield of my car as I was stopped at a traffic light, traveling home from my writing workshop. I'm old enough to remember the oil crisis of the 1970s, and I'm barely old enough to remember when gas in the U.S. cost something like 30 cents a gallon (full service, plus you got a toy!).

In my travels this year, I've bought gas for as high as $4.01/gal. (and seen prices go higher) for regular unleaded.

This U.S. Department of Energy graph shows the price of gasoline, in both nominal (i.e., not adjusted for inflation) and real (year 2000) dollars, from 1949 through 2007.

In nominal dollars, the price of regular unleaded gas in the U.S. crossed the one-dollar mark back in 1980 and crossed the two-dollar mark in 2005 -- much more recently than I remembered. Last week I felt as though I hadn't seen gas priced below $2/gal. in ages.

According to zFacts.com, the state with the cheapest gas prices on Monday, November 24, 2008, was Montana, at $1.58/gal. I'm finishing up this entry from the Homosassa Library on Tuesday, November 25, and have seen the price drop to $1.84/gal. at one of my local stations -- though a place closer to the library is still up at $2.04.

"Shell" is one of the first two words I learned to spell. (The other was "Marx," not as in Karl or in Brothers, but as in the toy company, thanks to TV commercials.) I forget which word came first, but I distinctly remember sitting in my parents' black Rambler and making goo-goo eyes at the tall gas sign at the station just beyond the McDonald Avenue elevated subway tracks. I asked my mother what the Shell sign said.



This is Shell's 1955 logo, the one I remember seeing as a kid. I also remember the Sinclair brontosaurus, the old Mobil Pegasus, and the Esso (pre-Exxon) tiger -- but Shell was the station in my immediate Brooklyn neighborhood.

Back then, McDonald Avenue also sported trolley tracks cutting through the macadam, though the trolley was before my time. Thanks to the Forgotten New York tour of Gravesend, Brooklyn, I found this shot and commentary:



Writes, Joe DeMarco: "In the summer of 2004, workmen were busy ripping out the trolley and railroad legacy of McDonald Avenue; though trolley service had ended in the Fifties, freight service of the South Brooklyn Railway occasionally plied the tracks on the way to the Coney Island yards until 1978. The tracks had lain fallow since; after being paved over in the 1980s, they were finally yanked out about 20 years later. The tracks carried the McDonald Avenue route, #50. A short stretch of track is still detectable, though, at Shell Road where it meets West 6th Street alongside the Culver el (F train)."

(So far as I know, Shell Road bears no relation to the Shell station. The intersection is a few miles south of where I grew up.)



This shot by Tim Skoldberg at the Forgotten New York site shows the first kind of subway car I ever remember riding. In fact, I remember my very first subway ride. I must have been about two, and I screamed in my mother's arms as that behemoth pulled up to the Avenue N elevated subway station because it was frickin' loud and it hurt my ears like hell. Unlike in newer cars, those windows could be opened by passengers, which probably explained why the sills inside were consistently sooty. The seat backs and bottoms alternated between a comfy red (velveteen or leatherette, I forget) and a sticky, uncomfortable yellow wicker. I made a special effort to find non-wicker seat bottoms.

As for my other "first spelling word," I had a particular hankering for Marx trucks, like the one shown here in Don Bruno's collection of pressed steel toy trucks:



I can therefore thank crass commercialism for my start in reading.

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving!

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, BuyAustralian.com, DEAstore, eCampus.com, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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Florida Writers Association Conference

I got home yesterday afternoon from the Florida Writers Association's "Chart Your Course" conference, my ninth and final travel convention of 2008. Add in book-signings, media interviews, and one-day festivals, and that brings this year's event tally up to 19, with two more scheduled before the end of the year. That includes tomorrow's "Write-In" at the Homosassa Public Library and a December 13 book-signing at Poe House Books in Crystal River. Those final two events are within my home county.


Room 608, Lake Mary Marriott, outside of Orlando

Honestly, I don't know how the heck I'm still standing. But there is much to be said for how a convention can energize a person, and the FWA conference was a prime example of that. What set this event apart from the others for me was its focus on craft, combined with aggressive efforts (in the best possible sense) in networking and promotion. It also had fabulous keynote speakers, including St. Petersburg Times reporter Jeff Klinkenberg during the banquet, whose "Weird Florida" talk almost had me snorting coffee out my nose. His delivery prompted someone at my table to say he'd buy the speech as a comedy album if it were put on a CD. The conference-end keynote from C. Hope Clark (editor at FundsForWriters.com) inspired all of us to not only write and submit, but to sell -- and to savor the pride and passion of what it means to be a writer.... (continued)


Conference registration

As my friend Emily Antonen put it, this conference was "sacred space."



