Steven Harper's Blog, page 37

Michigan Law and the Pandemic

It always amazes me how many people think that something isn't legal unless it's specifically mentioned in the state or federal Constitution. It's simply not true. The laws have to meet Constitutional standards, but they don't have to be mentioned there. Lately, it's all these people claiming that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has no legal power to create or enforce behavior restrictions (such as mask-wearing or closing restaurants) during the pandemic. Look, folks--the three branches of our government passed laws that give DHHS the power to create and enforce restrictions. Just like the legislature passed laws that give the police the power to arrest your ass if you violate them.
 By the above logic, the police, who aren't mentioned in the Constitution, have no legal power to write you a speeding ticket or arrest you for drunk driving, and judge has no power to throw you in jail. I'd love to see someone argue that in court!

comments

Short Story Announcement

It can be announced! I have a short story coming out soon in the WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE from Zombies Need Brains. My story is set in near-future Detroit, and features an unusual hard-boiled detective who reluctantly takes on a case that threatens to destroy the world.

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE:

What could possibly happen when two cultures meet for the first time?

In WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, anything.

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE presents fourteen original stories where two different societies intersect and deal with the aftermath of that meeting. Will the conflicting cultures merge and adapt and find peace? Or will they clash, unable to either accept their differences or acknowledge their commonalities? Who will survive when the last of the Fae battle a world-killing AI? What happens when a being who is part of a vast collective-consciousness is forced to face their own individuality? Can a werewolf ever break free of the unholy pact its fae creator has made with humanity? Will Earth really manage to commit the biggest and most egregious faux pas in history when it’s on the cusp of joining the Galactic Union? And why is it that two very different kinds of elves are angrily facing off at a simple dinner party?

Whether your taste runs to humor, horror, science fiction, or fantasy, the stories collected in this latest anthology from Zombies Need Brains and written by some of today’s hottest SF&F authors will delight, thrill, and terrify you. Join Christopher Leapock, Howard Andrew Jones, Gary Kloster, Louis Evans, Peter S. Drang, Esther Friesner, S.C. Butler, Nancy Holzner, Auston Habershaw, Violette Malan, Stephen Leigh, Alan Smale, Steven Harper, and Jordan Chase-Young as they delve into what may happen…WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE.
 
“The Erratics” by Christopher Leapock
“Brother of Swords” by Howard Andrew Jones
“Walls of Teeth and Iron” by Gary Kloster
“Faux Pas” by Louis Evans
“Darithian Life Cycle” by Peter S. Drang
“Seelie With a Kiss” by Esther Friesner
“What and Why” by S.C. Butler
“Melusina” by Nancy Holzner
“Malevolent Liberation of Pret” by Auston Habershaw
“Mercenary Code” by Violette Malan
“Deep Heart Inside” by Stephen Leigh
“Dogs of Babylon” by Alan Smale
“Eight Mile City” by Steven Harper
“How the Fae of Savernake Forest Fought the AI that Ate the World” by Jordan Chase-Young





comments

Lake Living: the Birds

A little more than a week ago, the lake was frozen solid.  Then we got a spate of warm weather (in the 60s!), and it started to melt.  Even before the ice disappeared, the birds were returning.  Ducks and geese both huddled on the ice. Some seagulls dipped and swooped above like white kites.

Then, overnight, the ice vanished, as it if had never been.

Now, all the birds are back.  It's a cacophony of spring singing out there.  Redwing blackbirds trill in the reeds.  A flock of ducks are quacking madly at a honking horde of geese.  A pair of swans showed up this morning, and they're sliding back and forth across the water, opening up the summer cottage and checking for damage.  All the birds are rushing around like little kids, shouting and playing and demanding territory.  It's a lovely sign of spring.

comments

COVID Anniversary: a Retrospective

A year ago, the coronavirus (as we called it back then) appeared in Michigan with two recorded cases.

No one was wearing masks in public much.  We were avoiding handshakes and doing elbow bumps instead.  But no one seemed overly worried.

I was terrified.  I remember watching it show up in China and spread quickly.  Cruise ships filled up with plague victims and were refused docking.  Still, everyone, including Donald Trump, was saying it wasn't a big deal, and I was saying, "This is horrifying." Diseases like this spread like crazy, especially in a world of quick, cheap international travel.  It only takes a single case in an airport to send a virus all around the world.

