You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Introspective’ category.
I’ve had a blog of one form or another since 2003. There was the first Pondering Tree at Journalspace, which blew up and sucked most of the material down a wormhole back in 2008. And of course there is this one.
In the Fall of 2007 I started teaching at roughly the same time I started publishing fiction. I never expected to teach given the screwball interpretation of the hiring policies at a sister campus. The change in jobs meant a change in what I could and could not post about. Obviously I could not talk in great detail about what happened in the classroom, my own scruples would prevent that if the law didn’t. Nor could I post on certain topics which might be seen as unprofessional.
The entries changed and so did the readership. In many respects it seems to have fallen off since 2007. Part of that is due to the ongoing stall in my writing career, which seems to be holding steady at two story publications. It would help if I would write fiction, send it to market and revise older projects. However, as I type this blog I have the earphones in because the television is going.
I simply can not write any fiction with any verbal audio input. I’ve tried over and over again with the results of staring at a blank screen in total frustration. That frustration bleeds into the relationship I have with the Woman I Love and causes endless havoc. As it stands, writing a blog entry or doing non-fiction with the earphones in, tuned to instrumental music, is borderline difficult.
In any case, the solution to that problem is a writing space where I am alone and it is quiet. I’ve blogged about that before so I won’t beat that horse again.
I find it unwise to blog about the relationship I’m in, or other relationships, which also causes grief from time to time. There is an ongoing feeling that the blog should be a couples blog, which it is not. It is a writer’s blog. Maybe it might be worth the time to create a stand alone couples blog but then it wouldn’t really be mine, it would be OURS.
There is also the feeling on my part that some things truly should be private. The world doesn’t need to know every detail about my relationship with Trinity. Even the Facebook feed doesn’t feature every aspect of our love affair for each other.
Further, writing anything that even feels remotely critical runs the risk of starting a problem. Such comments are often taken as a sign of unhappiness on my part and that the relationship is in trouble.
Which it isn’t. I can’t write fiction when ANY other human being is around. I had a bitch of a time doing it when I lived with my parents as a kid and again in my adult years. I can’t seem to get it done in a coffee house or any place else where humans are talking.
It is what it is.
As for blogging about my summer job, as with my teaching, there are things I can talk about and things I can not. I love the job but I have had my frustrations, the sort of frustrations that would bleed out there in years past. To be candid, I think my greatest frustration comes from enabling parents who put their children at risk with their own behavior. That said, I can’t really go into detail about that either.
Thus, I’m left with little to say most days. If I do have something to say, it is something that can usually be conveyed in less than 420 characters at Facebook.
At Facebook I’ve had some pretty lively discussions over one thing or another, the sort of thing which used to happen here at the Tree. I also use Facebook for many of the admin functions this blog used to serve, such as an online post it note, a record of things accomplished and yes, the things we ate for dinner. Sometimes I vent my spleen there, as I have done here.
Thus I find myself wondering about the future. Perhaps a day will come when the bare dirt around the Pondering Tree becomes overrun with the pixelated weeds and creeper vines of the internet. Should another server crash take place, perhaps it won’t even be that, nothing more than digital oblivion thrown to the four winds of words written and lost forever.
Who knows?
Year 2011 – Fall Semester Prep
We went to breakfast this morning at Corner Cafe in Liberty, the last hurrah for Summer 2011. Below is a shot of the place.
After a Wal-Mart run for some last minute items, I dropped Trinity off at the Pod in order to get some work done on the car. It took longer than I thought it would to clean the windows, wash the car and organize the trunk.
On the Guy Front per the car, the plan is to organize a maintenance kit for each vehicle. Once upon a time in the Army, I had such a kit for my privately owned piece of shit S-10 that my Father fucked me over with after I got back from the Gulf.
Desert tan, folks. Not only had it been through three engine blocks by time I got it, but it was desert tan.
I really, truly, deeply wonder sometimes what that man was thinking. I should spend my independent study session with Terri Lowry writing up some material pondering that particular question.
In any case, the plan is to have a basic kit in both cars by October. Contrary to popular belief among my extended family, thanks again to my Father, I am capable of rudimentary maintenance work on the vehicles. By rudimentary I mean that I can change a battery, change the oil (not that there is a place to do that here at the Pod), check fluids, change tires . . . you get the idea.
I also need to get a full sized spare rim for the ZX-2. It makes me nervous, driving around on the pathetic sort of donut that they give you these days.
Lastly, I’ve all but decided to get a new keyboard, one of the old school clickety-clack Model M keyboards. At the beginning I can hook it up to my laptop and possible make some headway on various tasks which need doing. Later on, perhaps when I convert a space at my Mom’s into a true writer’s space, I can get a writing only computer to go with it.
Then we can see about getting this writing career of mine back on track!
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Manual Typewriter is Dead! Long Live the Manual Typewriter!
When I was a kid, my mom had one of those traveling style manual typewriters which was kept in a carrying case much like a suitcase. I used to open it up and play with the keys, imagining that I was actually using a computer with the lid of the case serving as my screen. The funny thing is that this make believe computer didn’t have a mouse. It is probably best to remember that the apex of technology at the time was the Atari 2600 and the Apple IIe’s that our schools had. We used them to make simple programs that would draw pictures and play Lemonade Stand.
The Manual always frustrated me, even after I learned how to type in high school. I could never build up any real speed because the keys would lock up with each other. Of course, the machine is specifically designed to slow you down for just that reason.
