Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 49

Xmas loot!

Christmas gifts 2011 –

Two interesting fountain pens, a slender jade green Pelikan from Gay, that replaces one I lost a few years ago, and a new kind from Barbara, a TWSBI Diamond 500, made of transparent Lucite – a marvelous fat barrel that looks like it will hold a couple of chapters’ worth of ink. Barbara also gave me an ink-mixing set; two pipettes and ten vials along with four basic colors of Noodler’s ink for mixing.  I’ll have fun with that!

Anyhow, I filled the Pelikan with Noodler’s Seminole Sepia, and the TWSBI with North African Violet, two of my favorite inks. They’ll go into the novel Monday and Tuesday.

With some trepidation I asked for a strange electronic pseudo-guitar, a “You Rock Guitar,” which has a fingerboard that senses where your left-hand fingers are and plays the note that would sound if there were a string there. The right hand can fingerpick or strum six short strings that serve as sensors.  Its little guitar brain can do all sorts of things that probably mean something to a kid who knows modern rock.  I’ll just go in blind and see what happens.  (The fret positions read the same as a regular guitar, as a default, but you can fiddle [so to speak] with it.)  It has 25 “guitar sound” settings and 50 “synth sounds,” with 25 Rock Mode titles.  Runs on 4 AA batteries, or you can plug it into your computer through a USB port.

It has a gig bag, in case I feel in need of a second career and want to take it on the road.

Of the buying of books there is no end, of course.  I got Tuscany:  The Beautiful Cookbook, which completes my set of those.  Three Hemingway books:  The Complete Letters, V. 1, Hemingway and Vonnegut:  Writers at War, and Hemingway’s Boat, all of which I’ve been waiting for.  Raymond Carver:  A Writer’s Life.  New novels Lost in Shangri-La and The Pugilist at Rest.  A fascinating two-volume boxed set, American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub.  (Might be a reasonable text for Genre Fiction next fall, if it comes out in paperback.) 

In non-literary books I got My Brain is Open <> The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches by Marvin Harris (the anthropologist who did the wonderful Cannibals and Kings), Charles Mann’s 1491 and 1493, and the huge Oxford History of Western Art.  Lance Armstrong’s Comeback 2.0 and A Tea-Lover’s Travel Diary.  And Drawing for Dummies, not to be despised.  I’ve done a lot of drawing and painting but have never had formal training.

Gay got me the complete Deadwood series, which we missed.  That will be cool; we’ll go through them slowly, as we did The Sopranos, at our own pace.

A good morning’s present-opening orgy, after cooking breakfast for an hour or so.  Now a half-hour nap and on with prepping dinner.

Joe

A Christmas program

I imagine there are a lot of people out there like me, computer-fraught types who have to make flow charts for anything that looks methodical.  This is my timeline for tomorrow's rather large meal.  Anybody else doing this?(formatting may be wonky)  Christmas timeline22 December – mix marinade and set up beef roast to mellow . . . 24 Dec.  shop . . . .25 Dec.                                                                beef                                                                  ham                                                                  potatoesbiscuits                                                                  sweet potatoes                                                    carrots                                                                  green beans                                                                  artichoke heart salad                                                                  pickled beets & relishes(dessert – store-bought pie & ice cream)1:50  preheat oven to 325; prepare ham w/pineapple etc.2:00  ham inca. 4:00  peel & slice sweet potatoes; shake w/ oil, garlic salt, paprika                 peel carrots, potatoes.  Soak clay pot.                 4:20 ham out – wrap in heavy foil – open oven to cool4:30  beef in; oven to 480 (clay pot)5:20  sweet potatoes in (next to beef) – start string beans5:30  lay out biscuits5:40  beef out to rest; oven to 350; biscuits in5:50  toss salad; put out salad with beets and relishes6:00  EAT ALREADY! Merry Christmas in a few minutes!Joe

Rusty Hevelin writes

Our old friend Rusty Hevelin was very much a book-dealing and convention-going fan, and didn’t do any 
writing for fanzines in the forty years we've known him. Every now and then he’d 
dictate something for Gay to type up, when he was a Guest of Honor or toastmaster. 
 But he did go through a fanzine phase when he was younger. 
  