The latest (and ultimately false) information we had back then was that the virus spread on surfaces, like the flu does, so I set my students to work.  Twice a day, every day, I sprayed my classroom tables down with bleach cleaner and had my students wipe them dry with paper towels.  They grumbled and complained that it was stupid, that there was nothing to worry about.  I ignored them.

On Wednesday, I brought in a giant bottle of hand sanitizer and told my students that everyone who entered the room needed to use it, even if they said they'd just washed their hands.  This excited some commentary, especially from "Moe," a nasty-minded student from a right-wing family.  Moe was a big kid with a loud mouth who had clearly been raised to believe that if a big person just shouts at people, they'll be cowed into submission.  He was a bully and weasel both, who tried to get me into trouble by peddling false stories about me to the principal. These stories ended in showdowns in the office, and Mick upped his attempts to get me into trouble.

So after a bathroom break, Moe strode into the class and bypassed the sanitizer.  I stopped him and told him to use it.  He made a huge, vocal deal about it. "This thing is a fake! It's nothing! This is stupid."  I ordered him out of the classroom and told him not to come back until I'd heard from the principal.  He stormed out, vowing never to return.  As it turned out, he never did.

The following day--Thursday--Moe wasn't in class.  I marked him absent and taught as usual.

Meanwhile, I remember a palpable feeling in the air, similar to when a blizzard is on the way.  The numbers were shooting up in Michigan, and we'd had a case in our school district.  Fewer of my students were scoffing at the virus now, and the big discussion was whether or not it qualified as a pandemic.  The CDC was hesitant to call it one because they were afraid of panic.  This struck me as an idiotic policy, and was the first among hundreds of bad calls, missteps, and utter incompetence on behalf of the CDC in handling COVID-19.  This was The Big One, the event they'd been preparing for over decades. And when it finally arrived, they screwed it up from beginning to end and side to side.

"Do you think they'll close the schools?" students and teachers often asked.

"I think they will," I always said.  "We won't finish the school year."

"Nah!" scoffed my colleagues.  "It's a flu. We might miss a day or three, but that's it."

Also on Thursday, Darwin got the news that his brother had died down in Arizona.  I made sub arrangements for Friday so I could be home for him.

That evening, Governor Gretchen Whitmer called an emergency news conference.  She announced that she was closing places of congregation, including bars, restaurants, and all schools for the next two weeks.

This set off a flurry of work.  Darwin was dealing with long-distance arrangements surrounding his brother's death (no one else in the family seemed willing to get involved, strangely) and I was dealing with work.  Wherever Schools announced that on Monday, we teachers could come in and get stuff from our classrooms that would allow us to set up virtual teaching at home.  After that, we were forbidden to return.

I didn't get a final class with my students because I was out on Friday.  I noticed the sub had marked Moe absent.  I wondered grimly what he was thinking of hand sanitizer now.

On Monday, I rushed into my room, snatched up my school laptop and other portable technology, along with copies of textbooks, and drove home.  The district gave us one day--ONE DAY--to figure out how to use Google Classroom and put lessons up for our students.  Everyone was floundering, even panicking.  The big concern was how to use Zoom.  I didn't want to touch it, and never did that year.  Other teachers tried it, and got Zoom bombed.  One teacher got porn bombed--a Zoom bomber shared a video of hardcore porn with the class.  We were told to put up assignments and home-recorded videos for the students, but assignments couldn't actually count or be graded.

I worked for hours and hours and hours, recording and editing videos of myself, converting materials to Google Classroom.  Darwin was still working in Albion at the time, and I ended up spending half the week down there.  It was the strangest thing, teaching in Wherever from 50 miles away.

The end of the two-week closure coincided with the beginning of spring break.  Everyone was saying that three weeks of closing down would give the epidemic (as the dumb-ass CDC was still calling it then) time to ebb, and we could go back to normal.

"No," I said.  "We won't go back.  This thing is just getting started."

I hated being right.

In the middle of spring break, the governor announced that schools would continue to be closed, first for the month of April, then into May, then until the end of the year.  Graduation for everyone, including Max, was canceled.  This was the single most upsetting part of the pandemic for me up to that point.  After all the hard work, the arguments, the fighting, the coaching, the shepherding, the watching, the twice-yearly IEP meetings, I wasn't going to see Max walk down the aisle to get his diploma.  It still upsets me.

