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greygirlbeastThe world was deprived of no great entertainments that I posted no entry yesterday. It all goes back to the book I agreed to review for Publisher's Weekly. And the fact that I never do today what I can put off until next month. So, Wednesday was reading, reading, reading — and then I finally wrote the review yesterday. After this, I send it to my editor at PW. But. I was not meant to be a book reviewer. I don't know who would want to be. We'd all be better off without book reviews. And the pay, even when it's good, is for shit. So, yeah, likely I shall not do that again. I have no business mouthing off — in print — about an author many, many years my senior who has written and published far more than have I, and has awards out the wazoo, and so forth. And getting paid for it. But, you know. I'll try anything once...or twice, if it leaves a nice scar.
Congratulations to the winners of the "cephaloflap" and "doodleflap" auctions. They ended while I was looking the other way.
Er...yesterday. Well, besides finishing the novel I had to review, I moved the CD shelf, all the hundreds and hundreds of CDs (and no one should own hundreds and maybe thousands of CDs) from the "middle parlour" to the kitchen. More unpacking. After 5 pm, Spooky and I went to the little farmer's market at the Dexter Training Ground, to pick up our weekly bag of produce (it's a local farmer's support thingy), and this week we got apple butter, a mescaline salad mix, three tomatoes, apple mint, a cucumber, strawberries, and sugar snap peas. And then we went to Whole Foods, and East Side Market. Providence is at its most stunning in the late afternoon sunlight of summer. I'm going to have to walk out onto the Point Street Bridge soon, late in the day, and take some photos. Many boxes were broken down and carried to the street yesterday, as this morning the recycling truck came. No, they're not yet all unpacked, the boxes from Atlanta, but we're at least 90% of the way there. This is coming out all higgledy-piggledy, my recollections of yesterday, but who cares, eh? Late, late, I did some ritual work and also some writing in my Book of Shadows for this evening's seaside Solstice ceremony. Spooky and I took a very short walk about 2:45 ayem (I stayed up too late), and the moon was full (well, one night past) and beautiful hanging over all these old Victorian rooftops. Spooky trimmed my hair, which badly needed it after the ravages of the move. The postman brought the June 2008 Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, and it looks to be a great one, lots of dinosaurs and non-archosaurian herps. Oh, and I got a package from Writer's House (the lit agency that handles me), with half the advance for the German-language editions of Low Red Moon and Threshold, and that was a welcome sight (Amazon.com has gone back to making it a pain in the eema to find the new mmp of the former, by the way). For dinner, Spooky made bow-tie pasta with an arugula pesto and spicy Italian sausages. I read more of Fraser's book on the Triassic (I wish I were being paid to review that). And, give or take, that was yesterday.
Oh, I've made another "word cloud," this time from three paragraphs near the middle of Chapter One of The Red Tree. Also, this one uses two hundred words, whereas the last one used only one hundred and fifty (just click to see the larger version):
Today, well...there's some work, though there likely won't be much. We're getting ready for Solstice tonight and for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sovay's arrival tomorrow afternoon. Monday, though, I make one more trip over to Moosup Valley, and on Tuesday I nail myself inside this office and don't come out until The Red Tree is written (fortunately, there's an entrance to the bathroom from my office). I have lost far too much time, and have far too little time until the book is due. And I know it will refuse to be rushed, even if I had the will to rush it, which I don't.
Yesterday,nullmode wrote: Having been involved with wicca some years ago and being disappointed by the fro fro nature of what I found there I gave up on it. However, reading your blog and the comments of some of your readers I find myself inspired by the fact that there are intelligent people out there practicing in a meaningful way. So, although I know that discussion indicates that there are not many great books out there, do you have any recommendations? I'd like to re-explore a bit and I was wondering what you've read and liked.
And I replied: I have found very, very few.
First, and foremost, I would recommend Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford; 1999). Also, something of a classic and slightly dated (but maybe good for that reason), Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess Worshipers, and Other Pagans in America Today (Penguin Compass; 1979, 1986). Those are, by far, the two best that I have found. Starhawk's The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (HarperSanFrancisco; 1999), in its 20th-anniversary incarnation, is not so bad as many who disparage "fluffy-bunny" Paganism make out. Sure, Starhawk is still full of it as regards buying into Murray's ideas about there having once existed a universal goddess religion and a race of Pictish dwarves and all that, and she can go a bit twee at times, but she has a poet's ear. Too many Wiccan books read like bad goth poetry. Starhawk also gets points from me for at least trying to embrace science and rationalism, for her ecological emphasis, and for generally seeming to regard magick as a matter more of psychology than of manipulation of cause and effect and matter.
