Elizabeth Moon's Blog, page 15

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Of Gauge and Absence and Hoping Socks Fit

Sometimes we shoot ourselves in both feet but don't feel the pain until most of the way through the race.   And so it has been with the current pair of socks, just off the needles today.  They look innocent, don't they, laid on a picnic table bench for display?

Just a simple pair of light-blue and white striped socks, simple construction, nothing to 'em.  But behind these socks are a series of assumptions about what the yarn would do, and I could do, given the circumstances involved in making the socks--which I set up for myself.


I made  these socks for a friend who lives over a thousand miles away.  Which means I have never had her feet to measure, or measure with.  At least when I made socks for my friend who lives part of the year in New Zealand, she was only fifty miles away and we saw each other at choir practice and on Sundays.   So, right off the bat, I depended on my distant friend to understand my request for certain measurements.

Second, I made these socks of very old yarn, a stiffish blend of Orlon and wool originally misnamed "Fabulend".  They are striped., with yarns which I assumed (yes, I know)  would handle the same and knit the same.  Same brand, same weight, same content--surely they'd knit just the same, right?  (Bitter laugh here.)

I had a full or mostly full skein of the white, and a partical skein of hte blue.  Hence, not enough of either to make a pair ot socks.  Hence, stripes.  I felt very clever at that point.   It "felt" like altogether there was enough weight of yarn for two socks.  No, I don't have a scale that would have weighed to the right accuracy to find out, or even find out how much blue there was.  It "felt" like maybe 2/3 of the amount in the white skein.  Surely at least half.

I started one sock, then realized it would be better to work them in parallel.  So...without measuring (too much yarn to measure it with one little ol' yardstick and the weather was cold and wet--no stretching it on the lawn outside), or getting a scale so I could weigh it, I decided to "guesstimate" while winding it from the swift what was half a skein and half the unknown amount of blue.  Yeah.  THAT was smart.  Not.   I had in mind a design with bold, matching stripes on the cuffs, with the blue used below the ribbing and for the heel, with thinner non-matching blue stripes on white for the foot, and a blue toe with a single white stripe...for the sock that used the smaller ball of blue...there sure wasn't much blue left when I finished.



At least I'd made my friend a pair of socks with the same kind of yarn before (socks my mother had started.)  And I had measured the socks, making notes.  With sketches.  With numbers.  Notes I had been sure were complete.    Except they really weren't, something that became clearer and clearer as I neared the toe decreases.


This picture shows some of the yarn's problems.  It's stiffish, it kinks, and it splits.  So the heel appears to have sucked in part of the width of the food.  I'm usually a very consistent knitter, easily keeping my gauge the same through a project.  But look again at the ribbed cuff (not the top--it was cast on a larger needle.) Notice that the blue stripes bulge out a little compared to the white.  Yup--my gauge on the blue is not the same as on the white.  Something I didn't figure into the pattern.  Compared to the wool socks I make, the socks are stiff (but hearty--boy, they do feel hearty!)

Where I wanted to reinforce the carrying of a color across another stripe to another of its own, by knitting one stitch with both yarns, the stiffness of the yarn pushed other stitches much farther away than normal, and there's a laddery vertical row in the back.  Not a problem I've had in striping the ribbed cuffs with wool yarn.

I consider the successful (if these fit my friend, which I won't know until she gets the package and tries them on)  completion of this project to be way more luck and stubbornness than intelligence and skill.  Just so you know.

The War on Woman: Criminalizing Spontaneous Miscarriage

The so-called "Pro- LIfe" movement (which should be more accurately called the "Pro-Fetus" movement, since the lives of women are considered less important--even negligible--in comparison with a fertilized egg) has resulted in changes in the law that increasingly criminalize spontaneous miscarriage and put all pregnant women at risk of unjust arrest, confinement, and punishment.