We teachers were hailed as heroes due to our attempts to create workable lessons for at-home students, but we were too busy putting in twelve-hour days to notice.  (Later, when schools were still closed for the fall, we were suddenly denigrated as lazy and incompetent because the teachers refused to risk their lives for their jobs.)

I never did see Moe again.  I was too busy to care.

In June, my uncle Indul died from COVID-19. 

Mask mandates were finally introduced, and became a political flashpoint because Trump stated he wouldn't be wearing one.  The Republican party stood behind Trump and resolutely blocked methods that would slow or halt the spread of the disease. 

A few months later, my uncle David and his step-daughter died from COVID. 

Here we are, now.  I've gotten both doses of the vaccine, and Darwin's had his first.  Numbers are finally going down.  We may be back to some version of normal by July.  And it's never been more clear than ever that the Republican party wants nothing but power. They don't care about lives, they don't care about their constituents.  They don't care.  They must never, ever be allowed control of the government again.

And now we need to move forward.

comments

Lake Living: A Second Kayak and a Fall

Darwin went with me to the sporting goods store to look at wrist weights. We walked inside, and straight into a huge display of kayaks.

A bit of history: when we moved up to the lake last year, I wanted a kayak. A sporting goods store is only a couple blocks away from us, so we went kayak hunting.  It turned out to be devilishly difficult--they had few in stock, and most were ungodly expensive. Turned out that the pandemic, which was in full swing, was pushing people to look for safe activities, and kayaking is one of them. The store couldn't keep kayaks in stock! A clerk told us they didn't even bother unwrapping them. They just put them on the sales floor, still encased in plastic wrap, and they were gone within a day.  After several trips to the store, I finally found one that was more-or-less affordable and used it happily, but we couldn't get a second one for Darwin without paying $800, so we decided to wait.

Winter came, and it passed quickly.  A few days ago, the lakes melted.  And apparently, the sporting goods store decided to get a jump start on kayak season.  Today, they had dozens and dozens and dozens of them, in all sizes and price ranges, all neatly stacked right up by the front door.

Well, dang!

It's still too cold for kayaking, but decided to get a kayak for Darwin anyway, on the grounds that they might sell out again. We got one for way less than I paid for mine.  We got the cheapest one, really, because our lake is shallow and basically waveless, and we don't need ultra-stability, titanium steel, or stealth capabilities.

We were carrying it back through the store parking lot toward our place when Darwin tripped on a parking block. 

He went straight down to hands and knees on the pavement, and I saw him hit his head.  My heart about stopped.  I shouted his name and tried to get him back up.  I couldn't at first, and I wondered if I should call an ambulance.  But finally he got upright.  He'd hit his head on the kayak, not the pavement, at least.

Somehow, we got him and the kayak back home.  Upstairs, I examined the damage.  The area above his right eye was tender and swelling up, and both knees were a bloody mess.  I gave him an ice pack with orders to keep it on his eye, then put cold cloths on his knees (this made him hiss) while I hunted up the peroxide.  At first, he didn't want me to use it, but I told him it was that or a bath to clean the wounds.  He relented.  I put towels under his legs and started pouring.  It set the scrapes bubble merrily, which made Darwin hiss again, but when it stopped, he said he was surprised that everything had stopped hurting.  (He'd never put peroxide on a sore before.) 

I fed him ibuprofen, then went to the drug store for bandages and antiseptic spray.  Back home, I did the spraying (NO STING! the label proudly proclaimed), and Darwin howled.  "The label lies!" he yelped.  When everything died down, we got the bandages on him.

Darwin had meanwhile abandoned the ice pack.  I checked his forehead, and found a knot under construction.  I refreshed the ice pack and told him to leave it there, or he was going to have a bruise.  He did.

He's feeling better now, even more so after I burned a batch of cookies for him, and I think he'll avoid a bruise.

But we have another kayak.

comments

Wrist Weights to the Rescue!