At the back of our Hevelin correspondence file, I found a yellowed old ditto’ed 
fanzine page – half a century old – and by one of those odd coincidences he 
talks in it about a book that I just started reading day before yesterday, T. 
H. White’s Once and Future King. (My book editor Susan Allison sent it; Ace 
just published a new edition.) 

Rusty wrote in the FAPA zine Laundry Mark H-1661, in February 1961: 

“I didn’t get around to reading T.H. White’s book on the Arthurian legend till 
recently. Before I finished it, the Loewe-Lerner-Hart version known as “Camelot” 
opened on Broadway with a record-setting advance sale of over $3,000,000. Reviews 
indicate that despite the creak of rusty armor in the script, the play’s assets 
of spectacle, music, wit and charm give the customers enough that it should 
have a long and successful run . . . 
   
“. . . if you have not read the trilogy you have missed some fun.. Even if you 
no longer read fantasy and science fiction, I know that plenty of you enjoy 
whimsy and humor. White handles them deftly. I have been wild about Benchley 
and Thurber since my first encounter with each. There are numerous places in 
these tales where White easily holds his own with them. Be prepared for some 
dragging episodes (the musical is not alone on this score), but this is the 
sort of thing that Disney at his once-upon-a-time best might have worked into 
a fine and funny film.” 

Joe 

off to Florida

A lot of food for thought there, Dave – unfortunately I’m literally headed for the door.  Closing up this apartment that has been a rather constricted home for the past three and a half months.
 
I just finished doing the laundry; all the sheets and towels are neatly folded on the bed.  Not everyone has a Hugo- and Nebula-winning MIT professor for a scullery maid.  We have high standards in this household, though.
 
So off to the airport with a couple extra hours inserted in case things go wrong.  My MTA “Charlie” card has one more ride left on it, and it will get me to the airport.  Weary and heavy-laden – but with an upgrade into First Class!  So I’ll think of all you hoi polloi as I sip my free glass of wine and watch Logan slide off to the north.
 
Joe

stuffed dates

True, David, it’s best not to get hung up on dates.  Conditioned as we are to respond emotionally to calendric coincidence.
 
For many years after I got back from Vietnam I got antsy around September 14th, the day I was wounded and almost died.  But what day was it, really?  It was the 15th in the United States.  So should I feel nervous on both dates, just to be on the safe side?  Or maybe I have it backwards, and it’s the 13th that’s unlucky, especially one year out of seven, when it’s on a Friday.
 
Today’s date will have significance to the many men and women who served in the war that sort of ended today.  Of course the enemy is still shooting at people who are Americans and wear American uniforms, thousands of them, but they just get a paycheck and so don’t get sentimental about the halls of Montezuma.
 
 About the shores of Tripoli, well, maybe that’s not put to bed yet.
 
Joe

artichokes and memories

Today would have been my brother Jay’s 70th birthday.  He died on New Year’s Day, 2002.  Can it have been a decade?  Seems impossible.
 
Many of my memories of him are Christmas-y.  One of the earliest is when we rushed down the stairs on Christmas morning in 1947, to see the tree brilliantly gleaming in the corner by the fireplace.  We always left out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk – and a shot of bourbon, I think with the tacit recognition that Santa was actually Dad and Mother.  Who might have refilled the glass a few times in the process of decorating the tree.
 
In later years we all got together to decorate the tree, which eventually became outrageously overloaded with lights and balls.  The holidays from 1948 to 1952 were wonderful, though – Jay and I were the only kids in my parents’ circle of friends at the Public Health Research Station in Anchorage, Alaska, which at the time was pretty much on the frontier.  We always had servicemen bunked out on the living room floor, on pallets, so they could have a bit of Christmas too far from home.  Too close to Korea.
 
It wasn’t exactly “check your guns at the door,” but people did carry guns on the gravel roads that were the main streets of downtown Anchorage.  Of course some still do.  You can never tell when some balmy politician might attack you.
 
We got a joint Christmas present when I was in the fifth grade, Jay in the sixth – a really huge moon base play set, with spacemen (the term “astronaut” some years in the future) and aliens stamped out in different colors of rubber, the whole thing covered in a large crystal plastic dome.  We had my father blow cigarette smoke into it, so that it looked like another planet.  (I don’t recall whether we addressed the illogic of putting an alien atmosphere inside a lunar base.  Maybe it was to make it more hospitable to the aliens.)
 