A few years back, a pregnant woman in Missouri fell downstairs and went to a hospital to see if the fall had injured her fetus.  She was arrested on suspicion of having thrown herself down the stairs to achieve an (illegal by then) abortion and jailed to "protect" her fetus from her.   New laws in some states have made it a crime for a pregnant woman to do anything that anyone anywhere thinks might harm the fetus.--and women have been put in prison to prevent this harm.  Because women's civil rights are nothing compared to a fetus.

And now a woman has been sentenced to 70 years in prison because...she had a spontaneous miscarriage of a tiny fetus that was dead on arrival.   On the basis of unscientific "evidence".  On the basis of unscientific assumptions (any woman who has a miscarriage must have been trying to end her pregnancy.)    On the basis of unscientific pressure from certain religious and political groups whose war on women has been a consistent, fanatic attack on women's freedom in multiple areas, but most stark when it comes to medicine and reproduction.   Ms. Patel's life--her essential human rights--have been taken to punish her for killing (for which there is no evidence) a fetus so premature that--had it been delivered alive  in a hospital--would not have lived, and had it come out dead would not have been cause for any legal action whatsoever.  Miscarriages happen.

Why do I care?  Because miscarriages--spontaneous miscarriages--and stillbirths are part of my personal history.

They were not my own--they were my mother's.  And her mother's.  My maternal grandmother delivered only two live children but had miscarriages and at least one stillbirth (my mother remembered that one.)  This was blamed (at that time) on an injury she had sustained as a child.  My mother had five unsuccessful pregnancies in a row, including second and third trimester miscarriages and at least one stillbirth (so recorded becase he died in less than two minutes.)  Had the current laws in Indiana (where my mother lived for several of these) been the same then as now, my mother would surely have been arrested on suspicion of attempting to end her pregnancy, tried, probably convicted, and imprisoned.

And I would not exist.  I am the product of her last, successful pregnancy.   Because the law did not condemn her for having miscarriages--because it was understood that these occur, that some women do lose pregnancies over and over--she was not in prison, and on D-Day she and her husband had sex, and nine months later I was born.  Because she was not in prison, the work she did--which included saving a lot of lives by her engineering work during WWII, her nursing work in polio wards (she'd had polio as a child and was immune)--was done.  Because she was not in prison, the art she painted, the clothes she made for me and others, the sweaters and mittens and hats she knitted, the friends she had--all that happened.  Not to mention the important thing for me--the mother she was to me until she died at 77 a quarter century ago.

Because the new laws did not exist, my life does.  Her life--as a free person, able to contribute in the many ways she contributed to family, friends, community, the world--existed.  Whatever I've contributed (certainly not as much as she did) in my 70 years--the same number of years that Ms. Patel will be in prison--is due to the fact that the laws then were kinder than the laws now.  The books I've written would not have been written.  The music I've played and sung--would not have been played or sung the same.  Our son would not be where and what he is now.   Ms. Patel will not have that chance at life.  She will not have a chance to have children she wants, with enough health care during pregnancy to give her a better chance to carry them to term.  She will not get to be a mother, or whatever else she wants to be.

And for what?  For the sake of a fetus already dead?  For a theory about women that denies in them all possibility of existing as free persons, allowed to make choices about themselves and their own bodies...a theory that allows some men to call them "cows" and insist that their only value is in bearing children?  A theory that says their lives are valueless compared to that of a fertilized egg?  It's a lie.  It's a lie that miscarriages are all a cover for abortion.  It's a lie that women can't be pregnant without knowing it, or can't know how far along they are, or can't mistake the pain of labor with an early fetus for stomach cramps.  It's a lie that says any injury during pregnancy was probably self-inflicted to get rid of hte pregnancy.

I know people who've had a therapeutic abortion--the fetus was dead, or was anencephalic and doomed to death shortly after birth, while the mother's life was endangered by continuing the pregnancy.  Of the ones I know, every one had a healthy child born in a later pregnancy.  Without that abortion, they would likely have died and never had a living child.  But those who want women as cattle--as breeding animals--condemn saving the life of a living person--a living citizen who under the Constitution should have the same rights as men--and claim it's about the poor innocent little fetus.  That's a lie.  If they cared about fetal health, they would make sure that the environment in which women live--the air, the water, the food, the space, the social conditions--were those which best support pregnancy.  They don't.  What they care about is controlling women, keeping them subordinate, dependent, and, yes, pregnant.  "Keep them pregnant and barefoot" as the saying goes and is still heard in some quarters.  If they die of such treatment, there's always more where she came from.