The hallway display to the left shows items in the silent auction to benefit the Florida Writers Foundation. While the Florida Writers Association works to advance the craft and career of writers, the Foundation works to promote literacy. I bid on and won a coffee-table-size collection of the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz, donated by Kodak. (The book peeks out from behind the statue.)


FWA Conference Bookstore

The bookstore carried Covenant and the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (which includes my story "Arachne"). Also on display were postcards for Electric Velocipede (which includes my story "Hermit Crabs") and flyers for both Riffing on Strings and the forthcoming anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (available for pre-order here, with contributor interviews here. Unspeakable Horror will include my story "Memento Mori").


Covenant display


Riffing on Strings display



Shown here is the venue where writers participated in reserved, paid-for interviews with agents and publishers, for the purpose of delivering pitches for their work.


Networking reception for volunteers and faculty

In addition to a reading and bookstore sales, I gave two workshops at this event, one on metaphor and one on character and plot development. Feedback was very positive -- attendees told me that I had given them actual, practical tools that they could immediately apply, rather than just theory.


Schedule board with the sign for my metaphor workshop

At 9 on Saturday morning the audience for my second workshop came ... and came ... and came ... to the point where we had standing room only and we had to commandeer chairs from the adjoining room so we could sardine everyone in.


Photo credit: Karen Lieb


Photo credit: Karen Lieb

An hour or so later, those sheets on the wall behind me were completely filled.

Before the conference, I'd been most nervous about giving this particular workshop because it marked the first time in 16 years that I conducted it as I'd originally designed it. The format requires enough wall space to accommodate 11 and possibly more large sheets of paper. Coordinator Chrissy Jackson pointed me to self-stick Post-It wall easel pads:



I love this product. Individual sheets can attach to walls, including walls covered in ribbed fabric, and I used large crayons for scribbling. No tape marks, no bleed-through. My Persona Workshop is a collective brainstorming session, very high-energy, and no two sessions are alike. I had to be quick on my feet, both in running up and down the front of the room and in responding to call-outs/making connections across what amounted to a gigantic storyboard. The "playshop," as I call it, is almost 100% spontaneous.

As if all that weren't enough, the conference location outside Orlando gave us a thrilling view of Friday night's launch of the shuttle Endeavour. I couldn't help comparing it to the only other time I've watched a shuttle launch, that of STS-1 -- the very first, back in April 1981. As a volunteer at a small publication I had come as a member of the press, which placed me three miles away from the launch pad. That maiden voyage of now-gone Columbia carrying astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen had driven some press members to tears. The force of the rockets had sent our pants legs flapping behind us even from three miles away.

I was dozens of miles away from Endeavour's launch on Friday night, close to the end of the shuttle program and halfway between the conference's banquet/networking reception and open mic.



I stood with dozens of other writers in the balmy outdoors, instructed by the hotel staff to look between the parking lot's sodium lamp and the palm tree. Twenty-seven years after that momentous first-ever shuttle launch, we cheered Endeavour on like fans at a football game.


A section of the outdoor crowd, a few minutes after the launch



The FWA's Royal Palm Literary Award ceremonies took us almost to midnight. Winners include Joyce Elson Moore (the white-haired woman standing beside the flag), one of the founding members of my local critique group.



The FWA's chapter map. There are as yet no chapters in my county. The closest one is about 30 miles away.

On the drive home I almost photographed a large, lighted sign advertising gas at $1.99/gal. at the intersection of SR-44 and I-75, but the traffic light changed before I could squeeze off a shot.



Flyer for tomorrow's "Write-In" event at the library, the second of three events for the November Novelists group of people participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).



My display for the NaNoWriMo Kickoff on October 29

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, BuyAustralian.com, DEAstore, eCampus.com, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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Moonsorrow - Tulimyrsky EP (2008)

Genre: folk metal, viking metal, pagan metal, black metal
About: Quite possibly the most epic EP of all time. Starts off with the epic and varied self-titled song, weighing in at almost 30 minutes, then two re-recordings of old songs, and two covers, For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica cover), Back to North (Merciless cover).