As for automatic typewriters, I learned to type on IBM Selectrics. For the record, I actually failed the second half of Typing One in High School. Once I learned the basics I found that I wasn’t terribly interested in the other aspects of the course, such as how to type a myriad of business letters. I suspect that I sensed that the need to know precisely how to craft such things would soon fade.
When I joined the Army, I allowed myself to be talked into MOS 31C, Single Channel Radio Operator. It was also known as radio teletypist. No recruiter ever used the second term because I suspect they knew that it wouldn’t appeal to 17 year old recruits. Instead, they showed laserdisc videos of soldiers assembling satellite dishes and fiddling with digital readouts. In my mind, that looked pretty cool. They also showed soldiers carrying radios on their backs with combat teams, a dangerous job but not the one I actually got.
Instead, when I got to Fort Gordon, Georgia in October of 1989, I found a piece of equipment that more closely resembled the props needed for a 1950s science fiction movie than a one set in the 21st Century. Depressed and missing my girlfriend of the time, I signed up for an accelerated typing class in an effort to cut two weeks off my training and get out of there early.
I passed the training with no real trouble. The downside is that the Army kept me for the additional two weeks where I got to pick up trash, move pile A over the pile B and the like.
Fast forward to my year in Korea. I used my paycheck to buy the first and last typewriter I would ever own. I used that Panasonic to keep a detailed journal of my experiences in Korea. In actuality, I used it to vent my spleen about my growing frustrations with the unit I was assigned to. However, even though I have since destroyed the inch and a half thick journal, I did gain from the experience by practicing my typing and my composition skills.
I do not miss typewriters. I don’t miss the need to properly align the page in the machine. I don’t miss losing a page of work because of a series of typos. I definitely do not miss correction tape.
When I got home, I purchased my first desktop computer, a Dell 386 33 mHz computer with WordPerfect 5.1 installed onboard. I hooked an HP 500 inkjet printer (the best thing HP ever made) and saw miraculously clear, clean print materialize with the click of that mouse button I had forgot to imagine as a kid.
I was hooked.
There is a fair amount of modern technology which I find irritating, cellphones, texting, and PowerPoints are three good examples. There is also a fair amount of old, reliable technology which I admire, such as bicycles, horse and buggies, and the landline telephone. That said, I won’t miss the typewriter.
Not one bit.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Twenty years ago this week I was coming to the realization that I had survived my first and last war. In retrospect, that war was a forgone conclusion. Military historians have ascertained that the reasons for the defeat of the Iraqi Armed Forces at the hands of the Coalition Forces of Operation Desert Storm can be traced to poor leadership, poor planning, lack of motivation among the opposing forces, and perhaps an overinflated assessment of the capabilities of Soviet technology.
It was a war that lasted, in terms of ground combat, four days.
It changed everything.
How did I come to stand on the razor’s edge of history? Granted, I didn’t have any effect on it through my personal actions. I was a mere cog, a little tiny bit of the war machine, one that could have been deleted without a second thought. In fact, if I were writing a novel on the Persian Gulf War, which would probably need at least one fire fight to satisfy the readers, I would pick someone other than myself as an example. I saw a lot of things, but in terms of actual battlefield changing actions, I did very little.
I bore witness, and that is about it. As wars go, I got off pretty easy in the initial assessment. So easy that many of my peers, including one particular prick in South Korea, frequently stated that it wasn’t a real war at all.
Tell that to the Iraqis we killed.
I am not a repentant veteran. I never have been. I offer no apologies for my service nor make any excuses. I do not experience any great discomfort at what happened. Perhaps I experience a very real regret that people I bore no personal grudge against were killed and I often wonder about the living that survived the dead.
I wasn’t particularly eager to go to war either. I was not the kind of soldier who sat around masturbating to the latest issue of Guns and Ammo while whispering sweet nothings to my weapon, named after some woman whose pants I failed to get into. I did not volunteer for Airborne training, in fact I actively turned down an opportunity to go. I did not have any particular affinity for elite infantry units such as the Rangers, who seem still to this day to be not much different than Marines. Technology interested me more than living in the mud and if the Air Force had offered as much for enlistment as the Army had, I probably would have been an airman.
Instead, I joined the Army. Money was part of the motivation, family lineage in the Army was another, and finally the lack of any real prospects was a third. Perhaps patriotism figured in at some point though I can be just as cynical as the next American about my home nation. Lastly, if nothing else, I knew I was a fighter. I had spent my teen years fighting. I would spend my Army years fighting and I’d fight some more after that.
It is perhaps a strange thing then that I was influenced by what is essentially an antiwar documentary which was aired in 1983 on PBS. Each night I would sit down in front of my small black and white television set in my bedroom, which was a big thing in my book, having a television, to watch Gwynne Dyer hold for on the futility of war.
The documentary, entitled War, was designed to educate the public on the futile nature of warfare as a means of resolving differences. Like many products of the Reagan Era, it was designed to scare the living shit out of anyone with an ounce of sanity about the probability of a nuclear war.
Here is the installment entitled The Deadly Game of Nations.
</object
The music with the intro, along with the images, embedded themselves into my teenage brain. Unlike my peers, I never saw anything you might call glory in warfare. I knew it was a bloody, horrifying, dirty business. I knew it came with horrendous costs, all I had to do was look at my Vietnam Era father to see that. From reading the history books along with science fiction novels, I knew that the next World War, the one we still haven't fought and hopefully never will, was going to be the last.
