Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 21

Pepys never slepys

 
More news from The Diary of Samuel Pepys –

On 18 Dec 1680, Pepys had to hang around the house watching workmen, who were installing a new front door.  His one-line diary notation is a little testy . . .

All day at home, without stirring at all, looking after my workmen.

One of the correspondents on

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/12/18/#annotations

asks --

Haiku?
Morning to midnight

Pepys, stone-eyed, blinkless,
stirs on 
his workmen.
Then slepys.


It’s not a perfect haiku, but close enough.

Joe

Leaving MIT

Only another week of classes.  The end is in sight.  I'll probably get the grade sheets Monday. Then we pack and leave . . . sort of.  In a way, the move is simpler than usual, since it's a matter of choosing between stuff that goes back to Florida and stuff we give away or toss.  Nothing stays.

Which translates, of course, into an apartment full of boxes, which Gay and our dear friend Jag are right now filling and refilling and eventually taping and consigning to Railway Express.  No, that's Pony Express.  No, Big Brown Truck Express.

Although we love Boston, I can't say it will be difficult to leave.  I want to get back to "real" life.  Even though it's the difference between a salaried high-status position and being a money-grubbing freelancer. 

No longer An MIT Professor.  It's attractive, in a non-mysterious way.

I want to go back to normal life, the writing life.   The morning-dark porch and oil lamp and fountain pen – which nowadays is more like the porch on the coffee house on the corner in broad daylight.  I've allowed myself to grow soft, with the steady income and legitimacy of the MIT job.  Now I go back to the open market.

After the holidays settle down, I may try to get back into that groove:  go to bed early and get up around four, and work in the morning darkness and silence.  Quit around nine or ten and nap for awhile.

My current regimen in Florida came out of desiring regular exercise – I'd bicycle eight or ten or twelve miles before settling down to write.  In the past several years, I've moved out of the darkness  . . . I do work before dawn, but it's non-writing stuff, in my office at home.  When it starts to get light, I get on the bike and go a few miles to a coffee house and start writing.

But it's not really that much exercise.  Maybe I have to revise things so that I incorporate gym time into the routine.  Maybe write in the dark of the morning and go off to the gym when the sun comes up.

(I hate to do this, because my "self-image" is of someone who gets plenty of exercise in the normal course of the day.  But in fact the scale, sadly, says otherwise.  I have to eat less or exercise more.)

Whatever, it will be an interesting new chapter to open.  Have to finish this one first, though.

Joe
 

MISTER Jesus to You!

Speaking of holiday spellings . . . has anybody else been caught in this conundrum?I haven't been a believer since I was eleven or 12.  But I hesitate before typing "Xmas," because I don't want to offend people who see it as lazy and sacrilegious.  If I'm going to be offensive, I don't want to be ambiguous about it.  (I mean, some believers see the "X" as a religious symbol instead.)There's probably not another person here who scratches his head about that.  Or is there?Joe

book release timing

(Keith in sff.net was worried about my book coming out the week after Christmas . . .)

I'm always of two minds about that, Keith . . . you want your book out for sale to possible Christmas shoppers -- but the bookstores are crowded with holiday stuff, and a mere novel not by Steven King is not getting any placement or promo.  It occurs to me that I might have a Grinch Factor in my favor -- coming out in early January, I can nab some people coming back to bookstores with returns and with shiny new gift cards!The season is all about optimism, anyhow!Joe

