Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 86

Acoustic Eidelon

Went to a house concert last night at Seven Stars Farm out in Melrose (same place as last house concert), featuring Acoustic Eidelon, a mostly instrumental trio. Guitar, cello, and harp, but with a difference. The guitarist usually plays a "guitjo," a hybrid instrument of his own invention that has two seven-stringed necks. The lower neck is pitched very high, and has a metallic tinkling harp-like sound; the upper neck is like a regular guitar with an extra bass string. Sometimes he uses s...

Blue-Skying again

An article in the current New Scientist (27 Feb) notes that Obama's "change in direction" for NASA includes reinstatement of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. Good news for science fiction readers and other future-oriented people. They note "Until it was closed by budget cutbacks in 2007, the institute funded research into potentially revolutionary technologies, including space elevators and antimatter harvesting." They even dipped into FTL and generation ships.

Back in its heyday t...

It could bug you

I wrote a little review of a play a couple of days ago, but managed not to post it. But I did send a version of it to the local paper, the _Sun_, like so:

Last night we went to the Acrosstown Repertory Theater, where Samara Golabuk was starring in the avant-garde play "Bug," by Tracy Letts. It's very dark, a harrowing downward spiral as the main character, Agnes, tries to deal with life's problems with booze and drugs, failing to avoid her ex-con ex-husband, and finally hooking up with a ps...

'scoping it out

I've just about got the IOptron telescope mounting figured out. Once it's calibrated on a known star, I can have it whir around and find some invisible galaxy a gazillion light years away. Unfortunately, it's almost invisible in the telescope as well, with the bright moon and light pollution. In about ten days, the moon will be rising late enough that I can haul the scope out to Paynes Prairie or someplace and check out some planetary nebulae and stuff.

Meanwhile there are a few refinements...

The Fat Lady Has Sung

Thomas Friedman has a good editorial in the NY Times today, "The Fat Lady Has Sung," http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/opinion/21friedman.html -- about our "Grasshopper Generation," eating our way through the bounty we inherited. And what we might be doing instead.

The interesting point Friedman makes is that "Obamism" isn't one easily characterized thing; it's presented as a set of stand-alone initiatives rather than, in his words, "a big, inspirational project that can bring out America's ...

Bill and bird

Doris Nabors was over a couple of days ago and we got to talking about missing Bill, her husband for about forty years. Because of distance, he and I only got together a few times a year lately, shoot pool and discuss a bottle of wine, but in our occasional fellowship there was a kind of continuity I don't have anymore. We'd been thick as thieves in conservative rural Brooksville back in the seventies, being the only two hippie writers in town. Before we moved to Iowa and they to Key West....

new model in two senses

(copied from sff.net)

A fun and interesting but tiring day yesterday. We had a very good-looking model at studio, I think early twenties, tight little cheerleader figure. Pictures in LiveJournal.

While I was at studio the new Ioptron telescope mounting came. I started to put it together and then went off to the political thing Gay agreed to organize, a letter-writing workshop for the progressive group MoveOn. The idea was to write letters to the editor of the local newspaper, on health care ...

bad pun and good girl

This is in poor taste on several levels, but I can't resist posting a pun I
spontaneously generated at the doctor's office a couple of days ago. He was
going down the usual checklist . . . yes, no, yes, yes, no . . . and then he
asked "Have you noticed any change in the output from your ostomy bag?"

"No," I said. "Same ol' shit."

He grinned and the nurse almost lost it.



Yesterday we had a fine model, Rebecca, at open studio. Young and pretty as well as still. Here are a couple of pictures, ...

beans 'n' greens (and corn pancakes)

Yesterday I cooked up a mess of Rancho Gordo beans, Christmas Limas (the size of fava beans, actually, mottled red and white). Part of an assortment of heirloom beans that were a gift from Jag Patel and Antony Donovan.

If you think beans are just beans, you should try some Rancho Gordos. (www.ranchogordo.com/html/rg_varieties...) I'm a total convert.

I'd been thinking of a new recipe, a natural for a vegetarian meal with beans. It would probably work without the milk and eggs, for vegans, ...

666 and then some

Well, rats. I'm 66 years old, and it belatedly occurred to me to calculate how long 0.66667 of a year would be, so I could celebrate my two-thirds century mark, or "666" day. But I was born on June 9th, so that day would have been February 9th (counting from midnight on my birthday). So I missed it by almost a week.

Have a devilish good time anyway. I will.

Joe