Dyer's job was to talk me out of enlisting. He wasn't a dick about it. He was a veteran of military service himself steeped in a solid background of military education. He was antiwar without disrespecting, demeaning or insulting the soldiers.
In my case, he failed.
To be fair, my father failed too. So did my mother, at least the first two times I signed an enlistment contract. Each time I managed to come up with sufficient justification for enlistment. Threats to crack my kneecaps not withstanding, I signed the dotted line. I should point out that I nearly did so again in 2004 in order to go to Iraq, not because I felt a need to prove myself, but because I felt a need to back up my support for Operation Iraqi Freedom by virtue of direct participation.
Perhaps some perspective is in order.
In March 1989, when I signed the Delayed Entry Program contract, these facts were known.
1. The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of Russia actively targeted civilian population centers with enough ordnance to destroy the planet many times over.
2. The danger of dying in such a war was no less or great at Fulda Gap in Germany than it would be if I stayed in Kansas City, Missouri. What difference does it make if a T-72 gets me, nerve gas or a ten megaton nuke chucked at Downtown KCMO? Dead is dead, no matter where the dying transpires.
3. The two Super Powers had managed to keep the genie in the bottle. I had a belief, perhaps a naive one, that no one would go so far as to chuck nukes around like so many hand grenades.
4. On a personal level, the economy sucked. My job prospects were awful. Four years of active service bearing witness to the failures of my civilian counterparts only serve to reinforce the notion that I had made the right choice.
5. I had to pay for college somehow.
So I signed up, knowing that I was signing a contract. I promised to go fight, and if need be, die. In exchange, the United States of America would feed, clothe and house me. They'd provide a rudimentary if not great medical care program and if I made it to the end of my first four years, they'd give me money for college.
If I could pick up an honorable discharge.
All I had to do was agree to go kill anyone the United States of America declared the Enemy of the Week.
It turned out to be the Iraqis.
If a war was to be fought, I expected it to be at Fulda Gap in Germany. Or maybe, in my wilder moments, perhaps Columbia fighting some Vietnam do over in an attempt to control the drug trade. I didn't expect Iraq and I don't think the Iraqis did either.
Dyer's series is useful for a lot of reasons. Aside from laying out the mindset of a soldier, he captures the attitudes of the early 1980s regarding the military.
1. Soldiers are obsolete.
2. They are preserving an obsolete way of doing things.
3. The equipment they use is expensive, fickle and will probably fail them at the worst possible moment.
4. The Soviets have more of everything, which will lead us to use nukes.
It turns out Dyer was wrong, perhaps sadly enough. He was wrong on every front. We still use wars to solve our problems. We haven't blown the planet up yet (and I probably just jinxed us by typing that). Our weapons are expensive and fickle yet they are also far more effective than anyone could have possibly imagined.
In one respect, I'm glad he was wrong. If he had been right, I wouldn't be typing this right now. I'd be in a grave somewhere, long moldered away to nothing, the victim of a futile effort to dislodge an invader from another country.
In many ways, Dyer convinced me that it didn't matter where I was. Stay at home and catch a nuke or go for a soldier and take your chances. This series did the convincing.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
It has been a busy week for yours truly. So busy that my fitness program, which had been running pretty consistent since the start of the new year, got a bit derailed as I dealt with one issue or another.
Let’s get to it.
The Teaching Front
We’re advancing to our first exam, which is far later than normal due to the snow days we’ve had. I’m behind in all of my classes as well, which is yet another struggle. Further, due to the disruptions, it has been difficult to build up momentum and bond with the students. As a result, things are not working quite as smoothly as I’d like. Fortunately, I have no real disciplinary issues on the table.
On the other hand, I see a lot of my students using their textbook and their study guide during the lecture to hunt down terms. On the surface this might seem like a good thing, right? At least they are paying attention to something.
Well, actually, it is a bad thing. It is a sign of a time crunched student, or worse, a bored student, who is attempting to work through the study guide while I lecture. More often than not students believe that the lecture material is not important for the test. I often get students who ask how much of what I lecture on is in the textbook.
Less than you’d think. The lectures are often specifically designed to go deeper into the topics at hand or they are designed to operate hand in glove with the textbook.
So an example would be the lecture on the Pre-Revolutionary Era of American History. The traditional way of teaching this is to start with the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the This Act and the That Act and rest assured that is exactly how it sounds to the student. They are merely memorizing bits of info for regurgitation and that is the last thing you want them to do. Memorization is just an early step towards true understanding.
Rather than lecture on those acts, I make the student responsible for reading the textbook’s coverage of those acts. What I do instead is lay out the case for why the Colonials believed that their only recourse was to declare independence from Great Britain. I lay down the grievances and I fill in the background for the Colonial’s historical understanding and perception of events.
How does that work out? Well, I’m two semesters into using that method and if you are a student who does what I told you to do, take notes on the lecture, tie it to your reading and form a synthesis of the two, then they do fine.
Test results aren’t much different between one strategy of coverage or the other, I might add.
In any event, they are doing their homework while I lecture. I think I’m going to put that on the Why Did I Fail The Test? section of my syllabus for next semester.
The Student Front
I’ve not had a chance to update either the Pondering Tree or Playing with Genesis.
We’ve moved into the actual writing of the novel. The group I am in wrote a combined first chapter this last week.
