Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 79

An Important announcement

Most of you know that Dave Freer won the Prometheus Award with his excellent Cloud-Castles. (If you haven’t bought it, do. And as always you give this blog a tiny tip when you click through. It doesn’t cost you any more.)

What you might not know, is that Yours Truly is presenting the award, which is your not to be passed up chance to hear the accent that ate the universe. (No, I won’t say Moose and Squirrel. It’s not seemingly. It’s a serious ceremony.)

Since it’s via zoom, I promise I...

Joy, by The Balloonatic

Joy, by The Balloonatic

Dave Freer wrote a book called “Joy Cometh with the Mourning,” a cozy little murder mystery sold to raise funds for the Anglican church on Flinder’s Island, a small island between Tasmania and the main coast of Australia. The main character is a female minister named Joy who stumbles into solving a murder, with the title being a word play on a Bible verse. By the end of the book, Joy doesn’t only find whodunnit, she also finds herself and her place in life. When I ...

The Vexed Question Of Student Loans

Before we start this, let us get a few things clear: when I find myself seemingly on the side of leftists, I backtrack and do my homework. And I make d*mn sure I’m not running on either emotion or knee jerk or propaganda.

That’s number one. Remember that. It’s important. Because there’s enough emotion on both sides of this issue to make it a complete mess.

Number two: I am not actually on the side of the left. The left talks about “forgiving student loans” but none of the things they’v...

The Ballad of Fed the Fred by Froggy Bottom

*Sorry. I know, I know, student loan post, but today is “not even time for post.” It’s been weird, and it’s been real, and it’s been real weird…. Anyway, I’m doing Winter Prince chapters, so this came across my feed, and I’m posting with permission. Froggy would ike us to know this was written on the fly and boy was the fly mad about it – SAH*

The Ballad of Fed the Fred by Froggy Bottom

Ear pieces, polo shirts,
Twill drive a man to drink!

Agitators, co conspirators,
Whence they came a my...

Boom!

Yes, I’m postponing the post on student loans, till I can write it, probably tonight. Because the weekend didn’t spiral INTO control and that post will take a while to write.

But because I’m still myself, I’m going to write about boomers, why a lot of us blame them for…. almost everything, why my generation (roughly 55 to 64) not only are not boomers, but tend to be the most vociferous in “D*mn it, I’m not a boomer.” Why I’m vaguely amused that millennials call everyone older than them “b...

It Was The Best Of Memes, It was the Worst of Memes

The Messages Fly But the Network is Down

We’re in a heck of a time. Our communications are thoroughly broken.

When I talk of what’s going on with the student loans, a lot of you think I’m being immoral for saying they shouldn’t be paid back. There’s been a ton of nonsense about “on the backs of the middle class” but none of that is remotely true. There’s a lot of things you’re assuming that have no basis in reality. They would, of course, if reality were even vaguely logical and if our system weren’t error piled on folly piled o...

When The Heart Breaks

This is not about me — for once — or not about me right now. I’m not here, now. I was here… well, more than once, starting at about 2003.

The last time, I woke up, in 2019, staring at the ceiling, and thinking “I could retire. It’s a thing I could genuinely do. Sure, this was never a traditional career, and I never made that much, but I could shutter the blog, close all the writing, turn the office into a craft room. Hit the local farmers’ markets and craft circuit.

Obviously I didn’t...

The Lunatic Ball

Other than Viva La Vida by cold play, I’ve recently been captured by “symptom of being human” by Shinedown.

I could write an entire post about how that song, unintentionally hooks in to various parts of my history, but this, right here:

I’ve never been the favorite, thought I’d seen it all
‘Til I got my invitation to the lunatic ball
And my friends are coming too
How ’bout you?

Dan and I were singing in the car on our last drive to see the older kids (Son and DIL) and on those lines,...

YOU EXPECT TO BE PAID FOR THIS?!?!?! by Foxfier

YOU EXPECT TO BE PAID FOR THIS?!?!?! by Foxfier

I’m fairly sure we’re all familiar with the drumbeat of how newspapers are dying. It’s so expensive to print, people just aren’t buying, the websites are a sunk cost that never pays back on advertising no matter how obnoxious they make the ads or how difficult they make it to see a story without paying ahead of time….

What they generally do not point out is that the reason people aren’t buying the news papers is that they decided to cut c...