It is disgusting and shameful that Ms. Patel has been sentenced to 70 years.  It would be disgusting and shameful is the sentence were 7 years or even one year.   It is disgusting and shameful that religious bigotry and male domination has written and enforced these laws.  That a woman's life is not considered as valuable to society as well as to herself--that her freedom can be so constrained.

Someone asked me, sneeringly as they do, how I'd feel if my mother had chosen to abort me.  The obvious answer is that I wouldn't be around to have feelings about it.   I said that, and added that knowing I was a wanted child--that she had pushed past great difficulties and medical warnings to get pregnant again (this time with me)  was certainly better than being unwanted and having a parent say so.  The less obvious answer is that my other grandmother--my father's mother--wanted my mother to get an illegal abortion so she could give my father a divorce when he wanted it.  She tried to push my mother down the stairs.  My mother fought her way out of her mother-in-law's house, and (having survivor instincts)  went a thousand miles away just in case.

I believe every woman has a right to make her own decisions regarding her own body.  I believe that all forms of birth control that are medically safe should be available, and abortion should be available for when those methods fail.   Society--or any particular person, male or female--has no legitimate interest in the products of conception--only the woman carrying them does.  Society should be more interested in the woman--in her health and safety and her basic human rights--than in what's inside her uterus.  Ms. Patel should be free.  Those bad laws should be rescinded.

More Sock Progress Report

The "Blackberry" Socks--finished Saturday night, March 7.   Put on for the first time this evening, for their "first wearing" portrait.
And the Orlon/wool blend light-blue and white socks are now (Sunday night, March 8) ready for the heel turn, though I need to wait for daylight to do that.


Heel flap at top, eye of partridge reinforcing stitch, ready for heel turn
Both pictures taken at night indoors, by kitchen light + camera flash.  These socks are not the same size or knitted in the same gauge.  They're on size 4 needles, not 5s, and are for a smaller person.

I Know A Lot About Marriage

In another couple of days I'll be 70.   I've been married since I was 24-and-some-months.  Before you try to do the math, the last anniversary was the 45th.  So on the topic of marriage, I have more experience than average.   Do try this at home, if you think you have what it takes...

And that leads me to comment on some of the idiocy that's been spouted about marriage over the past half of my married life when it comes to the possibility and then the reality, of recognizing same-sex unions as, yanno, marriages.  Real actual marriages that give same-sex couples or partners or whatever they've been called the same legal status as different-sex marriages.  Because the idiocy being spouted has made me madder and madder over the years, since it consists of a combination of fear, ignorance, selfishness, and downright meanness.


Like I said, I know a lot about marriage, as does anyone who's been in one as long as I have.   And I can definitely tell you what damages "traditional" (straight) marriage between a man and a woman:  the man and the woman in that marriage.  Not gay marriage.  Not the rate of divorce.  Not sex education in the schools.   Not anything but the behavior of the man and the woman in that traditional marriage can really harm that traditional marriage. 

Legitimizing gay marriage does not make straight marriage less legitimate.  It doesn't make straight people gay.  It doesn't make them be unfaithful to each other.  It doesn't make them lie, cheat, steal, commit domestic violence, commit child abuse, go bankrupt, burn down their business to get the insurance, hire someone to kill a spouse.

There is no mechanism, no process, by which every time a gay couple marries, a straight married couple becomes un-married.  It's not like there's a maximum number of married people allowed in a state, and marrying a new couple means un-marrying an existing one, and so suddenly the wife loses her married name, they have to file individual rather than joint tax returns, and their children are swept away into foster care.  Does not happen.  Cannot happen.  All the panic about gay marriage destroying or damaging straight marriage is misplaced--is panic generated by those who want division and hatred rather than healthy communities of healthy families...or those seeking an excuse for their own lack of character and coping skills.

