Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 307

Painted All In Tongues

I hate rumor.  Perhaps I hate it more because I grew up in a village.

The people who imagine villages are idyllic and every person in it loves the other like a brother or sister, have no knowledge of people — or reality.  Sure, in many villages in isolated places, most of the people there are related to some degree.  This was not true where I grew up, because the village was already in the process of exploding into a large-city suburb.  It wasn’t visible to me as a child, because it was so sl...

Just the Sunday Vignettes, Ma’am- by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli

Just the Sunday Vignettes, Ma’am- by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it!  For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like...

Golden Moments

As most of you know I’m buried under a book deadline, and having  asthma attacks that pretty much knock me flat.

I know why and they’re tied to anxiety about family members, some of them health related.  But that doesn’t diminish the stress.

And yet there are golden moments.

What are golden moments?  When you get older, and have lived enough, you find most of your memories slide into this kind of haze “this type of day” is much like another type of day.  Unless you’re ten (and even then) if I...

Be Careful What You Ask For – E. Marshall Hoyt

Be Careful What You Ask For – E. Marshall Hoyt SWITZERLAND That’s the counter to use against liberals on healthcare! Liberals hold the firm belief that healthcare is a right, and that every citizen should have healthcare, regardless of circumstance. If they support the government telling everyone they need healthcare, surely they approve of Switzerland, which basically requires all males own a gun? Surely if they are so keen to adopt European policy, we should enforce gun ownership as mu...

Green

This is a post about grass and fences.

Yes.  I live in Denver.  I’ll let you get it out of your system now.  Yes, yes, grass, ahahahahaha.  We’ve sure never heard that one before.  (Has anyone seen my eyes?  I think they rolled under the sofa.  Someone find them before Havey-cat does.)  All I will say on that part of “grass” is that driving for two years after legalization was h*ll on Earth, with idiots not realizing that counted as impaired.  Seems to be smoothing out to normal Denver rate o...

Situational Ethics, a Guest Post by Caitlin I. Woods

Situational Ethics, a Guest Post by Caitlin I. Woods

Is it wrong to steal if it’s to feed your starving family?

No, no, wait—I mean, what if you *really really* needed the food, and you had no alternative way to get it, and you had a huge extended family that was going to die, *literally die* if you didn’t procure food for them *right now*. And you live in a hideous dystopic world where the powers that be are intentionally starving everyone, and the only people who have food are the ones that...

Bare Branches

[image error]It seems to me that this is my week for apologies.  I apologize.  I have guest posts working, but I was so tired, yesterday, that I couldn’t find it in me to schedule (or read even) them.  And this morning, when the place opened, I had an MRI.

Complicating things, I slept very badly.  Partly the two deaths, partly other people’s issues which I, like an idiot, tend to take on my shoulders, partly the book which I’m still fighting (mostly because I keep having headache-clusters and I’ve been in...

Doing the Impossible

Sorry this is so late.  Had news of the death of a relative.  No one close in blood, but someone who was very much a positive presence in my childhood.  So I took a little while to be … cogent.

I was talking to one of you on AIM and I said my family is half crazy and half stubborn and that all the best people are crazy.

And it occurred to me you need a good bit of crazy to get anything done.

When I was very little — oh, four to ten or so — I loved Enid Blyton’s books of adventures. In them ki...

Sunday Vignettes by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli Someone Ought to Open Up A Promo – Free Range Oyster

Sunday Vignettes by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it!  For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend t...

Say Goodbye To The State of Fear

I published this here, I think (though it might have been at PJM) 2 years ago.  I keep saying “For the times they are achanging” but it’s hard, even for me, sometimes, to remember how AFRAID I was.  Afraid of being associated with people I actually admired.  Afraid any words I said revealed I read an unapproved magazine (in the nineties, mostly Reason.) I was afraid of stepping out of line.  I monitored my emotions, my look, my friends on FB to ensure I had no spec of taint.  The first time i...