You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2009.
Trinity is holding services at The Cathedral of Trinity (see the link) regarding broken wings and repair work. Go check it out.
I’ll have my own thoughts later on that.
Teaching Front
We cleared the 1920s today in my 0800 hour class. Not my favorite period per se but we did cover it. We’ll be moving toward Franklin D. Roosevelt (Saint Frank to some) on Wednesday. After that we will move back to foreign policy and the Rise of Japan.
In the Noon class I’m giving them their test today. We’ll see how that goes. My full time peer resumes command on Wednesday. I’m a bit nervous about their return only insofar as the fact that the area we covered is not my strongest.
Though given the number of times I have given the Pre Revolutionary Era lecture over the last month (must be upwards of five to six times) I should be stronger. If nothing else, I should know what needs to be fixed.
In the 1300 hour class we’re moving into Boom and Bust followed by Andrew Carnegie.
It is supposed to be warm today but it is not and I’m still trying to figure out what to do about the summer job front.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
As of this writing I have two published stories which rate as professional level work by most standards of measurement. The first is Tearing Down Tuesday and the other is The Limb Knitter. Both are available on the links to the right of your screen but most regular readers have probably read the stories by now.
They are the pinacle of my writing development, a path that has taken me from the depths of childhood to my first sale to Interzone in 2007. I’ve been working consistently to make my first sale since the year 2000 though you can trace an initial effort back to a summer before graduate school in 1997 or 1998. I can not remember which summer it was but I remember the title.
Under Fraudulent Skies. It is the sort of story that would never sell, even today. It took some pretty hard jabs at the environmentalist and global warming movement. In terms of character, plot and story development, UFS had serious flaws but even if those flaws were fixed, it still wouldn’t sell.
In any case, that was my first. There were others. I kept at it and eventually made it.
Why write at all? That is a good question to answer first. I have a knack for it. Everyone says so, including detractors (reluctantly in some cases). I have some modicum of talent to draw upon in tandem to a touch of imagination. I am stubborn enough to keep at it and I like spending long periods of time alone.
Vital ingredients to be sure, but why devote so much of my life to it? My parents, I am certain, ask this question.
Sanity saver perhaps? Perhaps the straight answer to the question is that short of a rocketship to a New World, writing is my escape from the mundane world I live in. It gives me a way to examine that world from some distance, reshape it and see it in a new light.
All of which is trite and cliche I suppose.
I write because it pleases me to write. On a list of things which provide me with solace, writing is up there along side sex, swimming, horseback riding and teaching.
So, with that first part poorly answered, why write science fiction? Terri has said more than once that I should try something else, perhaps mainstream literature. Birmo has suggested crime and memoir work. I’m not so certain about the mainstream work mainly because it seems to be more of what I seek to get away from, put some distance between myself and this world I live in. Also, I often find American Mainstream Writers to be pretentious and more than a little stuck up. I think Birmo’s suggestions carry more resonance for me.
Why science fiction?
Escapism I suppose, that dirty word which no one in the current community of up and coming writers like. The idea that for just a little while we can go somewhere else, examine some other problem, find a solution, get some distance or maybe even catch a breather from our own mundane, paltry, annoying existence.
I write science fiction for the same reason I study history. It gives me a new set of lenses through which I can examine the problems that interest me, using a cast of characters that I can identify with. Characters I can relate to, characters which, these days, are underrepresented in science fiction or worse, they are stereotypically depicted.
I write science fiction because I like watching someone try to fix that shiny new gadget which doesn’t work as advertised. I like to explore how creatures my perceive reality differently than humans. I wonder how humans will deal with the sociological changes wrought by advanced technology. Will they change a great deal, or just adapt and continue as they always have?
I will admit that I do not write a great deal these days. Teaching consumes a great deal of my time and energy, something Terri warned me about. The energy which is left is further sapped away by the ongoing nonsense over what we should be writing in science fiction.
Or more to the point, it is sapped away by self appointed assholes who generate long lists of Thou Shalt Nots for the genre. It is worth pointing out that both of my stories violate a number of those Thou Shalt Nots which can be found at The Market Which Shall Never Be Named at the Pondering Tree.
Will I continue to write science fiction? I like to think I will. I like to think that at some point I’ll get back into the saddle again for longer than a few days before teaching, relationships and life in general draw my attention away. I like to think that I’m gathering grist for the new stories, whatever they might be.
I like to think that.
But sometimes I wonder.
On we go.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Over at Thoughts of a Lime Monkey, Jason asked folks to submit questions. One that I asked him is the reason he become an English Major, which he does into some detail explaining. My blog links are a bit out of date but if you want to read his answer, it can be found at this link here.
http://thoughtsofalimemonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/answers.html
In retrospect, my decision to become a historian seems rather stupid, especially when I notice how my wallet doesn’t have any money in it. So why history?