All marriages--all (if not legal marriages) partnerships between people who live together have stressors.  Money problems.  Health problems.  Children problems.  In-law problems.  Employment problems.  Recessions/depressions/wars/ epidemics/every kind of problem humans can have occurs in relationships--including marriage--as well.  Been there, done that, have a stack of T-shirts.  We married during a very unpopular war when we were both in the military--in different branches.  You think that didn't come with some problems?   We both came from one-parent families (one the middle son of a widow, one the daughter of a divorcee) and had both been told we'd probably have problems in marriage--gee, thanks for the vote of non-confidence, people.  You think it was an easy transition from single to married?  Of course not.  From military life to civilian life?  Of course not.  Sometimes we barely scraped by economically.   We had setbacks.  Infertility.  An adopted child turned out to be autistic.  Careers rose...and fell.   People we loved died.   Plans collapsed.   Our marriage has not been Easy Street...for either of us... but we each worked on the challenges as they came (sometimes more smoothly than other times.)   We made mistakes; we had misunderstandings; we got mad, we got sad, we got over it.   Not perfection, but we never gave up on the determination to make it better.   We are still married--and happily so--because we knew from day one that it was our responsibility--ours alone--to keep our marriage alive and healthy.   Nobody else could do that.  Nobody else could make it fail.

And that 45 years of experience in a maturing marriage that is still a source of comfort, joy, and daily laughter for both of us--and watching both healthy and unhealthy marriages from the outside--is how I know, positively, absolutely, without a doubt, that the only people who can deepsix a marriage are the people in the marriage.

It's how I know that gay marriage does not threaten straight marriage: what other people do in their marriage is irrelevant.  What matters is what the people in the marriage do in their marriage.  Are they honest, are they compassionate with each other, are they generous with their time and effort, are they working to make things better for the marriage?  Or are they sneaking around, are they harsh and judgmental,  are they all about self and expecting the other person to do all the work (physical or psychological)?  That's what makes the difference.   And heterosexual, straight couples do not have a great track record in creating healthy marriages, even when they stay married.  Ask any therapist. 

And no, I don't expect all gay couples to do better..  Gay kids were raised in the same toxic households as straight kids, too often learning the wrong ways to interact with people--ignorant of healthy boundaries, ignorant of personal responsibility, etc.  But I don't expect them to do worse overall, because, honestly, how could they?  When I worked in EMS I learned very quickly how bad things can be in a hetero relationship.  I expect some gay marriages to succeed for decade after decade, and some to end--some ending quietly and some with great drama.  Gay marriages will succeed and fail for exactly the same reasons as straight marriages: because of the behavior of the people within that marriage.

So: no more panic, please.  If you are straight and you want to marry someone, the gay couple ahead of you  or or behind you in that line for a marriage license will have no effect on your ability to get a license, find someone to perform the ceremony, or live as a good husband/wife. Once married, it's all on the two of you--in any marriage.  The threats to your marriage are right there in your own head and heart, and in your partner's head and heart...but the only ones you can control are your own. So do that.  Put your energy there, where it can do some good.  And quit using your religion as an excuse to deny others a legal right that you claim for yourself.  Whatever you think about gay marriage, your opinion should not trump their rights, any more than their opinion should trump yours.


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Another Sock Picture in Nonliving Color...