This EP sees a set of visitors in form of actor Turkka Mastomäki, Olav Eira
(Áigi), Tomi Koivusaari (Amorphis), Oppu Laine (Mannhai) and Janne Perttilä
(Rytmihäiriö/Moonsorrow), all of whom contributed vocals.

From Finland, of course.

LINK REMOVED DUE TO COMPLAINT (This is why I mostly post underground stuff and my blog has so few followers) I have my own views about music sharing... I will leave it for another day. In essence, I would never be a fan of an awesome band such as Moonsorrow if it wasn't for it. If i really feel an artist deserved my hard earned money, I will do so. (Such as, i have purchased every Metallica and Rhapsody of Fire album on CD) If not, i should at least be able to hear it! Eh... not quite what i wanted to say but oh well.

However, you should definitely check this album out elsewhere.
BUY from official Moonsorrow shop

Still Weaning from CNN

I've been in a bit of a fog -- a happy fog, granted -- but with new work coming in, it's time I got back on the stick. I started writing this entry last week but got sidetracked.



The photo above is my answer to The Kid's meme back on the 4th: "Take a picture of the line you're waiting in, and/or a pic of YOU with your 'I voted!' sticker!!"

Having voted early, I'll let my TV serve as my proxy and Mary's. Note the four "I Voted" stickers to the right of the screen. The large, circular stickers that say "I Made Freedom Count" come from the primary, when we heard our Florida votes were to be tossed out because the primary occurred too early. The smaller, oval stickers up top are from the general election.

I rarely watch TV news, choosing to get my info either from the newspaper or from NPR. That said, when I do watch TV news, it's deep immersion.

I've been listening to and reading the various bits of punditry being bandied about, and on that score there's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said. So instead of doing that, I decided to write about the memories that have traveled through me these past few weeks....

(continued)

The last time I watched the political news this unrelentingly was during the Watergate hearings. I'd literally get home from high school, plop down in front of our dinette's black-and-white set, and be immovable. We had a color TV by then (we'd gotten one in 1966), but the color TV sat in our living room where my father gave piano, organ, and accordion lessons and was inaccessible when students were over. Among other things, the color TV was for late-night, long-before-cable, broadcast news, but our dinette TV was the one most often pressed into service.

That same dinette TV provided my first-ever memory of a presidential election. I was two years old, the year was 1960, and the contest was between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. As the much-later producers of Teletubbies knew, kids pick up on and can remember images from that early, and I was no exception. My single memory, aided by parental reinforcement, was that whenever Nixon's face came on the tube I said, "Shut up, Nixon," no doubt echoing my folks.

I was born during the Eisenhower administration but I remember nothing of it directly. My first political memory dates back to the 1960 debate, the first one in which television made a difference.

I turned 18 less than a month before the 1976 Presidential election. My parents and I went to our polling place, the administration building for Friends Field in Brooklyn. Friends Field was my favorite outdoor hangout, with a picnic table where I spread out my homework and then my writing notebook. I listened to my transistor radio as I daydreamed and watched Little League when a game was in progress. Beyond the baseball field was the F-train's elevated tracks. To the right of that was Washington Cemetery.



This photo dates from the mid-70s. I don't know who this boy was, but I thought it was pretty cool that he had climbed a tree. I'd never been inside the Friends Field administration building before the '76 election. The building is out of frame, off to the right. The F-train "el" is behind me and the cemetery is out of frame, to the left.

For at least a quarter-century I have voted by either punching holes in cards or filling them in on paper sheets (as I did this time). But in '76 I was introduced to levers, in a booth where pulling on a long arm closed and then opened a heavy cloth curtain, the type you'd see in a theater. There was a practice booth for first-time voters, along with a giant replica of the ballot.

The first time I stepped inside one of those for real, armed with the power of my vote, I experienced the best kind of shock and awe imaginable. Pressing down a hard, solid lever with my index finger to vote for my chosen candidate felt like a sacred act. I forget whether I double-checked or triple-checked before I hauled on that massive arm that clicked everything back into place and opened the curtains. I lost track of how long I simply stood inside the machine, taking everything in.

I forget whether I actually heard voices raised and questioning outside, or whether my parents told me afterwards that they had to explain to the others in line that I was casting my very first vote and that's why I was taking so long.

I'd just turned old enough to vote, but I was also old enough to remember Watergate. And, after Watergate, President Gerald Ford's words, "Our long national nightmare is over." His words of hope. I'd voted for Carter, and subsequently wrote him an angry letter when I was protesting against nuclear power after Three Mile Island.

