C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 82

Arrrh! It’s national Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Pirates were with us from the time of the Greeks, and probably the Egyptians…

Most were Not Nice People in any way, shape or form.

They tended to blossom forth in numbers after political upheavals on land…as people who had boats found a way to get out of Dodge. When whole navies were put in that position by losing a war—they sometimes turned to free enterprise.

The little nation of Cilicia, girt by mountains, having nothing but a major land trade route and some fishing for a resource (it sat where Asia Minor connects to the Syrian/Lebanon area)…declared itself a ‘free port’ in ancient times: no questions asked. So it a) harbored pirates, who could put in there for a re-fit and supplies, and spend their gold ashore, thus encouraging local business b) encouraged land trade, because it didn’t allow banditry on that trade route c) didn’t itself need a navy: it had the pirates.

They were a plague on Roman shipping (witness Caesar getting kidnapped by pirates in his youth) and unstoppable until Sextus Pompey took after them with an organized Roman fleet and denied them Cilicia.

The Pirates of the Spanish Main were yet another variation on the ‘defeated navy.’ In point of fact, they’d succeeded too well as an adjunct navy—Britain had licensed privateers (private ships) to harry the Spanish trade routes during the period when Adm. John Hawkins and family (kin to me, Jane, and apparently some of you guys!) redesigned British warships to be more weatherly and seaworthy—and agile. This was a good thing, since the Spanish, duly annoyed at the action of the privateers, decided to go invade England. Which, as you know, didn’t work, and put a heavy hit on Spain.

This had an adverse effect on the privateers, who began to look for other ways to go on doing what they were doing.

Meanwhile England, Holland, France, the Netherlands…all broke out in religious contentions and the Pope unhelpfully blamed the bad weather (Little Ice Age) on witches, which made the whole continent crazy, created mob mentality, burnings, witch hunts, and political push-pull as the English beheaded their king and had Cromwell attacking the Irish with fanatic intensity—all over religion. Some people fled to the New World either to practice their beliefs or to take over the New World for their particular sect or belief — and the privateers, meanwhile, pursued a lifestyle of democracy, racial and gender tolerance, work-based advancement, and all the virtues we now hold dear: they just had this untidy habit of raiding shipping…

They had their own Cilicia, in Port Royal, but when a great earthquake slid Port Royal into the sea, they were kind of disadvantaged, and when Adm. Hawkins’ redesigned fleet left off fighting the Spanish to go after the pirates who were now being a nuisance to the slave-molasses-rum traffic (the Triangular Trade) — the pirates were running on borrowed time…

If anybody has corrections for PROTECTOR, please post them here.

I’ll collate them and get them on to DAW. They’re preparing an update.

The weather is definitely starting to turn…

The air is cooler, damper, and it’s overcast today. We were rained on last night—no breakfast on the patio, because our patio chairs were soaked, and the wisteria canopy over the other seating would rain on you–

I’m ready for summer to end, I think. We were cheated of our snow last winter, and that means we had a battle with pests all summer, not serious, but so much so that every trip to the garden ends with chopping or pulling something.

Oh the other hand, the pond is glass, top to bottom. I need to get pix.

Big windstorm…

We normally watch Hulu or Netflix in the evenings…been watching Tree with Deep Roots (24 episodes) on Hulu, now Revenge on Netflix—and that means we don’t get the weather warnings. But I’d left my telly on in my room, and heard the beep/buzz. So at next episode break, about 10 min on, I got up and used Tivo to roll back and check what had come on.

Yikes! Major gust front coming our way with 60 MPH winds, large hail, and lightning—so I hied me out to batten down the pond, rescue the bag of fishfood, and get anything loose weighed down.

Just 5 minutes after I got in, the front hit…not with hail, but dust. The air turned surreal red in the streetlights (we’re on a 4 lot block, so we have two in sight) and stuff blowing, garbage cans gone orbital, just real nasty. Some thunder, distant, some lightning. No hail.