Anyway...those are the three I'd recommend at this point. Hutton is the best. Adler shows us what Paganism in America was like before the Coming of the Fluffy Bunnies and the subsequent loss of diversity, before wishful thinking overtook common sense.
Okay. Gotta go. Merry Litha, to thems what observes it. Miles to go before I sleep, and all that rot.
Congratulations to the winners of the "cephaloflap" and "doodleflap" auctions. They ended while I was looking the other way.
Er...yesterday. Well, besides finishing the novel I had to review, I moved the CD shelf, all the hundreds and hundreds of CDs (and no one should own hundreds and maybe thousands of CDs) from the "middle parlour" to the kitchen. More unpacking. After 5 pm, Spooky and I went to the little farmer's market at the Dexter Training Ground, to pick up our weekly bag of produce (it's a local farmer's support thingy), and this week we got apple butter, a mescaline salad mix, three tomatoes, apple mint, a cucumber, strawberries, and sugar snap peas. And then we went to Whole Foods, and East Side Market. Providence is at its most stunning in the late afternoon sunlight of summer. I'm going to have to walk out onto the Point Street Bridge soon, late in the day, and take some photos. Many boxes were broken down and carried to the street yesterday, as this morning the recycling truck came. No, they're not yet all unpacked, the boxes from Atlanta, but we're at least 90% of the way there. This is coming out all higgledy-piggledy, my recollections of yesterday, but who cares, eh? Late, late, I did some ritual work and also some writing in my Book of Shadows for this evening's seaside Solstice ceremony. Spooky and I took a very short walk about 2:45 ayem (I stayed up too late), and the moon was full (well, one night past) and beautiful hanging over all these old Victorian rooftops. Spooky trimmed my hair, which badly needed it after the ravages of the move. The postman brought the June 2008 Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, and it looks to be a great one, lots of dinosaurs and non-archosaurian herps. Oh, and I got a package from Writer's House (the lit agency that handles me), with half the advance for the German-language editions of Low Red Moon and Threshold, and that was a welcome sight (Amazon.com has gone back to making it a pain in the eema to find the new mmp of the former, by the way). For dinner, Spooky made bow-tie pasta with an arugula pesto and spicy Italian sausages. I read more of Fraser's book on the Triassic (I wish I were being paid to review that). And, give or take, that was yesterday.
Oh, I've made another "word cloud," this time from three paragraphs near the middle of Chapter One of The Red Tree. Also, this one uses two hundred words, whereas the last one used only one hundred and fifty (just click to see the larger version):
Today, well...there's some work, though there likely won't be much. We're getting ready for Solstice tonight and for
sovay's arrival tomorrow afternoon. Monday, though, I make one more trip over to Moosup Valley, and on Tuesday I nail myself inside this office and don't come out until The Red Tree is written (fortunately, there's an entrance to the bathroom from my office). I have lost far too much time, and have far too little time until the book is due. And I know it will refuse to be rushed, even if I had the will to rush it, which I don't.Yesterday,
nullmode wrote: Having been involved with wicca some years ago and being disappointed by the fro fro nature of what I found there I gave up on it. However, reading your blog and the comments of some of your readers I find myself inspired by the fact that there are intelligent people out there practicing in a meaningful way. So, although I know that discussion indicates that there are not many great books out there, do you have any recommendations? I'd like to re-explore a bit and I was wondering what you've read and liked.And I replied: I have found very, very few.
First, and foremost, I would recommend Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford; 1999). Also, something of a classic and slightly dated (but maybe good for that reason), Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess Worshipers, and Other Pagans in America Today (Penguin Compass; 1979, 1986). Those are, by far, the two best that I have found. Starhawk's The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (HarperSanFrancisco; 1999), in its 20th-anniversary incarnation, is not so bad as many who disparage "fluffy-bunny" Paganism make out. Sure, Starhawk is still full of it as regards buying into Murray's ideas about there having once existed a universal goddess religion and a race of Pictish dwarves and all that, and she can go a bit twee at times, but she has a poet's ear. Too many Wiccan books read like bad goth poetry. Starhawk also gets points from me for at least trying to embrace science and rationalism, for her ecological emphasis, and for generally seeming to regard magick as a matter more of psychology than of manipulation of cause and effect and matter.
