Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 67
March 16, 2011
health, etc.
A mostly good news progress report. I've been to the docs and back and back again, and now they seem to have gotten rid of me, at least for a couple of months. I have a little hole in my abdomen that I have to tend to twice a day. Physically a little peaked but today got back on the bike with the doctor's blessing and pedaled three pretty steady miles. Painkillers downgraded from oxycontin to Tylenol. Took niece Lore out to lunch after she escorted me around the VA today; tomorrow she's going to shepherd me down to Orlando for ICFA, the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts.
Gay normally goes to ICFA every year, too, but this year she's stuck up in Dayton helping Rusty Hevelin. Rusty had a scary time about a week ago. (He's 89 and a little fragile.) He fell in his kitchen and was unable to get up, and lay there for several days. Gay went up to be his patient advocate in the hospital there, and until now it's been touch and go. But he made an impressive recovery today. This afternoon she wrote:
"Rusty is a different person today! He ate all his breakfast and all his lunch by himself; joked intelligently with the nurses; read the front page of the newspaper and commented on it; asked about mutual friends who are having problems; asked about his medical bills .... He still has a memory or cognitive sip or two, but he says them and then realizes he's slipped .… The difference is night and day. Maybe this is the turning point and he'll do well from now on."
So things look pretty good overall. Hope to see some of you in Orlando.
Joe
Gay normally goes to ICFA every year, too, but this year she's stuck up in Dayton helping Rusty Hevelin. Rusty had a scary time about a week ago. (He's 89 and a little fragile.) He fell in his kitchen and was unable to get up, and lay there for several days. Gay went up to be his patient advocate in the hospital there, and until now it's been touch and go. But he made an impressive recovery today. This afternoon she wrote:
"Rusty is a different person today! He ate all his breakfast and all his lunch by himself; joked intelligently with the nurses; read the front page of the newspaper and commented on it; asked about mutual friends who are having problems; asked about his medical bills .... He still has a memory or cognitive sip or two, but he says them and then realizes he's slipped .… The difference is night and day. Maybe this is the turning point and he'll do well from now on."
So things look pretty good overall. Hope to see some of you in Orlando.
Joe
March 14, 2011
water disaster
Optical disaster department . . . uncovered my telescope this afternoon to set up for the evening's observing and found that the (sealed) tube had about a half-inch of water in it, call it 250-300 milliliters. Supposed to be airtight, and protected by an all-weather cover. I rotated it (so the glass corrector plate was facing down) and the water dribbled out.
After I emptied it out I realized I should have taken pictures. I'll take some tomorrow and see what the retailer, Company Seven, says about the situation. Hope it's fixable.
Joe
After I emptied it out I realized I should have taken pictures. I'll take some tomorrow and see what the retailer, Company Seven, says about the situation. Hope it's fixable.
Joe
March 10, 2011
ouchers
A pretty gruesome and painful session with the surgeon yesterday, lancing a deep suture abscess. Spent the rest of the day creeping around like a wounded animal but improving internally.
Then a really significant milestone this morning: for the first time I slept through a scheduled pain pill, at 3 a.m. The pain didn't wake me up till 5:00. I can stand up straight and the abdominal swelling is down.
I do have to tend to the hole left by the abscess, cleaning it out with Q-tips and hydrogen peroxide, which is unpleasant, but I'd rather do it myself than have Gay contend with my jumping around!
Perhaps I can hold a guitar comfortably now. After I've finished writing I'll give it a try. Already have over a page.
Joe
Then a really significant milestone this morning: for the first time I slept through a scheduled pain pill, at 3 a.m. The pain didn't wake me up till 5:00. I can stand up straight and the abdominal swelling is down.
I do have to tend to the hole left by the abscess, cleaning it out with Q-tips and hydrogen peroxide, which is unpleasant, but I'd rather do it myself than have Gay contend with my jumping around!
Perhaps I can hold a guitar comfortably now. After I've finished writing I'll give it a try. Already have over a page.
Joe
March 8, 2011
Faith and begorrah
Dave, sometimes I put on my amateur philosopher hat, the one with the floppy beagle ears, and play with the interlocking functionalities of "belief," "faith," and "observation."
I've gone on in some detail here about the minefield between belief and faith; that belief is at least superficially subject to argument, but faith is immune to it. People "of faith" (as opposed to us "of protoplasm") sometimes misuse logic, even though they don't really need it.