So I've been pounding through the workout/game Supernatural on the Oculus. The workouts come in three levels: low, medium, and high intensity. I started out with medium and quickly progressed to high. I check my progress by tracking my heart rate with my Fitbit. The Fitbit also tells me how many calories I've burned, which is handy--I can put the information into Noom, and it adjusts my calories for the day accordingly. I get to eat one "extra" calorie for every two I burn.
Anyway, I noticed lately my heart rate wasn't going as high during even the most difficult high intensity workout. I also wasn't sweating so much and wasn't becoming breathless. Stupid aerobic exercise! How dare it improve my muscle efficiency?
Trouble is, I was burning fewer calories as well. I needed to figure out what to do.
So I went to the sporting goods store near our place and bought a set of wrist weights. Three pounds for each wrist. Then I climbed into the Oculus.
Boy, could I feel the difference! It was tough, but I powered through it. My usual Oculus workout runs 60 minutes, but this time I had to stop at 40. I finished things off with a 20-minute treadmill run.
Check the stats when I was done. The Fitbit sorts heart rate into Fat Burn, Cardio, and Peak. I was spending most of an hour-long workout at Cardio, with maybe five or seven minutes at Peak, though this time was shortening lately. I was burning about 600 calories.
With the wrist weights, I spent 36 minutes at peak and burned 850 calories.
Okay, then. We'll continue with them.




comments

Group Families

There are lots and lots of ways to structure a family. This has ALWAYS been so. The dad/mom/kids/dog thing was the only socially acceptable one, even though there were lots of single parents, divorced parents, blended families, same-sex parents, and households that included people who were considered family even though they had no blood or marriage ties to anyone. These families existed, even though no one talked openly about them, or even acknowledged their existence. Then, in the 80s, single and divorced parent families became normalized and accepted. Thirty years later, same-sex parent families became (or are becoming) normalized and accepted. Now we're seeing yet other types of families become normalized and accepted.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-throuple-families-coming-out-polyamorous-parenting-201401574.html
This is, frankly, the result of social media. Social media allowed people to tell stories that would otherwise go untold. Social media allows people in so-called non-traditional families ("so-called" because these families have existed just as long as dad/mom/kids/dogs) to communicate and understand that they aren't the only ones. And social media allowed these families to BE SEEN, and being seen is the first step toward acceptance. It's hard for people to understand and accept what they've never seen before.
I've encountered some poly families over the years, and every one of them said that a group makes a bunch of stuff easier. Child care, household chores, emotional support for kids and adults are all easier when spread out among more adults. It also saves money--more people living in one household is always cheaper than having multiple, smaller households. Its how humans were evolved to live, really--in groups or tribes.
People love to ask, "But what if someone divorces the group? What about the kids then?" Except that's the exact same situation for two-adult families, and no one asks such families, "What will you do if you decide to get divorced one day?"
It's interesting and wonderful to see families where there are more people to love and care for the children. And it's wonderful to see these families gaining mainstream acceptance.




comments

Amazon Dumps Hate-Mongers

When a major, exploitative corporation like Amazon does the right thing, I feel conflicted.https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/03/12/amazon-responds-to-republican-sens-on-book-ban-says-wont-sell-books-that-frame-lgbtq-identities-as-mental-illness/

I assume this only applies to non-fiction, though I'm wondering how they'll employ this new policy. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books that would need delisting.
Do note that, no matter what the right-wing says, this is NOT censorship. As a private company, Amazon is not required by the First Amendment to publish your book or offer it for sale on their site. It would be censorship only if the =government= tried to say a book could not be published.
And where were the "Amazon is censoring" nutbags back when Amazon got into a snit with Hachette and pulled all the books by authors with that publisher? Hmmmm? Not a peep back then. We know what they're worried about, and it ain't censorship.

comments

The Politics of Cat Food

Although Dinah's mouth has healed, I've continued the practice of giving her a meal of canned food in the morning. She'd come to expect it and gets more and more agitated over the morning if I don't feed her, and she's still on the light side.  Canned food to the rescue!

But this turned into kitty politics.  Dora, the meatloaf cat, doesn't need more food.  She can barely jump up to the bed, and when she jumps down, she lands with an audible grunt.  She doesn't understand the idea of "Dinah gets special food and you don't," though. She simply FREAKS.  "Wheresminewheresminesheresminesheresmine???"

So I put a dab of food on a saucer for Dora while Dinah gets the rest.  At first, this quieted Dora.  After a while, she began to notice that Dinah took a lot longer to eat.  She never tried to steal Dinah's portion or chase her away from it, but she'd hover and pace and stare while Dinah finished.