Some yarns do not photograph in true color, and warping the colors makes everything else look weird.   Here's an example:


Photographed in direct sunlight on concrete, no color adjustment
So the balls of yarn in the plastic bags look purplish, but the socks on the needles look reddish, right?  (We are not starting another The Dress debate here!)    Holding the actual socks up to the monitor, they are more like the color of the yarn in the plastic bags.  That magenta color only darker.  Not the dark red color.   Now look at this:


Photographed indoors with overhead kitchen light (LED) and flash

Now the yarn in the right-hand bag looks like royal purple (compare to the yarn in the sacks above, from the sunlight picture), and the socks (esp.the right one just above the single strand of yarn crossing) is almost the right color, just a bit dark, when I hold the sock itself up to the screen to check, in a room lit by a window beside me, indirect daylight on a clear day.  No direct sun.  The left sock is picking up blue from the sky outside (upper half of window not curtained) and looks more straight purple.  I fiddled with the histogram adjustment a bit, but any further tinkering with color balance (and yes, I looked) will make other things look weird.  Like the table top.

I call the color I see on the sock itself dark  magenta.   The yarn in the plastic bags, in direct sun, is what I'd call magenta.  The socks in direct sun are not magenta at all, but a very slightly purplish dark red...not even sure what to call that color.  Claret, maybe?

Anyway, looking at the yarn, I thought of blackberry juice when I was making blackberry jelly, so they've become the blackberry pair.  They will be in the "purple family" of socks (which right now has one pair of Cascade 220 Superwash in a purple heather, and one pair of Plymouth Yarn Galway Nep, a dullish purple with flecks of other colors in it.   Blackberry is a lovely color, saturated and intense, and they're *almost* to the toe decreases.   Both photograph fairly "true".

But I now have (slightly) more sympathy with the people who photograph yarn for the various online stores.  Some of it cooperates and comes out looking the way it looks.  Some very definitely does not.  The emerald green I like for socks, another rich, saturated color, comes out unsaturated, paler--a sort of mid-to-light bluish green.   And this one...well, you see what it did.

Meanwhile, though, the socks are growing and I might even have them ready for my birthday Saturday.   For those who like the color, it's Ella rae Classic worsted weight, color #326.  For other knitters, the top photo shows the heel construction (standard heel flap with heel stitch, the heel stitch continued under the heel for extra wear.

Verbal Abuse: The Internet and Feminism

Books have been written about verbal abuse, and this isn't one.  This is specific to verbal abuse of women on the internet who speak out on issues affecting women. 

The first response to a woman addressing an issue affecting women on the internet is direct, puerile, verbal abuse---without addressing the issue that she was discussing.   "You're fat."  "You're ugly."  "You're aging badly."  "You're stupid."  Sometimes addressed at all women, or all feminists, along with "You [Feminists] hate men."  "You're a liar."  "Feminists are all liars."  Then there are the threats of rape, dismemberment, death, threats that include the family in some cases.

What's immediately obvious is that the persons making these attacks assume that what their targets care most about is being thought to be physically attractive to boys and men at every age (including old age) so that "fat, ugly, aging badly" are insults that will have an effect on the target.  That all women, including those they despise, are actually basing their entire self-image on the way men--including hostile men--perceive them.   That the world of women revolves around their opinion; that their opinion counts most.   In other words, the attackers are revealing a level of narcissism usually associated not with healthy adults, but with very small children--something parents try to help children grow out of.   (As a happily married woman, the only male opinion of my appearance I really care about is my husband's.)

What's also obvious is the elementary-school level of insult going on.  In the early grades, we were free with our insults--"You're fat!"  "Well, you're UGLY!"  "Well, you're fat AND ugly and you're stupid, too!"  We lacked the intellectual skill to engage with ideas, issues, facts, opinions...everything was at the level of simple insults and occasionally (though strongly discouraged by parents) threats.  "Say that again and I'll hit you!"  "Nyah-nyah you wouldn't dare!"   Without adult supervision, ganging up on a disliked kid was inevitable;  small children are savages when left to their own devices, as the kids in my neighborhood and school proved repeatedly.

It is, of course, easier to say "You're fat and stupid and ugly" than to address an issue and do the research necessary to engage it...and, on occasion, find out that your opinion does not fit the facts.  But it's childish.  The internet has made it possible for people who are supposedly adults, supposedly educated, to act like bratty children in public and feel smug about it.  "Nyah-nyah, I can do whatever I want, NYAH!"   And this causes several interconnected problems.