Observation is subtly deceptive, ab initio, because we're deeply imbedded in the instrument we use for observation. At a plain level it's easy to admit that we can only see certain wavelengths, hear certain frequencies, detect motion of a certain fineness, and so forth – we know this with absolute and prosaic certainty. But maybe that's not the end of it. What charms me is the possibility that the logical operators we use to translate observation into generalization – experiment into science, if you will – might have equally profound areas of blindness that keep us cut off from a true understanding of the universe.
This comes dangerously close to the woo-woo area that I despise. "Of course we only understand a small part of the universe; we are only mortal." That's not even close to what I mean.
We can look at a star that's nine thousand light years away, and measure the variation in its brightness reliably enough to detect a regular variation in the eighth or ninth significant figure, which tells us that it has two planets, Earth sized and Jupiter sized, rolling around it in the same orbit. This in a star that's not even visible in the big telescope I have in my back yard. To me that's as prosaic and wonderful as a baby's smile or the rainbow refraction of dawn's light in a dewdrop.
What makes my hair stand up, though, is the thought that this utter marvel may be only a small wedge of actual reality. Humans may or may not ever break through into a larger understanding; the notion that it may exist is still entertaining. Another Archimedean "place to stand."
My own place is, I think, a little improved over yesterday. There's constant low-order pain, but I'm able to write through it without crippling my brain too much with painkillers. It occurred to me yesterday that it's sort of the way you felt when you were a kid and some jerk kicked you in the abdomen. You can function but you kind of creep around trying to find some comfortable position.
See the doc tomorrow.
Joe
I've gone on in some detail here about the minefield between belief and faith; that belief is at least superficially subject to argument, but faith is immune to it. People "of faith" (as opposed to us "of protoplasm") sometimes misuse logic, even though they don't really need it.
Observation is subtly deceptive, ab initio, because we're deeply imbedded in the instrument we use for observation. At a plain level it's easy to admit that we can only see certain wavelengths, hear certain frequencies, detect motion of a certain fineness, and so forth – we know this with absolute and prosaic certainty. But maybe that's not the end of it. What charms me is the possibility that the logical operators we use to translate observation into generalization – experiment into science, if you will – might have equally profound areas of blindness that keep us cut off from a true understanding of the universe.
This comes dangerously close to the woo-woo area that I despise. "Of course we only understand a small part of the universe; we are only mortal." That's not even close to what I mean.
We can look at a star that's nine thousand light years away, and measure the variation in its brightness reliably enough to detect a regular variation in the eighth or ninth significant figure, which tells us that it has two planets, Earth sized and Jupiter sized, rolling around it in the same orbit. This in a star that's not even visible in the big telescope I have in my back yard. To me that's as prosaic and wonderful as a baby's smile or the rainbow refraction of dawn's light in a dewdrop.
What makes my hair stand up, though, is the thought that this utter marvel may be only a small wedge of actual reality. Humans may or may not ever break through into a larger understanding; the notion that it may exist is still entertaining. Another Archimedean "place to stand."
My own place is, I think, a little improved over yesterday. There's constant low-order pain, but I'm able to write through it without crippling my brain too much with painkillers. It occurred to me yesterday that it's sort of the way you felt when you were a kid and some jerk kicked you in the abdomen. You can function but you kind of creep around trying to find some comfortable position.
See the doc tomorrow.
Joe
March 7, 2011
astro-stuff
Couldn't sleep so about 3:50 went out to uncover the telescope and take a look at Saturn. The scope worked fine: turn it on and punch in SELECT & SLEW > SOLAR SYSTEM > PLANETS > SATURN and it whirs in two axes and stops less than a degree away.
Not a great sky; only a few stars visible. Sometimes that's good for planets, the haze steadying the atmosphere, but you never know until you look. In this case, it was not so good. In the low-power wide-field eyepiece Saturn was a tiny pale cartoon with only one moon, Titan; I should be able to see four or five. At 200X you could tell Saturn was a little brighter than normal, but no dramatic sign of the storm that's currently taking place there.
I looked for a few minutes but didn't try any higher power, and there was not much else to see through the haze, so I came back in. Back to this discussion about Hemingway.