Anyway...those are the three I'd recommend at this point. Hutton is the best. Adler shows us what Paganism in America was like before the Coming of the Fluffy Bunnies and the subsequent loss of diversity, before wishful thinking overtook common sense.
Okay. Gotta go. Merry Litha, to thems what observes it. Miles to go before I sleep, and all that rot.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 06:19 pm (UTC)bow-tie pasta
hey you really got me thinking there for a second. Farfalle, right?
bow-tie....tststs they really do look like butterflies
German-language editions of Low Red Moon and Threshold,
oh both at once? i have the first on preorder...is the second one avaiable now?
nope "Fossil" ISBN-13: 978-3499249020 is to come next january (so long to wait) and whatever will be the name of "Low red moon" is not even announced yet.
That word-thingy is an iresistable toy, isn't it?
The Coming of the Fluffy Bunnies
sounds almost as if it could be a nice horror-flick
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 06:32 pm (UTC)Farfalle, right?
Yep.
oh both at once? i have the first on preorder...is the second one avaiable now?
nope "Fossil" ISBN-13: 978-3499249020 is to come next january (so long to wait) and whatever will be the name of "Low red moon" is not even announced yet.
I had no idea it would be called Fossil in Germany. Interesting, considering I'd intended it to be called Trilobite in English, but the publisher insisted on a name change. I don't even remember why. I don't know what the German would be on Low Red Moon, if they did a strict transliteration. Niedriger roter Mond? No idea. No one tells me anything. I'm just the writer.
That word-thingy is an iresistable toy, isn't it?
It truly is.
sounds almost as if it could be a nice horror-flick
Night of the Lepus (1972).
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 07:27 pm (UTC)Hmm right, in a literal translation. But the first word going from one to three syllabels makes it sound wrong
Tiefer roter Mond
tief can be used for that too, not just to translate deep
i like trilbites...really beautiful
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 07:31 pm (UTC)Tiefer roter Mond
tief can be used for that too, not just to translate deep
Thank you. For my German is ass...
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 07:33 pm (UTC)well your German might be better
but Mylady, if mood strikes you to get your German brushed up, i will be your servant ;-)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 02:10 am (UTC)Yeah, 'cause, you know, between all the writing, and the witchcraft, and the reading, and Second Life, and the paleo' studies, and breathing, and bathing...oh, and occasionally sleeping...I have so much time left over to brush up on another language. ;-)
Where are my damned co-conscious clones!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 05:46 am (UTC)of course i understand you have not as much time to do everything you would like to do.....doesn't everybody have this problem?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 05:54 am (UTC)sleep is overrated ;-) did nobody tell you?
For years I said, "You can sleep when you're dead." Then my body said, "Fuck that shit." So, now I have to try for at least 7 hrs. a night.
of course i understand you have not as much time to do everything you would like to do.....doesn't everybody have this problem?
Maybe. I don't know, excepting in my own case. I have about 1/100th the time required.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 07:06 pm (UTC)Please let me know more about the local farmers' produce bag: I just read about a farm in Michigan that does this as well on subscription, and I hear noises about several local farmers here in Dallas doing the same thing. I'd love to see this become a lot more widespread.
Thus far, we've been very pleased. We paid $200 for, I think, ten weeks. A bag a week. I'm not sure we'll be able to get on the autumn list, as I fear it has already filled.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 02:07 am (UTC)Warren Ellis on that wonderful question: where he gets his ideas.
Okay. This I have to see...
Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 08:24 pm (UTC)(And thank you for supporting local agriculture.)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 02:09 am (UTC)Solstice Blessings to you, Spooky and Hubero.
Thank you. And to you and yours, as well.
from us amidst much moon-howling, placenta-burying and wine-drinking here on the farm.
Oh, to have a farm *sigh* We have to settle for Spooky's folks having one. It is our vicarious farm.
(And thank you for supporting local agriculture.)
You're welcome!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 02:46 am (UTC)http://tagcrowd.com/
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 04:16 am (UTC)Oh how the internet provides:
http://tagcrowd.com/
Hmmmmmmmm. I'll have to puzzle over that one after my obsession with "wordles" ends....
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 04:20 am (UTC)Completely understood.
It has very flexible, extremely customizable parameters, a fact which works really well, for me.