One is mistaking your target.  If a woman doesn't care that you think she's ugly, or old, or fat, or aging badly--if in fact she has no interest in attracting you because you're being so hostile that the last thing she wants is your esteem--then your insults are wasted keystrokes.  And threats are the very last thing that will convince her your position on the issue at hand is valid--she knows that threats are a tactic used when you have nothing valid to say for your position, and you may just spur her to buy a firearm and become expert with it.  You have lost any chance to convince her that your position has any validity by your failure to engage the issue: you will be seen as childish, petulant, arrogant, ignorant.  When you attack feminists on ground that are clearly untrue (whether you know it or not) you rouse the same response.  Feminists know not all feminists hate men, not all feminists are fat, not all feminists are ugly, and so on.  So those attacks are basically toothless against their intended target.

Another problem is that when you act like an ignorant, petulant child, you risk losing the support of those not already of the same mind.  Most people have a vivid memory of their school days, and the kinds of insults thrown around then.  Whether they're feminist or not, they recognize "You're ugly" as a child-level insult, inappropriate in adults.  They recognize it as a way of avoiding dealing with the issue at hand.  Yes, there are mean adults who were never properly socialized in the first place and delight in verbally abusing others in their own families, at work, everywhere--but not the majority of adults.  Showing yourself to the world as an unsocialized bratty child works against you in most circles.

Except, now in the anonymity of the internet, where grownups can go to play at being the bullies and mean girls of their schoolyard years and may not be discovered if those reading their posts don't bother to seek our their real identities.   But there are grownups on the internet who are no longer the vulnerable 6, 7, 8 year olds of elementary school, or even the vulnerable middle-school tweens and high school teens.  They grew up completely.  They can shrug off the "You're ugly" and "You're stupid"  and "You're aging badly" because...it's like being yelled at by a third grader who's mad at you.  They may not shrug off threats (since so many women and some men have been injured and killed by angry bullies) but they can prepare to meet those threats.  It is unwise to assume those you're threatening have no real defenses.

Feminism--the real thing, not what some people claim feminism is--is not going away.  Lying about it won't make it go away.  Childish insults thrown at feminists posting online won't make it go away.  Doxxing feminists online won't make it go away.  
Crude sexual insults thrown at feminists online won't make it go away.  Threats made to feminists online won't make it go away.   Feminism is about the basic human rights of half the human race, and that is not going away.   It's not going away online, or offline, or in politics, or in religion, or in business, or in science or in the arts. 

Meanwhile, at least try to get out of third-grade mentality or prepare to be laughed at.  Because really...a grownup saying "You're fat/ugly/stupid/old..." as a serious response to issues of gender under discussion?   Ridiculous.   Yeah, yeah, tell it to the Marines.  Keeping in mind that I am one ("once a Marine, always a Marine.")

Yes, comments are disabled.  My birthday's coming up and I don't want to be bothered moderating comments on this topic.  Think what you please and post it on your own space.

Another Sock Progress Report

Using up the last of the Red Heart "Fabulend" yarn (60% Orlon, 40% wool)  for a pair of socks for a friend.   Or, the last of the yarn I'll knit, should I happen to find more.  The back of one sock-in-progress, showing the carrying of the blue from stripe to stripe, and the front of the other, where that doesn't show.  The plan is that the short stretch of leg below the tall ribbing and the heel flap will be blue, the toes will be blue, and the foot itself will be blue and white striped, narrow stripes.  For me, this is uncomfortable yarn to work with, and after this pair I feel I'll have paid my dues to my mother and her yarn stash and can go back to yarn I like better.   Two other pairs are on the needles, both with 100% wool yarn.

On the Dangers of Attempting Mars

So all of a sudden articles are sprouting up warning that the people who may (or may not) be headed for Mars on a private venture are likely to die, they're all *doomed*, and this is horrible, and it can't be allowed to happen.