Maybe he needed a hobby, besides shooting animals and chasing women all over the world. As a young man he was an energetic naturalist, collecting and classifying, as I think many writers are. Did any writers continue that into adulthood? Steinbeck and his marine specimens. I don't know of any novelists besides myself and Arthur C. Clarke who peered through telescopes.
Though when we toured Hemingway's cottage outside of Havana, the Finca Vieja, I was excited to see that he had two books on his headboard/bookshelf that I would have had at the same time, mid-fifties: THE HANDBOOK OF THE HEAVENS and THE STARS FOR SAM, amateur astronomy handbooks.
The novel I'm reading now is HAVANA BAY, by Martin Cruz Smith, and it's a time trip. About twenty years ago Gay and I covered the same beat in and around Havana; it's fun to revisit the bars and nightlife. It hadn't changed that much since Hemingway's time. Sultry and mysterious, everywhere dark rum and sticky tropical fruits, heavy sweet cigar smoke. Ancient American and Russian cars held together with baling wire and beaten tin cans. Friendly charming people full of secrets. Love to go back. Nice if I could rent a new pancreas for the week. I'm not sure what Cuba would be like without alcohol.
It's five and I better get to work.
Joe
Not a great sky; only a few stars visible. Sometimes that's good for planets, the haze steadying the atmosphere, but you never know until you look. In this case, it was not so good. In the low-power wide-field eyepiece Saturn was a tiny pale cartoon with only one moon, Titan; I should be able to see four or five. At 200X you could tell Saturn was a little brighter than normal, but no dramatic sign of the storm that's currently taking place there.
I looked for a few minutes but didn't try any higher power, and there was not much else to see through the haze, so I came back in. Back to this discussion about Hemingway.
Maybe he needed a hobby, besides shooting animals and chasing women all over the world. As a young man he was an energetic naturalist, collecting and classifying, as I think many writers are. Did any writers continue that into adulthood? Steinbeck and his marine specimens. I don't know of any novelists besides myself and Arthur C. Clarke who peered through telescopes.
Though when we toured Hemingway's cottage outside of Havana, the Finca Vieja, I was excited to see that he had two books on his headboard/bookshelf that I would have had at the same time, mid-fifties: THE HANDBOOK OF THE HEAVENS and THE STARS FOR SAM, amateur astronomy handbooks.
The novel I'm reading now is HAVANA BAY, by Martin Cruz Smith, and it's a time trip. About twenty years ago Gay and I covered the same beat in and around Havana; it's fun to revisit the bars and nightlife. It hadn't changed that much since Hemingway's time. Sultry and mysterious, everywhere dark rum and sticky tropical fruits, heavy sweet cigar smoke. Ancient American and Russian cars held together with baling wire and beaten tin cans. Friendly charming people full of secrets. Love to go back. Nice if I could rent a new pancreas for the week. I'm not sure what Cuba would be like without alcohol.
It's five and I better get to work.
Joe
March 6, 2011
EH
[In sff.net, talking about Hemingway and THE GARDEN OF EDEN . . . ]
Todd, Hemingway's ideas about masculinity and gender roles become pretty tortuous in middle age, I think largely because he wanted to be your basic hairy-chested man's man, but he did feel something more complex within himself. He did want to be honest but (dime-store psychologizing here) that was one thing he couldn't tell the truth about, even to himself. His wives and children suffered but, to be fair, didn't offer a lot of help. When his son went from cross-dressing to homosex to a sex-change operation, that probably beat him up quite a bit.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN would have been a difficult novel for him to write, but the long rambling rough draft he left behind wasn't anywhere close to a finished state. I think it's fair to say that he abandoned the project and would never have allowed it to appear in print in any form. Part of that may have been a reluctance to confront his own complex sexual nature – but part has to be that it was a crappy out-of-control monstrosity that he should have burned. He had any writer's natural aversion to throwing stuff away, and in his case that really came back to color his posthumous reputation.
(Though who knows? Sex sells, and the compost that novel turned over fueled a new generation of gender-oriented criticism. Hundreds of Ph.D.'s who subsequently went out into the world to teach, and kept EH spinning in his grave and sparking arguments in class.)
I will always prize the image of the young man sitting in the cold garret prying the language apart and putting it back together his way. None of the excesses that fame allowed him, dropped on him, affect that younger man's existence and the service he did to letters in self-service to his own career.