We’re in a computer lab and to be honest, I am growing to believe that this was not the best choice for the class. It is hard to get into an effective group in order to get any work done. The computers serve as a frequent distraction. Given that I was using my laptop on Tuesday, even I am guilty of this, though I had a reason (which is not the same as an excuse) for having that computer out. If nothing else, the clickety-click-click-click of the keys on my laptop are relatively quiet.
In fact, in terms of technology in the classroom, I think it ought to be banned. No videos, no slides, no powerpoints, none of it. Just a board to write on and comfortable chairs for the students to sit in with a large desk to spread out their things. On C-Span this morning (and what a wonderful discovery that is, a place where people discuss without drama or shouting or Jerry Springer like behavior) an education pundit was talking about a high tech public school on the East Coast which cost a pretty penny to equip with the latest and greatest in technology.
The performance at that school? In the toilet. Students surf the net, IM each other or spend their time trying to get the tech to work in the first place.
Banish to the Computer Science Department and leave it there.
I’ll provide a proper update to Playing with Genesis that covers the actual course material and progress later this weekend.
Research Project Number – 05
The Client was on deadline this week, which was something of a surprise to me. I wasn’t aware of the deadline. No matter. I sat down with the backlog I could most effectively contribute to and worked over the material. By deadline time, I had most of the storyline components covered. There are a few lingering errors in the manuscript but I will catch them later.
It is going to be a pretty big novel, folks. I’m looking forward to seeing how the trilogy ends.
The Writing Front
In the Early Morning Rain by Berry Henderson and myself is currently out to market. We haven’t heard anything back yet so we’re hopeful. It is a new market open to e-subs so I’ll be looking over my inventory to see what can be polished up and put into the wind. Many of the valuable things I have learned in World Building will be helpful in that respect.
On the novel front I was able to drag out the manuscript for the first time in a couple of weeks to give it a going over. What I have right now are a bunch of cobbled together, pasted together scenes which are loosely linked together. In looking over the manuscript I think some major work is needed to better define the roles of the various characters.
There is also one glaring problem, the same one I noticed with my previous novel effort, Convergence Point.
When I have the space to spread out and more specifically, work on a military topic, I tend to let the action and strategy dominate the narrative. It is a natural strength of mine as a storyteller and an historian. Unfortunately, without significant character depth and development, no one is going to care about that action. It will be nothing more than a series of cardboard targets getting cut down on the battlefield.
So that part of it needs significant work. It is the sort of thing I can probably hammer out in a week of concentrated effort.
As for the World Building in the novel, I think some refinement of various structures and institutions are necessary. I definitely want to redefine the family structure of this society based upon what I have learned in Melissa Eaton’s Cultural Anthropology side of the course.
If things go according to plan, I’ll use my time during Spring Break in tandem with Trinity’s Spring Break (which is at the end of the month) to get the project ready for submission to market.
Other Fronts
Over the next few days the Great Summer Job Hunt will commence. Now that I am lifeguard qualified I should be able to, hopefully, get a decent job at around 25 to 30 hours a week maximum. Even more ideally, it will be a posting to an outdoor pool.
Trinity is making plans to travel to California to see her eldest son and wife for a week during her Spring Break. I should be able to polish up the novel while she is out there. I’ve got to say that I am glad to see that fences have been mended with that particular component of her family.
Lastly, March 10th is my father’s birthday. He’ll be sixty-nine years old if my math is correct. No one thought he’d get this far given that he has prostate cancer, multiple myeloma, stage three lung cancer and a heart muscle that more closely resembles a chunk of hamburger than a heart.
I chalk it up to sheer cussed stubborness myself.
Trinity and I are going to see about getting some barbecue for tomorrow night so we can celebrate a bit early. Both of us will be tied up during the week with our respective college obligations.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Sometimes when I read my student’s essay responses to the exam, I wonder what they are thinking. Or worse, what they are being taught outside of my classroom.
One frequent essay question which appears in my American History 121 classes is the issue of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II. It is one of the most controversial issues in American History today and is often grist for the revisionist’s mill in politics, history and even science fiction.
I give a pretty extensive lecture on the Rise of Japan stemming back to the 1840s and 1850s with the efforts of Commodore Biddle and later Commodore Perry to open Japan to trade with the United States. The lecture is perhaps more broad and than deep but in my defense, it is a survey course and I feel that it does provide some aspect of multiculturalism for the students. It is also a classic clash of two different cultures. I also give an extensive lecture on the causes of the war between the Empire of Japan and the United States, the nature of that war and the views of the Japanese Government up to the use of the atomic bomb.
Students are asked to analyze the options facing US leaders in 1945, consider the alternatives and then provide an opinion. In order to get most of their essay points, the student must demonstrate that they have a grasp of the events, particularly the causes, motivations and perceptions on both sides of the fence.
As a rule, when I give this lecture, I do not give my personal opinion on the matter. There are a number of reasons for this. First, I do not want my students regurgitating my own words back to me. Second, I am not trying to create intellectual clones/drones, I want them to learn to think for themselves. Third, I do want them to struggle with the material and give a solid, well argued opinion.
On the better essays, I get the usual arguments pro and con which have been exhaustively debated elsewhere. The pro-bombing argument is that it shortened the war, saved lives and was the only thing that would break the Japanese. The anti-bombing argument is that it was immoral, a war crime, and used primarily to dissuade the Soviets from invading the Japanese mainland as well as to show them who is boss in the post War world.