I was only two generations removed from a time when women couldn't vote at all. My maternal grandmother, my only living grandparent when I was born, had attended Margaret Sanger meetings in secret, when birth control was outlawed.

There is much to be said about one's ancestral memory.

I forget how young I was -- somewhere in the early grades -- when I learned about my country's history of slavery, but I remember how utterly shocked I was. My ancestors had fled slavery in Egypt, and I grew up learning that it was one of, if not the most evil institution imaginable. That the country to which I pledged allegiance every school day had engaged in that practice seemed unthinkable, but it was also indisputable.

Closer to home, I'd experienced my first taste of racism in kindergarten. Two teachers ran my class. Mrs. N was a lovely person. Mrs. K berated the only black child in the class, a little girl, telling her over and over how stupid she was and driving her to tears. It's an indelible memory. I was very withdrawn as a child, berated for my almost-constant daydreaming, and I felt powerless to do anything, even to comfort the girl. But I noticed the abuse, and I wish I could have been stronger.

It's probably why I let a black girl beat me up in the schoolyard in the sixth grade. She was convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was the same girl who had mistreated her at another school. I had not gone to any other public school. I couldn't convince the girl I was not the person she thought I was, and I suffered only some light bruising. I could see how angry and hurt she was.

My mother taught high school in the inner city and came home daily with stories both horrific and triumphant of what her students experienced. She'd literally broken up knife fights and told me about pot smoke and used syringes in the stairwells. Then there were the students who fought against the odds, her best and brightest, whom she took annually to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. She took me out of my own school for the trips, writing to my teachers that I'd had an upper respiratory infection that day. I enjoyed conversations with her students on the bus and I remember one Magic Moment when one of her students told me she'd held hands with God in a dream. The clasp matched the one I've used in my own spiritual meditations since I was about ten, and it's the same clasp that's the logo for the Boys and Girls Clubs, though I didn't consciously know it at the time:



My mother was also the advisor for the school's literary magazine, and my family's finished basement became the headquarters for cut-and-paste layout. Several students, most of them people of color, spent a day in a neighborhood that was predominantly Jewish and Italian. When I was eight years old my mother pressed me into service to help her grade papers -- first multiple-choice tests against a key, then essays when I knew enough to find grammatical errors. Back then, during the Vietnam War, most of the essays dealt with issues of love and peace and had a simplicity and innocence about them. They contrasted with my mother's reports of prostitutes "doing their business in the teacher's parking lot" and the principal's alleged line to gang members that they could kill anyone they wanted to "as long as it isn't on school property."

She told stories about one student, in and out of mental institutions, who would erupt into screams in the middle of class. After the student had her baby, she fought her demons enough to come back to class to take the final exams needed to get her high school diploma.

Another student, a young man, wrote beautiful nature poetry. One day, when the lock to the teacher's women's room was stuck, he jimmied the door open for my mother. She took one look at his switchblade and asked, "You?" He explained, briefly and sincerely, that he had to survive.

I followed the 1972 campaign of Brooklyn Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first major-party African-American candidate for President. I'm happy to see her name mentioned more now than it had been during Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 campaigns, when several sources incorrectly called Jackson the first African-American major-party presidential candidate. He was the second. Shirley was the first. I can hear her voice as I type -- eloquent, civil, and no-nonsense. Still too young to vote, I cheered for her back then, 36 years ago.

When I was in college a friend of mine, L, worked as an usher on Broadway, which meant she traveled through Times Square. She and I belonged to our alma mater's honorary music society. Back in the 70s, Times Square was still a red light district. L was one of the most physically and spiritually beautiful women I'd ever known, who happened to be African-American. She'd been on her way to her job as usher, dressed in a non-provocative way that complemented her beauty, when the cops arrested her for suspected prostitution. I still remember her hurt and outrage.

I also remember her once telling me, "You're very smart, but you're not stuck up about it. You're a real human being." It made me cry, because as much as high grades were valued in my household I was also made to feel ashamed of my intelligence when I was growing up. It makes me cry to remember her kindness and then of how unjustly she was treated.

On the night of November 4, Mary and I sat before the TV with a fresh supply of air-popped popcorn. In addition to CNN, we'd also been on a steady diet of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, with weekly side trips to Chocolate News. We were watching the John Stewart/Stephen Colbert special on Comedy Central when the election was called for Barack Obama. We toasted the result with sherry before we switched back to CNN.

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, BuyAustralian.com, DEAstore, eCampus.com, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The sequel, Appetite, is forthcoming. The Deviations page has additional details.

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