Well, because I like it. That is the simple answer. The more complex answer is that as I was coming up through the public school system, in an era where the traditional blue collar jobs were failing left and right, we were told that the only way to “The Future” was to earn a college degree. And the perpetual problem I had in public school as well as in the Army was trying to decide what that degree should be in.
I knew that I hated dealing with financial matters (I still do). I knew that law bored me to tears and frequent attempts to take additional law classes have only reinforced this point. I am no good at mathematics at all so that took away all of the fields of engineering, robotics, and many sciences. In an ideal world where an alternate version of myself master mathematics, I would be designing new green sustainable housing or something.
So that narrowed my choices down to things which I knew I was good at or had some potential.
Biology
Writing
History
Law Enforcement
Soldier
Possibly Computer and Communications Technology.
Our high school, North Kansas City High School, did not have a real computer science program in the 1980s. I spent a lot of time on the Apple IIe computers we had typing papers but no one taught me anything outside of the very basics of computer programing. Most hackers of that decade were self taught kids with lots of crap to work with at home, a category I did not fall under. My parents instead spent $2000 on a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas.
Which, I digress, was not a bad investment per se. I used them as recently as my first semester of teaching. Unfortunately I had to get rid of them when I moved out of my last apartment. Too much weight, no place to store them, and they were hopelessly out of date.
My encounter with communications technology in the US Army quickly taught me that I was ill suited for that sort of work, regardless of what my ASVAB scores said. The radio teletype rigs I started out on in the first two years of my enlistment were hopelessly out of date and no longer used on a regular basis. When we transitioned over to Mobile Subscriber Equipment (the Army’s version of cellphones is the oversimplified way to describe this crap) I found that while I may have had an aptitude for the work, I didn’t enjoy it. More to the point, I didn’t enjoy hanging around Signal Corps Pukes for the most part and a year in a Signal Battalion in Korea showed me that I needed to be in some other branch if I was going to continue in uniform.
So I steered away from technology before I started college. Ironic given that I am a published science fiction writer.
Biology and history were the top candidates for degree majors. Unfortunately I ran into an instructor (similar to Jason’s story) who, while I did not dislike them, was very difficult to understand. I got a C in Biology, my first college C and more to the point, in a subject I had performed well in previously.
That left History, which was my strong suit. I had excellent history instructors during my first two years, strong enough to help me deal with an incredibly incompetent instructor at Park during the next two and lay the foundation for some modicum of success in my graduate years.
We know I walked away from the Army (a decision I continue to wonder about, especially lately) and we know that I consider myself incredibly ill suited for police work. My fear of needles precludes a medical career so here I am.
History, at least the parts that interest me, holds the potential to answer questions I have always had about human nature. Why is there a constant need to engage in violence, conflict and competition? Why do nation-states and their leaders behave the way they do? Why do their populations allow them to behave in this way? Is it possible, studying history, to find ways to forsee trends in behavior and perhaps avert bad situations? To turn a negative into a positive?
Which is probably why I focus on politics, foreign policy, trade in some instances, and military history in my classroom. I do some social history to a lesser degree but to be honest, I received a social history overdose when I was in college and feel, to be brutally honest, that social history is a dumbed down version of spoon feeding knowledge to students who can’t be bothered to understand the basic structure of history.
I do focus on gender and race when the course requires it. My interest in gender studies sustains me when I cover gender related topics though I have noticed lately that my lectures could use an overhaul to cover this in more detail. I have also noticed that Asian and Hispanic minorities are not covered in the detail I’d like. Race is such a caustic topic in any case (see Racefail ‘09) that one must tread carefully on that ground.
I have almost no interest in religion, which may actually be a positive in an environment where the interest in religion is to attack, destroy and engage in xenophilic worship of ever religion outside of Western Culture.
My goals as a historian have always been relatively modest. Here they are in a nutshell.
1. Increase my understanding of the human story.
2. Impart my understanding of the human story to students in the classroom.
3. Find a way to make money doing this.
I’ve managed to get the first two to work for me. And I have some indicator that number three is starting to work for me. The big question now is whether or not I can transition to a full time job at some point.
Next time I’ll cover why I became a writer and specifically why I became a science fiction writer. I suppose I should also answer the question, “Why do I continue to strive in a field that has become the home of politically correct, witch hunting fascists?”
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
The springtime weather we’ve been enjoying is about to disappear for a bit tomorrow. We’re supposed to get up to eight inches of snow and today is already a cold, wet rainy mess. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see an ice storm coat the Midwest before it is all said and done for this winter.
At least I’m not living in Fargo. Whew. Sandbagging in the snow.