Sometimes I see arguments which make me wonder what is going on in their heads. For instance, one option was to continue General Curtis LeMay’s firebombing campaign. I take great pains to point out, for a lot of reasons, that the firebombing killed far more Japanese civilians than both nuclear weapons combined.
To my horror, I have seen students argue that firebombing is better than the atomic bomb. Which leads me to wonder about their thinking. It is okay to firebomb but not okay to nuke? How is one any better than the other? They will argue that using the atomic bomb is unethical under any circumstances. Once they’ve made the statement, they do not elaborate on why the atomic bomb is unethical and how that compares to firebombing.
I will say that the anti-bombing side has never argued for a ground invasion, nor have they argued for a naval blockade to starve the Japanese into submission. No, what I have seen, on very rare instances, is something that bothers me.
Students on the anti-bombing side will argue that the cause of the problem stems back to Biddle and Perry’s efforts to open Japan. That, on the face, is a pretty sophisticated argument and one worth conceding. It does ignore the reality that a European power was likely going to open Japan up to trade anyway but since I do not lecture on that and the textbook doesn’t even cover that topic I give them a pass on that score.
What follows is what troubles me. Basically it can be summed up as follows.
If only Perry and Biddle, as well as the United States, had been respectful of the culture of Japan, perhaps the hundred years of diplomatic strife which lead to World War II could have been avoided.
Read that line for a minute and tell me if something bothers you about it. It seems pretty solid, doesn’t it? It shows that the student in question (multiple students have used this argument, I might add so I am not singling any one particular student out). Even with my qualification, I have to admit that I’ve been reluctant to blog about this. My concern is that students will troll the internet looking for material to use in their essays or papers at other campuses. I have additional concerns but I will keep those to myself as they do not quite pertain to the matter at hand.
The problem with the statement in italics is that it is a fallacy. It makes the assumption, a false one, that Perry, or any other American dealing with Japan up to 1856, didn’t respect Japanese culture. In fact I’d argue that Perry had a great deal of respect for it in that he studied what he could of their culture in order to figure out how to accomplish his mission, which was to open Japan up to US Trade.
What he learned, from Biddle’s failure and his studies, is that the Japanese respected belligerency and strength.
Perhaps what the student meant by respect is that the United States respect Japan’s desire for isolation and not resort to belligerency in order to open the Empire up. Thing is that Commodore Biddle tried the diplomatic, tactful approach during his mission in the 1840s and was pretty much blown off. Worse, he left the Japanese with the impression that America was incredibly weak and not deserving of respect.
The problem I’m describing, and I relate this in lecture, is a clash of differing cultural values on what constitutes respect between the Japanese and the Americans of the time.
What is probably most likely is that the students in question feel that if Perry and Biddle had a respect for Japanese culture in a 21st Century American sense, then perhaps the war could have been avoided.
And herein lies the core problem, the fallacy of presentism. Presentism is when a student of history takes their present day values system and makes a historical interpretation through that filter or bias.
If only Commodore Perry had been through a sensitivity session. If only he had our 21st Century values.
Well, you can and probably should make a moral judgement on those grounds, but does it get at the historical truth of the matter? Do we gain a clear perspective of what Perry was thinking in the 1850s?
Or perhaps I should put it this way.
To expect Commodore Perry to behave as a 21st Century US Naval Officer would is no different than expecting Socrates to hold forth on the Petrine Theory of Papal Supremacy. It’d be pretty difficult for Socrates, Plato or Aristotle to do any such thing as the Catholic Church didn’t exist yet. Or perhaps just as unlikely would be to expect Marcus Tullius Cicero to write extensive essays on the Enlightenment or Marxism.
Out of what time warp is Perry supposed to get these values? He isn’t a product of 21st Century America, he is a product of early 19th Century America. He simply wouldn’t see the problem of contact with Japan in the same manner as we do.
He wouldn’t have foresight of coming historical events either. I suspect if the Americans did have a crystal ball showing them what was down the pike that they probably would have behaved far more aggressively than they did.
How does this apply to American Science Fiction?
Well, a classic example is The Lucky Strike by Kim Stanley Robinson. Ostensibly an alternate history concerning the use of the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, Robinson uses a protagonist who is somehow inculcated in the values of late 20th Century Liberal America. The protag, Captain January, is disgusted by the bomb and believes that he best alternative is to drop the bomb into the ocean near the coastline. When he does so, the Japanese see the effect of the bomb and surrender.
The moral of the story? If only we had tried something else then things could have ended better than they did.
Aside from presentism, the story is also flawed due to a poor understanding of what was going on in the halls of Japan’s government in 1945. Their reaction to the bombing of Hiroshima was simply to state, and I paraphrase, “We lose more in firebombings than we did with this one atomic bomb. We may as well continue to fight.”
Dropping the bomb into Tokyo Bay would not have impressed them anymore than the actual bombing of Hiroshima did.
I have also seen this in the Fantasy and Steampunk movements. There has been an effort over the last few years to modify the traditional medieval style Fantasy away from the original European roots into something that is more reflective of our 21st Century progressive values. The same can be said for the Steampunk movement with calls issued to move away from depictions of racism, colonialism, imperialism, and sexism.
