08:59 pm I know I've been out of sight for a while--traveling, politics, family, you know...and here is some shameless self-promotion, but I did promise to let some of you know when this book was available in paperback--and now it is. The Dying Tide is a sort of cozy mystery--not a high-action thriller--but a book that might be fun if you like the southern coast and that world.
11:23 am I don't love taking Cipro and Flagyl, but it's amazing how fast they work. I woke up yesterday with a flareup of diverticulitis, my only real disease--for me, it's somewhat painful, but the 103 temperature knocks me down to the ground. Blessedly, my gastroenterologist is a friend and was willing to call in the antibiotics so I didn't have to go through ER and catscan like last time. Still, I was pretty much immobile (to the extent of not even being able to go upstairs and get in bed, after getting the meds) until they kicked in, around 6. Today, I'm almost back to normal.
Ironically, this was going on while the evil bill was being passed. I've used my new-found energy today to call senators and write to others about calling theirs. What if I had this with no access to a doctor? What if I had a job and young children and no way to cure this?
10:30 pm Suddenly realizing that I have disappeared from view, I'm here to say I'm at least reading! For those who think you can stop the crazy life when you retire, I'm a good example of how not to do it. I didn't intend to get back into political stuff just when a visiting monk arrived, needing chauffeuring and organizing and publicity for talks, didn't realize that family members might at that same time get ailments requiring attention from other family members, didn't think about how all of that could possibly get shuffled into my nomadic life. And cat, and house, and car, and friends, and now American Gods and The Handmaid's Tale both need watching.
And in fact there is writing that needs to be done, but it doesn't wave its hand and text me at midnight, so too easy to keep tending to that other stuff instead.
05:14 pm I see that there will be another exodus from LJ to DW. I'm the same user name in both places, so hope to see some of you here. It used to be that I hated to leave the LJ communities, but few of those seem active anymore.
10:47 pm I want to say more than a word for all the men I've known who've supported women's strength. Today I was with my son and his four year old daughter at the playground. In her natural habitat, she's a fearless, tough girl, but walking on to this new place with a gang of kids four years older who all knew each other was a challenge even for her. And then we came to the pole. You've seen them--the playground equipment that has a pole about a foot away from a stand that's about 6 feet high. Kids jump from the platform and slide down the pole--the bigger kids just swing down. But J was afraid. I was glad to see that, because sometimes she's done such daring things that I worried that she didn't have a realistic idea of the harm that could come to her body. But clearly she does. Her Papa (my son) stood by the pole with his hands up to catch her. She said she was afraid, he said she didn't have to, but that he'd catch her if she did. Finally she held on tight and swung her legs over, and slid down. She ran right back up and then was afraid again, but finally did it. They did this many times, and then he began to lower his hands, and finally told her she could do it without them. She was reluctant, and he kept saying she didn't have to do it, but she kept wanting to. Finally she figured out how to wrap one leg and then the other to climb over without a jump. She'll be leaping from it soon enough.
I remembered my father taking me out into the ocean, over and over. You've got to jump the waves, he kept saying, lifting me up, until finally one day I caught the crest and flew all alone.
11:14 pm The memories and tales in my family go back to a woman. I'm not even sure of her name. She was my grandmother's mother, so what I know of her dates from probably the late nineteenth century. She married my great-grandfather who had a farm in the northwest part of SC up near the mountains, but settled by the French. She had two daughters and a son, and convinced my great-grandfather to move 25 miles to a tiny town that had a college. It was a men's college then, but my grandmother finished the girls' school and then was the first woman to graduate from the men's college in 1904. But the story I know of her mother, the great-grandmother, is that she'd ride back to the old farm by herself, her youngest daughter with her, and at the old homestead light all the lamps so a passerby would think the house full of people.She'd ride back with her youngest daughter, a toddler, sleeping in a wagonload of cotton. I remember her.
So many good things lately. Best was a kayak paddle in a swamp near Charleston--a perfect bright clear day, no bugs, no leaves, just dark water and silver trees that rose high and slender but spread at the bottoms, like a whole ballroom full of elegant ladies in trumpet skirts. And my friend's son, a naturalist/historian, knew so many fascinating things about the inland rice culture that had been there, hundreds of years ago, the enslaved people who dug the mud and harvested the rice, the rich Yankees who came down to shoot the birds, the way the different trees, cypress and tupelo, maple and gum, adapt to rising and falling water.
A walk on the beach next morning with my friends, a huge wide beach full of dogs! They can be off-lead before ten, so everyone takes them then. Now dogs know joy, when they're free to tun on a beach with other dogs! I'd love to have just a minute of that ecstasy.
A demonstration against he-who-must-not-be-named. We were relegated to a Free Speech Zone, a mile and a half away from where he actually got off the plane (this is what democracy looks like!), but we got to shake our signs at him as he flew over, and that was very gratifying, even if he didn't bother to look out the window of his plane.
A good writing session, giving me a little hope that this book could yet gel into something resembling a book. Anyway, a good time digging deeper into characters I'd let get by too easily.
And now, a new episode of This Is Us. And then I'm very happy to be able to turn to the last of The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman, which I suspect some of you would like--the first of a series (yay) about a Library that collects books from all dimensions, and the very astute and brave young Librarian who tracks them down, with the assistance of very interesting men, women, and other...beings.