This morning we had one garbage can overturned (the compost one, which didn’t open: la!) and one patio chair turned over. But that was it.

Quite, quite a night! I’ve seen downbursts, where a rotation instead of bringing a tornado just dives for the ground, and that’s what this was like: didn’t last long, but the wind was fierce, and it carried half of middle Washington potato fields as dust…our eyes were really stinging this morning!

Jane and I are related—again.

So far the closest is 10th cousin, via the Batchelders of Massachusetts.

But we numerous times share grandmothers and grandfathers, before we diverge off again due to descent from a different sib.

Well, we’ve done it again, this time re Adm. Hawkins, naval architect, and one of the 3 commanders of the British Fleet against the Spanish Armada—. I saw Pinney and Hawkins come up in her tree, and sure enough, her 11th great grandmother is my 10th. We’re always about a generation apart in the relationship, though we’re only 10 years apart in our ages.

Hoping those of you in Colorado and New Mexico are ok…

I’ve been following the reports—know some of the territory involved. The Estes Park region, the I-25 corridor we use at least once a year. These are familiar names to us… We know we have people near 25.

Hope everybody is ok.

179!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First time I’ve cracked that weight plateau since the 1970′s.

Happy dance!

And here’s something I posted while talking about diets on FB, but it took me decades and some soul-searching to figure this out, so it’s worth sharing, where applicable:

“Cooks—let me add one other REAL nasty trap we get into. Cooking is our hobby. We think about it—and food—a lot. We *plan* food. We *buy* food. We get *luv* from food. And *compliments.* Face it—we’re addicted.

“Going totally over to the frozens in March—I felt a little panicked. Come my usual prep-time, I’d get up, go to the kitchen, and stand there asking myself what I was going to do. Too early to put a packet in the microwave. Too early to do anything. No grazing while cooking, either. So I go sit down and think about—food.

“—–Well, after 3 months, I now know that cooking time is 12 minutes for 2 packets, and that I need to be in the kitchen at 15 of 5, not 4 pm.

“I also know that the big problem with Jane losing weight—and us losing weight—was ME! I was cooking too much food, wrong kind of food, too heavy on the fat and carbs, and I was providing enough for us two to feed a family of 6.”

[Note: Jane kept blaming herself, because she'd gain, even when we were dieting, especially when the snack-urge would hit and she'd commit some indiscretion... Wrong, Jane. It was me, the villain all along. I was providing the carbs that would trigger the snack-urge, and almost setting it up that that would happen. I didn't realize I was doing it. But I was.]

“I have stopped, after half a year, thinking about food. So if you ARE the household cook, and trying to figure why the diets never work—my advice is—shudder—stop getting your warm-fuzzies from food and its preparation, and fahgeddaboudit! at least until you get where you’re going!”

I’ve cracked my worst plateau. Jane is a few pounds from hers, and looks to crack it by the end of September. Yay us!

Chondrite, how is the access problem?

e-mail me as cj@cherryh.com if you’re still having problems.

Mike Resnick wants to use short story ‘Cassandra’ in an e-mag, but I don’t have an e-copy.

If anybody can poke around and find one, I’d be obliged. Post an ‘I’ve got it’ here if you can, so as to save others the hunt. I have NO trouble with pirating the pirates.

We got it all shipped out…

The Teen folk were fine—couldn’t find an addy 10 blocks due north of them, but hey, you can’t find everything. We guided them in and they took the furniture with no problem.

Meanwhile I got a lovely hundred dollar discount from a reader who signed us as the person who referred her to Sleep Number, so I got some new sheets—the spendy ones that wick heat away from you and prevent ‘hot spots.’ You have to wash them on delicate and dry them on low, because they’re some space age thing that reacts badly to too much heat. But they are so nice and having a change of sheets that are already washed and waiting is a luxury I haven’t had in, well, since Oklahoma.

Weather’s still in the upper 80′, but nights are starting to trend toward fall.

And moving that large furniture out of the basement lets Jane and me continue on our reorganization plan.