The Teaching Front
We moved into the 1920s today, which isn’t my favorite period to be honest. We’re discussing Harding, the Palmer Raids, Prohibition and Women’s Suffrage. Of those topics, only the Palmer Raids and Women’s Sufferage really interest me. Prohibition is good for a joke about the upcoming depression (mainly that it was repealed in time for you to drink your depression away, if you could afford to that is) but that is about it.
Foreign policy in the 1920s is not discussed often enough so I’ll cover that over the decade and mightily bored my students will be.
Oh, and we discussed Communism today. I enjoy doing that mainly because I get to slip a jab in at a former instructor (whose name I never mention) that I do not care for.
I take my revenge in installments. 
In my noon time class we’ll discuss the Declaration of Independence and then I think we’ll be through. I’ll save Thomas Paine’s Common Sense for my peer when they return. They’ll enjoy that I suspect.
On the professional development front I’m slated for the second installment of a writing development course. We get paid to learn how to teach writing to students, which is a change from learning to write for free or a fee. The only downside is that due to budget cutbacks, we do not get a free lunch this time.
Cue shoulder shrug.
Other Fronts
Trinity is resting comfortably at an undisclosed location (folks simply do not need to know where she is to be quite frank). She is well cared for and I need to call and check up on her here in a bit.
And for RPN-04 I’m pondering economic history, something which is not my forte. I think the client is probably stronger on this than I am but as the research assistant I feel I should be contributing to solving a nagging concern which is related to economics. My thoughts are not fully formed enough to articulate them but when they are, I may blog about them to see what everyone else thinks.
Wow, a Friday night without Battlestar Galactica. I’ve had those before but there was always the dangling hope of more in the future. Sure, there is the upcoming movie but that is next year.
I guess I should spend the time writing.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Well, I’m sitting in a waiting room, using it for what waiting rooms are meant for. I’m waiting on Trinity to have some work done. It should be a relatively short procedure and I won’t get into specifics since it is her medical work and not mine. In any case, I find myself with a bit of quiet time and a laptop with a spacebar that sticks.
We’ve been seeing each other for almost seven months now. It has been a wild ride through disaster, chaos, joy and the like. Sometimes I wonder if maybe it is all worth it.
Then I tell myself, yeah, it probably is.
I am the only one here. Physically here that is. Her two sons are in the Marines so they can’t be here. Two of her three daughters are part of the reason she is in my life (and not in a positive way, personally I hope they both get hit by a bus in the near future, the wretched little shits). Her X obviously isn’t here.
But I’m here.
Long term relationships are not exactly my forte and predictions have been made by plenty. Maybe the predictions will be accurate, maybe not. One thing which would be nice is if most of the recreational naysayers would simply shut the fuck up for a bit and wait to see if we fail all on our own.
The Teaching Front
It was another full day yesterday. We cleared off most of the Pre Revolutionary Period in my Noon class setting the stage for their exam on Monday. In my 1300 hour eight week class we killed Custer off at the Battle of Little Big Horn again and proceeded toward the end of the Grant Administration. I’ve got to figure out how I can wedge their midterm into the next six weeks.
I’m looking forward to the return of the full time peer who is normally in charge of the Noon class. It will be nice to have that time back for the rest of the semester.
As for summer and fall classes, I saw the published schedules and it looks like summer is probably a bust. I might get something at the last minute if someone pulls out but I wouldn’t count on that. Last summer I turned an opportunity down mainly because it meant writing new lecture notes. This time around if I were offered something, I’d most likely take it.
As for fall, parsing the tea leaves (which is what it is up until you are standing in the classroom with rosters in hand) it looks like the same potential number of courses are available as last Fall. Whether or not I get anything and how many classes I get all depends on what the Boss wants, what the full time instructors need and how many students enroll. I’ll push for the eight week offerings again and since I work them all the time I should get some priority on that. I’ve also got a couple of other options I can work up.
I should, knock on wood, be back in the Fall for my third year. The big question, the same one we ask every semester, is whether or not I’ll get enough courses to support myself.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
The Teaching Front
Well, depending upon where you teach, you are expected to give an A for effort even if no such effort was expended. Which is part of the problem with the American Education System these days. In any case, I handed exams back in my early morning class. Each class is different in their overall behavior and sometimes they buck the usual trends. This class bucked a number of them.
In an ideal world, I’d tell you how but the Federal Privacy Laws and my own ethics prevent me from doing so. I will say that I had cause to celebrate how some students performed on what was probably a difficult essay question for many of them.
There were, also, the usual disappointments. But overall, the majority of them who took the test expended a great deal of effort in an attempt to improve their performance and this, my friends, is what gives me some modicum of hope.