As a fiction writer, I’m supportive of the idea that you ought to be able to write whatever it is you want to write. As a reader and a historian however, I have to admit that I find these politically correct fictionalizations of the past to be something of a disservice. Part of why the Fantasy genre doesn’t interest me in the first place is that it seems to focus to the exclusion of all else on the nobility. Everything is too clean, too neat, with most problems whisked away with a sword or magic. I suspect before long it will be this way with Steampunk as well, a distorted, sanitized view of what Victorian culture was like.
The past as it should be, not how it was.
Such things I am pondering today.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Sorry I’ve been away from the Tree for so long. There were tests to grade and record, students to see, bills to pay since April Fool’s was payday (irony be thy name), and sunny weather to enjoy with the Woman I Love. Needless to say, Reality has kept yours truly busy.
The April Fitness Plan
I’ve got until April 27th to get ready for Lifeguard Training. The good news is that I can push myself to reach 300 meters of swimming without break. The bad news is that it takes a great deal of effort and it only features the front crawl. I need to master the breast stroke and the turn required to effectively use the breast stroke. This has to be done in twenty days or less.
I ran into a bit of a snag with my revised swimming plan. Across from the Pod is North Kansas City Community Center (it is across the street from the burning Quik Trip in Birmingham’s Without Warning for those wondering). I went across the street to knock out the first of my morning swim sessions only to find a large swim team contingent there. Granted, they left me to my own lane but I found it oft putting. It prompted me to rethink my fitness plan.
Here it is.
Monday-Wednesday-Fridays
0530 hours: NKC-CC, Strength Training
I’m going to make a change to my strength training workout. I had been working on sheer muscle mass mainly as a way to burn off more calories. The more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll burn. I also like the additional mass because it gives me a bit of an edge in the classroom (the mass adds just a bit to my command authority).
Instead, I’m going to aim for endurance instead. I’ll drop the level of weight I am using just a notch, say my bench press down to 165 lbs at 10 reps rather than 185 at 6 reps. I have a lot of raw power at my disposal but not as much endurance as I’d like.
And it is probably worth pointing out that the swimming is increasing my overall strength anyway. Yesterday when I worked on the Lat Flex machine for the first time in two months (the Campus Rec Center doesn’t have one I like) I noticed that I was pulling far more weight than I had in the past, up to 255 pounds. So I can probably modify my workout just a notch.
0930 hours: Campus Rec Center, Swim Training
The Campus Rec Center pool is pretty quiet at this time with lots of open lanes. For this week I am going to work at building up my form, breathing and endurance.
M: 100 meters x 5 for 500 meters.
W: 100 meters x 6 for 600 meters.
F: 200 meters x 3 for 600 meters.
1900 hours: Northtown Community Center, Additional Swim Training
I notice that I recover pretty fast between sets which leads me to believe I can probably push myself a bit more. In the evening I’ll hit the pool again. Each night with the exception of Monday night (I teach so I can’t swim) I’ll try to reach the 300 meters mark consistently.
Tuesday-Thursdays
I have a body building class on campus at 1230 hours. I think I need to get down to the campus rec center earlier rather than hanging around the adjunct farm eating junk food and generally goofing off. I also need to work in a cardio element into my plan.
1130 hours: Strength and Cardio Training
It is easier to work back at Northtown so I’ll work chest at the Campus Rec Center.
I will also work in a 20 minute session on the elliptical trainer. This will probably happen during the actual class as my fellow students tie up most of the weights.
If I feel like it, I may hit the pool for some swimming. I think I’ll restrict myself to 100 meter sets.
Saturday and Sunday
With the Northtown Community Center back on line, I can work in some weekend workouts. These will probably be either easy going days or make up days. Usually Wednesday ends up being my paperwork catch up day so I suspect I’ll be running with a variation of the MWF workout.
Consumption
I need to tweak my eating habits. One probably is that fresh fruit is a bit thin on the ground. The apples around here have been pretty crappy and it is still just a notch early for strawberries. I also need to watch the binging.
So it goes. My goal is still the same. Qualify for lifeguard training. Secondary goals include fat loss and increased muscle mass.
The Teaching Front
I handed exams back this week in three of my four classes. It was a mixed bag. Overall there were marginal improvements in all three day classes. The marginal improvement can be traced to some basic facts.
1. Some students have dropped or simply didn’t take the test.
2. Some students took my advice and prepared.
The additional prep work, outlines and note cards, helped most of my students who used them. However there is always a couple of people for whom these tactics do not work. I don’t quite know why this is and it bothers me to hand out a solution to a problem and see it fail for a few students. I don’t think there is any one solution to the problem. Some students aren’t ready for college. Some students aren’t quite getting what I am trying to teach them. Some students have issues outside of the classroom which are beyond my control. Some students simply do not have time.
A few students, I think many students, approach the work the wrong way. They do the prep to get it done, much the same way a fast food cook or an assembly worker does work. Do Task A, go to Task B, connect to Task C, complete task order, set aside and move to next task order. They do it much the same way I used to fill out my DA-2404s when we were on maintenance in the motor pool. You find the same problems with the vehicle that the Army hasn’t fixed, you list them, turn it in, call it good, go get a soda.
They see the material as little bits of data to be memorized. This is not a new observation, James Loewen makes this point in his Lies my Teacher Told Me book (probably one of the only decent points he makes, overall I find the book questionable). So they memorize a little bit of data, hope they see something that matches it on the test, throw it against the wall and hope it sticks. And the more they dislike a given topic, the more likely a student is going to respond in this fashion.