Joe
Todd, Hemingway's ideas about masculinity and gender roles become pretty tortuous in middle age, I think largely because he wanted to be your basic hairy-chested man's man, but he did feel something more complex within himself. He did want to be honest but (dime-store psychologizing here) that was one thing he couldn't tell the truth about, even to himself. His wives and children suffered but, to be fair, didn't offer a lot of help. When his son went from cross-dressing to homosex to a sex-change operation, that probably beat him up quite a bit.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN would have been a difficult novel for him to write, but the long rambling rough draft he left behind wasn't anywhere close to a finished state. I think it's fair to say that he abandoned the project and would never have allowed it to appear in print in any form. Part of that may have been a reluctance to confront his own complex sexual nature – but part has to be that it was a crappy out-of-control monstrosity that he should have burned. He had any writer's natural aversion to throwing stuff away, and in his case that really came back to color his posthumous reputation.
(Though who knows? Sex sells, and the compost that novel turned over fueled a new generation of gender-oriented criticism. Hundreds of Ph.D.'s who subsequently went out into the world to teach, and kept EH spinning in his grave and sparking arguments in class.)
I will always prize the image of the young man sitting in the cold garret prying the language apart and putting it back together his way. None of the excesses that fame allowed him, dropped on him, affect that younger man's existence and the service he did to letters in self-service to his own career.
Joe
liquid, solid, and gas
Richard Chalfan in my Questar newsgroup forwarded a fascinating article from _Journal of Cosmology_ about microfossils found in meteorites – I'd heard of them but hadn't seen the evidence, which I think is pretty compelling. The paper's going to be massively peer-reviewed. It's well written and not sensationalistic, but mind-blowing anyhow. Unambiguously organic formations locked in mineral strata of extraterrestrial origin.
http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html
Some members of the group pointed out that if the science were unimpeachable then the journal of record would be _Nature_, no the relatively obscure_ J. Cosm_. It's a point; I'm not enough of an insider to judge.
No bleeding the rest of yesterday and none this morning. Pain only at an annoying level; I can maintain less than a half-dose of painkillers and write a few pages here and there.
Gay got me some over-the-counter gas tablets that help me sleep. More entertaining dreams, too. The last one this morning, I had to pee and was in an interminable line, which eventually I followed up a long ladder, and wound up on a springy high-diving board so high that the pool was a small blue square. I was about to climb back down and a voice reminded me I was dreaming, and only had to wake up.
Joe
http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html
Some members of the group pointed out that if the science were unimpeachable then the journal of record would be _Nature_, no the relatively obscure_ J. Cosm_. It's a point; I'm not enough of an insider to judge.
No bleeding the rest of yesterday and none this morning. Pain only at an annoying level; I can maintain less than a half-dose of painkillers and write a few pages here and there.
Gay got me some over-the-counter gas tablets that help me sleep. More entertaining dreams, too. The last one this morning, I had to pee and was in an interminable line, which eventually I followed up a long ladder, and wound up on a springy high-diving board so high that the pool was a small blue square. I was about to climb back down and a voice reminded me I was dreaming, and only had to wake up.
Joe
March 3, 2011
better
Those water sculptures are cool, Bruce. Wonder what happens when they thaw? I can just see Buick-sized chunks sliding down the road . . .
Dave, I started GARDEN OF EDEN twice before I could finish it. Hemingway was a much better writer when he was alive. It's a courageous and dangerous book for a man so welded to his masculinity, though, and I wonder what EH might have wound up doing with it if he had survived his late-middle-aged insanity to take an unblinking look at his life and the wreckage that it left behind. (I guess that's one lesson he left for the rest of us: it's hard to steer a steady course if you never let go of your dick.)
Sean, I used to go up to Norbert Slepyan's office in the Scribner's Building – Norbert was peripherally concerned with sf back in the early 70s – and I was totally taken with the place; its gravity and sense of history. The great bust of Hemingway in the entrance helped, too. Walking in the corridors where he and Fitzgerald and Max Perkins hung out. Now gone to the metaphorical wrecking ball. When I was last there it was a cosmetics store.
I'm still creeping around like someone who's been Roto-Rootered through the belly, but the plumbing is waking up and finally the pain is down to where I can concentrate on something besides being sick. Wrote a couple of pages on the novel today after spending some time reading through and amending it here and there. Great relief.