When I talked to them today, rather than hammer on them (I give the impression that I hammer on my students all the time, I don’t) I made it a point to talk about the effort expended, the general improvement in many and to cite a couple of standout cases where students pulled out of true power dives. The encouraging word, the virtual pat on the back and then I did something else.
On the board, I wrote out an outline of how I would have answered the essay question. I will not reproduce it here lest someone nabs it in order to plagarize their way out of a take home test or essay. The outline basically answered the question in about eight to ten paragraphs, each three to six sentences in length and I placed the events in chronological order.
Then I explained that while the next essay would, in an ideal world, take less time than this one did, I would expect more or less the same result. The same effort, the same amount of writing.
Whether this will do any good is anyone’s guess. I think it will make them better writers, which is something their instructors in other classes should be doing as well. That said, we shall see on the third exam.
We covered Margaret Sanger briefly today, though I did a hash up job of it, then moved on into the 19th Amendment before laying the groundwork for Warren Harding. So we’re in the 1920s.
Blah. Get me out.
In my Noon class we’re closing on the end of the Pre-revolutionary period. I need to print notes off for that. We may watch a video, maybe not. I’ve not decided yet. But hopefully we’ll get to Lexington and Concord this Friday. Test on Monday, then I turn command back over to the full time peer.
In my eight week class, I think we will kill Custer today. Which will be fun. I enjoy killing that bastard.
Research Project Number – 04
Another chapter in the hopper for review. I read over it before class today. I’ll probably print it up and mark all over it tonight and tomorrow. Follow up and edits are likely to take place on Sunday due to issues with medical on the Battlestar Trinity, transport on the Battlestar Steven Francis Murphy, and general mayhem across the board.
I remember a time when my life was less hectic. At least I think I do.
On we go.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Sometimes I wonder where my time went. More to the point, I wonder what happened to all of that down time I used to have. I didn’t realize it until recently but a lot of writing problems were worked out during that down time.
The quiet drive to campus in the morning before class or on the way back home.
Wandering around the bookshelves at the local bookmonger or window shopping in general.
Sitting by the poolside soaking up some sun while reading a good book.
Working out at the gym or sitting in the hot tub.
I spent a fair amount of time doing the above things, percolating on problems of plot, character and story. These days, it is all gone.
Replaced by prep for lectures, the drive to work replaced with the music Trinity needs to pump herself up in the morning, and so forth.
In this spare moment that I have as I wait to cover another class for a peer this afternoon, I find myself wandering around the workshop of my ideas, watching the cobwebs grow over old projects, the rust gathering around the edges, the skeletons of story structure waiting patiently for someone to finish their construction. Rats skitter across the cold concrete floor and tin sheets snap in the wind.
I’m surrounded by noise and activity in a hive of learning wondering if maybe that old proverb isn’t true.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
The Teaching Front
Without going into detail, I got some kudos from the Boss for good work in general.
Nice to hear I make some people happy.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
I lectured from 1100 hours today to 1545 hours, had to blast up North because Trinity forgot something . . . .
.
.
.
anyway, then had to blast back down to campus and deliver the last lecture of the day running from 1745 to 1900 hours.
A whirlwind tour of American History. Many of the lectures given straight from the brainpan no less, sans notes.
I guess it is nice to be needed.
Now, if only they needed me this summer.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Aboard the Battlestar Steven Francis Murphy BSG-71
Location: In the Field, Situation Room
Mission: Covering the Flanks
The Teaching Front
It’ll be a full day today, kids. I’ve got lectures from 1100 hours to 1545 hours with a break until 1745 hours. I’m covering for a peer who is out today.
Topics run the spectrum today. They include the following:
-Spanish-American War
-Revolutionary War-Pre-Revolutionary Period
-Grenville and Townshend Acts
-Reconstruction and maybe the start of the Grant Administration
Seven hours of lectures, more or less, in four respective classes. I’ve got a full plate today kids. But I’ll recoup the lost $100 bucks from last Thursday’s debacle.
Prep for Relocation
In a little over a month Trinity and I will (Lord willing and the creek don’t rise) relocate and cohabitate in our new home (which will remain undisclosed for a lot of reasons). I have mixed feelings, as I suppose any male would. I suspect there will be a loss of freedom that comes with the benefit of supportive, loving companionship. Given my lust for autonomy, I often wonder how it will all work out.
Still, I’m willing to give it the college try as they say. I love her, she loves me so now we’ll see if love conquers all problems.
Other Fronts
Nothing to else to report. Tearing Down Tuesday is still out to a potential reprint market. No writing of any note is taking place. And I’ve already covered the RPN-04 update. My father’s status remains unchanged and my mother is taking care of the ZX-2 today while I make money and try to build a career.
A one legged man in an asskicking competition has more time to reflect I suspect.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Those that done said stuff