Seriously?  Everyone making that argument is ALSO going to die (albeit not on the way to, or on, Mars) and some of them are likely to die even sooner than the Mars crews (if they actually take off) from any of the many causes of mortality right here.  People die.  It's what we do.  It is, besides being born, the most comprehensive and universal thing people do.  We all die.  We don't all eat any particular food.  We don't all have sex.  We don't all speak any particular language.  We don't all have sight (some are born blind) or hearing (ditto) or like/dislike/believe/disbelieve/ any particular thing, but we're all born (with or without medical assistance) and we all die (with or without medical assistance.).

So fretting that people who choose to go on an expedition they know is dangerous are going to die...is silly, and also presumptuous.  Humans have been dying for tens of thousands of years.  The ones who stayed home died.  The ones who migrated died.  The ones who went out and did dangerous things, new things, died in droves. The ones who fought in wars and the civilians in whose lands war raged died.  Every time someone set to sea in a boat, or went down a mine to return with some treasured mineral, or went up in the air in a balloon, kite, dirigible, aircraft...the possibility of death rode their shoulders, and many times the reality of death came to them.  People die of their own carelessness, their own ignorance, their own refusal to think ahead...but the prudent who may live somewhat longer will did in the end, of something else.  Nothing--not a "healthy diet," not the right supplements, not "staying fit", not  excellent medical care, not "healthy genes"--will keep someone alive forever, though it may (only may) make one's lifespan more pleasant longer.

I am alive as I write this, a few weeks from being 70, and my death may be less than a minute away (if I have a catastrophic stroke, a heart attack, or the house blows up--we use propane for heating--or an angry person barges in and blows my head off.  Or it may be thirty years (with one parent who lived to almost 102, that's a possibility) or more, or any point in between. Today, tomorrow, the day after, next week, next month, next year, next decade...or two...  In one or another scenario (the kind novelists can think up easily) I might die of suffocation, of poison gas, of drowning, of deliberate attack by individuals or groups, of unintentional (but effective) carelessness or incompetence of an individual or group, of the incidental breakdown of technology designed and maintained by fallible humans, of infectious disease, of non-infectious disease like cancer or auto-immune disease, of attack by an animal or unintentional injury by an animal.  Like many of us, I have thought about how I'd like to die...but I know (six years as an EMS volunteer in a rural area taught me) that this is a wish, not a reality.

I will continue to put myself in situations in which such deaths are slightly more likely (driving a car on a crowded highway, riding on public transportation, riding my bike on streets shared with cars and trucks, disagreeing with people who may turn violent, joining others to protest policies I think wrongheaded, quite possibly riding horses at speed again (I hope), trying new foods (to which I might, though unlikely, be allergic), because a) that's what life is, and b) I know that no amount of being careful will keep me alive forever.  I know my death is inevitable, and I'm a lot closer to it now than I was at birth.  And that's the way it is: it's like gravity, just there.  When I fall and hit the ground and it hurts, I can wish gravity didn't have that effect  (not a fan of broken ribs, personally), but it does have that effect and wishing doesn't change it.  Death is in my future.  I feel no desire to "rage" about that.  I feel a desire to knit more socks, cook more meals, walk the land as long as I can, sing more great music, write more stories, love friends and family, do stuff, keep on being alive until...I'm not.

So: assuming the people planning on that trip to Mars weren't shanghaied off the street corner, snatched from their own homes...yes, they will die, but they will die in no worse case than many others in human history.  They are no crazier than the people who went on one or another exploratory voyage, the ones who left a familiar place to go try to find a better one, the ones who experimented with electricity or steam power, or internal combustion engines.

Deeds of Honor announcements

Deeds of Honor is now available for the Nook direct from Barnes & Noble for those who've been waiting for that transition.  (Was released in December on Amazon; this took longer.)


It will be a Print on Demand paper book later--the cover design had to be expanded for a spine and a back cover and that's almost done.  Unfortunately (from the point of view of the author, who really-really likes leather covered books even though so do cockroaches and mice)  it won't be leather-bound with gold-edged deckle pages.  But will be pretty nonetheless.  I don't have a date for that release, but will post it when I get it.