Sam what am

Some interesting stuff in Pepys's diary this morning . . . (a couple of readers' comments appended) -- Friday 23 November 1660This morning standing looking upon the workmen doing of my new door to my house, there comes Captain Straughan the Scot (to whom the King has given half of the money that the two ships lately sold do bring), and he would needs take me to the Dolphin, and give me a glass of ale and a peck of oysters, he and I. He did talk much what he is able to advise the King for good husbandry in his ships, as by ballasting them with lead ore and many other tricks, but I do believe that he is a knowing man in sea-business. Home and dined, and in the afternoon to the office, where till late, and that being done Mr. Creed did come to speak with me, and I took him to the Dolphin, where there was Mr. Pierce the purser and his wife and some friends of theirs. So I did spend a crown upon them behind the bar, they being akin to the people of the house, and this being the house where Mr. Pierce was apprentice.After they were gone Mr. Creed and I spent an hour in looking over the account which he do intend to pass in our office for his lending moneys, which I did advise about and approve or disapprove of as I saw cause.After an hour being serious at this we parted about 11 o’clock at night. So I home and to bed, leaving my wife and the maid at their linen to get up.===============Two guys  sitting at a bar casually tucking away a peck of oysters with their ale sounds like longshoremen at work, but I guess that's how they got so round.I love his plain and chatty style, of course with centuries-old idioms. (All the talk of nautical matters is business as usual for Pepys, who at this time was Chief Secretary of the Admiralty, during the reigns of both Charles II and James II.  It bespeaks a new attitude toward professionalism, I take it, because Pepys was never a sailor or much of a traveler, but he was a  manager and executive of the first water.)Mary on 24 Nov 2003 ...at their linen to get up...This looks like the conclusion of four days' work at the laundry. The washing was done on Tuesday and now, on Friday night when all is finally dry (remember that the weather has been dirty) they are smoothing and arranging it; getting it up in the sense of getting it ready and putting it away.Mary on 24 Nov 2003 'behind the bar'Perhaps this means that Pepys had set up a 5 shilling 'slate' for the Pierces with the landlord. i.e establishing a 5/- credit for them. If this was an inn in which Pierce was well-known, Sam might have felt able to do this in fair certainty that they would be given decent measure for the money.Sam Dodsworth on 24 Nov 2003 'behind the bar'In modern British usage, this would be payment in advance rather than a line of credit - money given to the barman to cover the cost of whatever your guests might order. More often done with a credit card these days but still common when, for example, the boss is taking his employees out for a drink.Joe

Take my book -- please!

So the Supremes have endorsed Google's case against the Authors' Guild, of which I have been a member for forty years.  I have to admit, though, cautious agreement with the decision.  Justice Chin:

In my view, Google Books provides significant public benefits. It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders. It has become an invaluable research tool that permits students, teachers, librarians, and others to more efficiently identify and locate books. It has given scholars the ability, for the first time, to conduct full-text searches of tens of millions of books. It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life. It facilitates access to books for print-disabled and remote or underserved populations. It generates new audiences and creates new sources of income for authors and publishers. Indeed, all society benefits.

If somehow the law would accurately reflect that partial truth.  I suspect that pirate firms have already parsed it to their advantage.  You don't have to be a lawyer to see that "respectful consideration" opens a hole you could drive an eighteen-wheeler through.

I do agree with the spirit of it, though.  The paradox:  information wants to be free, but people who create information want to be paid.

Joe
 

talkin' 'bout my generation

In an article about Norman Mailer in the New York Times Book Review, Graydon Carter made an observation about American novelists that hit pretty close to home:    -- " . . . by the mid-80's {T]he brawling, womanizing train wreck that had characterized so many of the Lost Generation and post-war writers had gone out of style, replaced by weedy, thin-haired minimalists who had learned their craft at writers' colonies and lived in college towns teaching in master's programs."

I weakly protest that I wasn't always thin-haired.  Or thin-skinned.

Joe

bright blobs

This is the cover for, obviously, the Icon program book.   The picture is an abstract watercolor that I did just to try out a couple of new tubes of color – quinacridone yellow and orange.  Maybe yellow, too.  Lanhuished in a drawer for years, and now it's stfnal history!

Joe

Pepys's dyspepsia

Interesting concentrated bit of 17th-century grammar and lore in Samuel Pepys's diary for today in 1660 –

I dined with my Lady and my Lady Pickering, where her son John dined with us, who do continue a fool as he ever was since I knew him. His mother would fain marry him to get a portion for his sister Betty but he will not hear of it.

Poor John Pickering . . . plenty of people with that name listed in Wiki, but not the young fool Pepys knew.

Joe

Starting to miss Florida

We just spent a long weekend in Cedar Rapids, where I was "Artist Guest of Honor" at  Icon 38.   That's in quotes for obvious reasons – they've run out of things to call me – founder, co-founder, GoH, writer GoH.  This time I'm listed as Artist GoH and ICON "Papa" – no reference to Hemingway intended, I hope.  (I've outlived him by almost a decade, which feels creepy.)

I did actually sell two pieces, which is two more than I expected, and enjoyed hanging around with old friends and new.  I'll post a picture in LiveJournal of the curious way the pictures were displayed – the art show was in a sunken space in the lobby, with no walls.

My moment of fame over, I slink back to Boston for a month of relative anonymity and the onset of winter.  Perhaps one snowfall before further slinking, into the cool comfort of northern Florida.

Joe