Lately I’ve taken to telling my classes these things.
1. History is not about memorizing useless bits of data. If that were the case then I tell you that I can get a classroom full of parrots to earn As on the test if you give me enough time and crackers to train them.
2. History is about motivations, causes and consequences. A student needs at least that level of comprehension if they are going to understand what is going on. This is different from “intellectual history” which is what some say I should be teaching. But I can’t have a discussion about trends and historiography if they don’t have the slightest idea of the basic facts.
3. 99% of History is about this question, “Who got screwed and why?”
The response I sometimes get is this.
1. I just need my history credit.
2. Just tell me what you want me to put on the essay.
3. I am never going to use this information, why am I in this class anyway? It has no purpose.
I have some sympathy with the later one. The question which drives so many people, my father is a classic case in point is, “Will this put food on the table, pay the bills, make me happier?”
In the immediate sense? No, it won’t. For me it is only lately that my skills as a historian has helped pay the bills, put food on the table and make me happier. But even before I started teaching, my skills as a historian had use in my life. As a security officer it helped me to write a more effective report, which is a first draft of history. Most of my students are moving on to Vocational training in fields where I know they will be writing reports. Mechanics, techs, medical, law enforcement, teaching, so on and so forth, they’ll be expected to write reports, fill out forms, diagnose problems. The skills taught in an history class helps with that, even if they can’t see that we are trying to teach them a way of thinking.
For others there is only ONE right answer. The subjective nature of history drives some black and white thinkers nuts and generates the “Just tell me what you want” statement. Some items are certainly locked in stone, such as dates, who signed what document and why, where places are, where events took place, and who was there.
No one except a nutjob is going to argue that the Declaration of Independence doesn’t exist. It does. We have sufficient documentation to tell us when it was written, by who, how it was revised and why, and the reason for the creation of such a document. Those are facts.
What is subjective is the effects the document had on follow on events or what the people who helped write the document were thinking at the time. If a student thinks there is just one right answer to any question, then this will drive them mad. It will be worse if they are simply trying to get the work done and out of the way.
Anyway, these are the issues I face in the classroom on a general level. Next time I might ponder some about student attitudes toward the essay questions I issue with each exam.
Payday Activities
Well, the first of the month is payday from the teaching gig so it was off to pay bills and whatnot. We’ve restocked the larder, laid in enough to hopefully get us through the month. Perishables are a bit of a problem but we’ll do what we can.
I’ve been making Trinity’s car payment for the last few months. I’m a bit worried about what will happen once summer arrives. There will be no money for the car then. Hopefully we’ll both pick up part time jobs and maybe her summer student financial aid will help with that. Still, I’m looking forward to having the car paid off. Once we get that cleared, we can see about upgrades to the office and living room areas.
And I can start restocking my personal library.
Speaking of books, lately I’ve been looking for books on economic history. I found a couple of good surveys of US Economic History, one set in the Gilded Age, the other a comprehensive examination form 1600 to about the mid 1980s (when the book was published). I was driven down this road for a couple of reasons. One is that I would like to reach a point where I could discuss economic history more effectively in the classroom. The other is tied to Research Project Number – 05, which I think is as much about economic power as it is about military and political power. When I read these books, I’ll post reviews on them.
Niall Ferguson also has what looks like a pretty good book called The Ascent of Money. I’m going to try and snag a copy of that.
Hopefully at some point over the summer I can sit down with a revised understanding of economic history and rebuild my lectures for both American History classes.
Clash of the Titans
I struggled mightily to get out of seeing this movie but Trinity wanted to see it. So off we went, yours truly not very happy about it but I did my best to suck it up.
The film sucks ass. No character development, no reason to give a shit about what happens, it is just awful. Only Liam Neeson’s little moments make it bearable and then just barely so.
That said, there is this.
It is better than the original.
But then, how could it not be?
Other Stuff
Yesterday was a mad day of spring cleaning at the Pod. We scrubbed the shit out of that place and it needed it.
And finally, we’ve been invited out to Sunset Bed and Breakfast for Easter Sunday doings so I’ll be dropping back off the net.
Tomorrow will be another day.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Ponderings on Writing
I may have related this story here at the Pondering Tree or perhaps it was as the first version over at Journalspace. If I did it at Journalspace it is most likely lost forever, in which case I should probably tell the story again.
You probably should not openly state that the quality of a certain publication would be greatly improved if its’ editor stepped out in front of a speeding bus. Especially if this editor rejected your story.
Rejections are strange things. On the surface they are easy enough to understand. “We don’t want your story.” But they can be so much more, to the point where reading them and comparing stories is akin to reading the tea leaves. In Terri Lowry’s Creative Writing course we actually spend time talking about rejection letters and their stages of evolution. I should probably talk about that first.
When you send your first stories off you will most likely receive either no response back or a form letter. The form letter will be pretty clear. Depending on the publisher, the form letter may contain guidelines, frequent errors and the like. This is what I received in 2001 when I sent my first stories off to John Joseph Adams, the Editorial Assistant at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Over time, and with some luck, you will evolve as a writer. Editors will begin to leave little comments or notes on your rejections. Gardner Dozois at Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine was known for doing this. What gave me hope is that I received these handwritten slips in very short order, by 2003.
This is a sign that the editor is paying attention and sees some potential. It is also meant to encourage you. It does not mean resubmit that story. I’ll get to resubmissions here in a bit.