I think Jay always felt cheated because his birthday was so close to Christmas – like the parents were shopping for presents anyhow, and he just got “Happy Birthday” tags on some of his.  He was probably right.  (My June birthday neatly bisected the year between Christmases.)
 
I remember one especially joyous birthday when we were grown up and getting old, when Jay was living in Baltimore, Lore still a baby.  I think he had just turned thirty, and was feeling despondent – and then our buddy Ron Bounds showed up with a truly weird present – a crate of artichokes from California!  Our favorite vegetable by far. 
 
Wish I could simmer up a couple for us now, with sinful lemon butter.  They do make the beer taste weird.  But hell, there was always bourbon, in those days.
 
Joe

on age

Google has a service that allows you to limit the amount of advertising that plops into your googlebox.  I clicked on it and found out who I am:
 
Your demographics
We infer your age and gender based on the websites you've visited. You can remove or edit these at any time.
Age: 25-34
Gender: Male
 
Well, hell.  If they think I’m 34, it’s no wonder I get all those ads for bike touring and whitewater rafting.  Rather than hair restorer.  Don’t guess I’ll correct them.
 
Joe

Bikin' in a winter blunderland

For me to get to Mars, Dave, would require a lot of speedy progress in both space science and gerontology.  I ain’t givin’ up, but it’s only worth a small side bet.
 
(Maybe if one of the current missions finds three-breasted women riding ferocious beasts.  Otherwise it might take awhile.)
 
Two milestones, or a milestone and a millstone.  The former was the act of going to storage yesterday; the latter, grinding out the last grades.  A millstone I’m glad to quietly set down and back away from. 
 
(At least one student balked at the grade I assigned on the last rewrite.  It made me wish I were Albert Einstein.  He left his Princeton office one year without having given out grades.  An office worker ran him down at the train platform.  “Oh, that,” he said.  “I had fun.  Give them all A’s.”)
 
Going to storage was almost painless, thanks to Antony and Jag, who supplied two young[er] backs and a great big car.  We had a nice lunch afterwards at the Middle East in Central Square, one of my favorite joints in the area.  Too close to the vegan ice cream place, though, which pulled at us with a mysterious magnetism.
 
 
Whenever we leave Boston, they come up with something I hate to miss.  This time it’s The Paint Bar (thepaintbar.com) – out in Newtonville – you pay $25 to $45, depending on time and date, and they supply paints, brushes, and canvas, and sell beer and wine while you plash around for a day.
 
Today will be a cold one, unfortunately.  We still have to ride our bikes to storage, and it’s only getting up to 31 degrees.  Rhymes with “freeze my knees.”  Maybe we could call a cab and ask whether he has room for two bikes.  Maybe not.
 
Oh well.  It’s not raining or snowing.  Yet.
 
Joe

on girls

For whatever reason, I’ve always made female friends easily.  If there is such a thing as “having a feminine side” (which at one level is a sexist simplification) then I have it very strongly and for a plain reason – my mother really wanted a girl, and I became “it.”  (She had nine pregnancies, resulting in two live births, me and my brother.  My parents had Rh-factor incompatibility, which in those days meant a low probability of live birth.  I was definitely her last child; my father had his tubes tied after I was born, rather than have her risk another pregnancy.)
 
It may be simply that I didn’t make male friends easily when I was young.  I was interested in science and art and writing, and didn’t have time for cars and sports, and was repelled by rough-housing.
 
It’s not a bad dating strategy, if you don’t mind dating girls and women who aren’t interested in glamour and conventional femininity.  I always wanted to date girls I could talk to.  (Though I do have enough conventional male ego that I also wanted to have a girl on my arm who was attractive enough to induce envy.  With Gay I found both!)
  
Packing up the place now.  Boxes all about, suitcases.  Not leaving till Monday morning, but we’re going to storage today, so by this evening we’d better not have anything in the place that won’t fit into a couple of suitcases and carry-ons.
 
Joe

economic p.s.

A bit of numerical analysis. In those days -- one reason the bar was so popular with starving students -- a short draft (7-8 oz) cost fifteen cents and a shot was 35 cents. So for a buck and a half you could get pretty cross-eyed.

Joe