One day, I set the empty food container on the floor next to Dora's dab.  She didn't know what to do!  TWO bits of food to choose from?  This is both heaven and hell!  Finally she went for the dab, and after it was done, she dove into the container.  She worked her kitty buns off to lick every morsel and drop from the inside.  It was made more difficult by the way the container scooted across the floor.  It took her a good twenty minutes of work to satisfy her that it's clean.  She was clearly frustrated by this, but hey--it gives her something to do.  Now I do it every day.

Meanwhile, Dinah can eat in peace.

comments

Maintaining Corey

I've been neglecting my harp Corey lately--just haven't had time to play much--and he's shown it.  I finally noticed he was dusty and that the wrapping on his lowest E string had come undone.  His lowest C string has been buzzing a little for a long time, and now it was buzzing so bad, the string was unusable.

Time to rectify all this.

I replaced the E string easily enough, then went to work on the buzzing C.  First, I replaced it, but it still buzzed unbearably.  It was like Corey was complaining that I had left him alone for so long.  But the buzzing created a puzzle.

On a folk harp, every string has two pegs.  The upper peg is the one you wind the top of the string around.  You turn the peg with a special key in order to tighten or loosen the string for tuning. The lower peg doesn't move and has a groove in it.  The string slots into the groove to brace it, hold it in place, and to lessen the pressure on the upper peg.  Finally, between the upper and lower pegs, we have the sharpening lever, which looks a little like a light switch.  When you flip the lever up, the inner part presses against the string, effectively shortening it and raising the pitch by a half step, or sharp.  The C string was brushing against the sharpening lever.  This caused the buzzing. 

The solution was to find a way to move either the string or the sharpening lever so they didn't touch.  The sharpening lever has a tiny bolt in it, and I tried tightening that with needle-nose pliers.  No help.  I tried adjusting the sharpening lever by turning it a little--the levers are fastened to the bridge (top) of the harp with another bolt, and you can waggle them a tiny bit without harm.  But that didn't work either.  I even tried wrapping the string backward and bracing it against the opposite side of the lower peg, hoping this would move the string away from the sharpening lever.  That was a disaster!

It seemed more and more like Corey was being stubborn because I'd left him alone for so long.  I promised him a good tuning and a thorough cleaning if he would just show me what was wrong! 

I was getting worried, really.  Harps warp as they get older.  The strings pull down on the bridge and up on the sounding board with several tons of pressure.  As time goes on, the sounding board bells more and more, drawn upward by the strings.  The more the board bells, the better the sound, which is why older harps always sound more mellow than new harps. 

But as time passes, the wood ages, the pressure becomes too great, and the harp implodes.  This is a fairly spectacular event, a strange form of musical suicide that leaves you with a pile of wrecked wood and broken strings.  It usually takes decades, even a century, for this to happen, though, and Corey isn't even forty yet.  Still, I worried that Corey was warping early, and the string was being pulled out of place, causing the buzz.

I was just getting to the point where I figured I'd have to find a repair place and wondering how much it would cost to ship Corey to a workshop when my eye fell on the C-string's lower peg.  Hmmm . . .

A little-know fact about folk harp maintenance is that your best friend is a hammer.  Totally true!  The most common problem with a folk harp is with the upper pegs.  They're set into holes drilled all the way through the bridge and they poke out on both sides--one side to wrap the string around and the other for tuning.  Sometimes, the peg shifts in the hole, which loosens it and warps the tuning.  You tighten the peg back up by whacking it with a hammer, driving the peg back into place.  It's a little unnerving to watch.  A harp looks delicate and airy, and here you are pounding it with a chunk of steel.

However, the LOWER pegs DON'T go all the way through the bridge.  They only go halfway, and they generally don't shift. They DO hold the string in place, however.  I wondered . . . what if the lower peg had come out a little and was pushing the string against the sharpening lever?

I got the hammer and gave the lower peg a couple of careful whacks, like I was gently driving a nail.  Then I tested the C string.

Blessed Be!  The buzz had vanished!

Relieved, I gave Corey a good tuning, then cleaned him all over with gentle soap and polish until he gleamed.  Then I sat down and played.  It was nice.

Friendships must be maintained.

comments