Picked up the guitar and found it curiously easy to play – the powerful pain drugs mitigating my joints' arthritis – but my voice belongs in a bad cartoon. Maybe it's time for a po-mo Bob Dylan. (The answer ... my fren' …. is pissin' in the wind …. )
Joe
Dave, I started GARDEN OF EDEN twice before I could finish it. Hemingway was a much better writer when he was alive. It's a courageous and dangerous book for a man so welded to his masculinity, though, and I wonder what EH might have wound up doing with it if he had survived his late-middle-aged insanity to take an unblinking look at his life and the wreckage that it left behind. (I guess that's one lesson he left for the rest of us: it's hard to steer a steady course if you never let go of your dick.)
Sean, I used to go up to Norbert Slepyan's office in the Scribner's Building – Norbert was peripherally concerned with sf back in the early 70s – and I was totally taken with the place; its gravity and sense of history. The great bust of Hemingway in the entrance helped, too. Walking in the corridors where he and Fitzgerald and Max Perkins hung out. Now gone to the metaphorical wrecking ball. When I was last there it was a cosmetics store.
I'm still creeping around like someone who's been Roto-Rootered through the belly, but the plumbing is waking up and finally the pain is down to where I can concentrate on something besides being sick. Wrote a couple of pages on the novel today after spending some time reading through and amending it here and there. Great relief.
Picked up the guitar and found it curiously easy to play – the powerful pain drugs mitigating my joints' arthritis – but my voice belongs in a bad cartoon. Maybe it's time for a po-mo Bob Dylan. (The answer ... my fren' …. is pissin' in the wind …. )
Joe
March 1, 2011
flutter by
I have a quibble with News of the Weird, but maybe it's just me. They sneered at this –
* What Budget Crunch? The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported in January that despite an array of pressing problems, the Broward County public school system has paid about $100,000 per year since 2004 to build and maintain special gardens at selected schools in order to lure butterflies for pupils to study. [South Florida Sun- Sentinel, 1-1-2011]
To me the butterflies sound like a great idea, both for study material and esthetics. That hundred grand is part of a landscaping budget that's probably not breaking the bank, anyhow.
God help us that some school officials should think outside of the budget box.
Joe
* What Budget Crunch? The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported in January that despite an array of pressing problems, the Broward County public school system has paid about $100,000 per year since 2004 to build and maintain special gardens at selected schools in order to lure butterflies for pupils to study. [South Florida Sun- Sentinel, 1-1-2011]
To me the butterflies sound like a great idea, both for study material and esthetics. That hundred grand is part of a landscaping budget that's probably not breaking the bank, anyhow.
God help us that some school officials should think outside of the budget box.
Joe
the sleeper almost wakes
No stars last night, unfortunately. I went out after dinner and there were a few holes in the clouds, so I carefully unwrapped the scope. Then looked up and there was nothing but mottled cloud, illuminated by GatorGlow ™ -- that's the radiation produced by tens of thousands of students driving around to keep from walking.
Clouds forecast for tonight, too. But I will stroke my magic eyepiece and try to stare them down.
Slept pretty well, in a kind of Percodan fog. "Perk O'Dan" sounds like a sprightly Irish pixie, but it's more like a really comfortable gown that weighs so much you have to go lie down. It works really well for post-operative pain, though. When it starts to wear off, that "just lost a knife fight" feeling creeps in with no subtlety, but O'Dan punches it back.
It's a cool damp day, and I don't think I'll do any work in the morning. Find a DVD that Gay doesn't want to see in the judging stack we got for awards voting. If my brain wakes up enough I'll return to the Elmore Leonard novel I'm reading, but it has inexplicably become as complex as Kafka.
Joe
Clouds forecast for tonight, too. But I will stroke my magic eyepiece and try to stare them down.
Slept pretty well, in a kind of Percodan fog. "Perk O'Dan" sounds like a sprightly Irish pixie, but it's more like a really comfortable gown that weighs so much you have to go lie down. It works really well for post-operative pain, though. When it starts to wear off, that "just lost a knife fight" feeling creeps in with no subtlety, but O'Dan punches it back.
It's a cool damp day, and I don't think I'll do any work in the morning. Find a DVD that Gay doesn't want to see in the judging stack we got for awards voting. If my brain wakes up enough I'll return to the Elmore Leonard novel I'm reading, but it has inexplicably become as complex as Kafka.
Joe
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