If you are persistent, you will eventually receive a full letter in response to your submission. This letter will most likely be typed or these days e-mailed to you. It will contain a critique of your story, what the editor liked, what worked, what the editor did not like and why the editor isn’t going to buy this story. Again, this is a sign of progress. You are getting closer. The editor is taking valuable time to advise you and mentor you. Gardner Dozois sent me such a letter in response to my story Tranquility Lost, which can be found and read for free at Bewildering Stories.
At this point of the game, two things can happen. The Editor in question considers you to be pro-material. You are on the brink of breaking through, right on the edge. It can go either way with your next submission.
The best case scenario is a straight acceptance. I received my first one in 2007 from Andy Cox and his Fiction Committee at Interzone Magazine. This acceptance will talk about why they like the story and what they are prepared to do in order to acquire the story for their publication.
The next best case scenario can be (but isn’t always, I’ll get to that) the rewrite request.
The rewrite request looks like the personal rejection letter. It contains positives and negatives. It also contains advice and suggestions on how to fix the story. Finally, last but not least, this letter will contain an invitation to resubmit your story after you have made the revisions.
Depending on the editor and the quality of advice, you have two choices at this point.
1. Follow the advice and hope for the best.
2. Disregard and send the story to the next market on the list.
I say it depends on the editor because editors, just like writers, have reputations. Some editors have reputations for being supportive, straight up, honest and fair. Other editors have a reputation for being fickle, unclear, or in some cases they have other agendas driving their mission which have nothing whatsoever to do with your career or your story.
In most cases, I would advise this. If you agree AND TRUST the editor in question, as I trusted (and still trust) Gardner Dozois, then rewrite the story and resubmit it.
On the other hand, if you disagree and DO NOT TRUST the editor in question, then you really need to ask yourself if this trip is necessary. Again, there are no guarantees.
Case in point. Most regular readers know this but Gardner Dozois retired (sometimes I’m inclined to think he was forced out by a controversy that brewed up over a particular story but I have absolutely no proof of this) as Editor of Asimov’s. This affected me personally because I rewrote a story for his consideration and it missed his retirement date by one week or so. In fact, fellow writer Lou Antonelli was the last writer purchased by Gardner, he made it by that one week margin.
The new editor, who I won’t name here for a lot of reasons, took over. They took their sweet time getting back to me while I waited on pins and needles for a response, any response, on my story.
The new editor sent another rewrite request. Unlike Gardner’s, it was muddled, unclear and in my mind, contrary to what I was trying to achieve with the story. In fact, at the time, it read very much like a veiled rejection letter. However, I was prodded, both by people in the community and people here in my personal life, to rewrite my story and resubmit it.
I tried to get clarification on the required changes. I received nothing. I had nothing to go on with this new editor, no track record or anything else. All I had was word of mouth from various people who had met her personally. I wasn’t reassured by what I heard but when a goal seems to be SO CLOSE, you decide to push forward.
I rewrote (actually, I butchered) my story.
And I sent it off.
And then it was rejected. If it says anything at all about this new editor, the rejection was partially written by her predecessor and it was a half hearted one at that.
As I said, rejections are funny things. I’ve received maybe fifty to sixty rejections over my career to date. Given that many writers receive hundreds of rejections before they achieve their first professional sales, I have done pretty well. None of those other rejections make me angry. They are part of the business, part of the deal. You just roll with them. You weren’t the flavor of the month.
And most of the rejections since my first sales have been personal ones which indicate, “So close, Murphy but not quite.”
Now here is what you should not do as a writer.
For nearly two years I kept my anger bottled up, something I am not very good at. My friends and family will tell you that the longer I try to suppress my anger, the stronger, the more virulent, the more powerful it will become. However, I kept it pretty well in check for awhile.
Until my first sale in 2007. The reviews came in and contrary to what I expected, they were all positive.
The common belief, one that I held until those reviews started coming in, is that my success at Interzone with Tearing Down Tuesday should have negated the anger, the growing ball of something that transcends anger to a point where the emotion I experience doesn’t even have a proper name.
Instead, success served to reinforce and fuel that anger. My feeling today is that Maternal Soldier is every bit as good as Tearing Down Tuesday and The Limb Knitter. Yet I can’t sell it to save my life.
With the second sale in 2008, more positive reviews plus lots of reader comments at Apex and again, my anger grew.
At the same time that Interzone purchased Tuesday, Asimov’s rejected a story set in the same universe, featuring similar themes. For the record, they aren’t the same story but they do feature a post singularity world.
The current editor at Asimov’s rejected it. Readers aren’t familiar enough with the singularity to know what I was talking about.
Which was really the final straw, I thought. The same magazine that published Charles Stross and his singularity stories wasn’t going to publish this? Especially when Interzone was willing go do down that road?
I remember reading that reject in my dock office at 1000 Walnut on a very cold, snowy day with a mug of tea in hand thinking, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
The message of that reject was pretty clear to me. Gardner’s replacement wasn’t going to buy anything I wrote, no matter what it was.
Eventually, sooner or later, my anger will vent. If you are an aspiring writer or even a small writers, you’ve got to learn how to manage this. Anger scares the living daylights out of folks who do not live in the Blue Collar World.
My anger vented in a series of postings at the magazine’s forum. I basically stated, in many different forms, that I thought the magazine would be greatly improved if the current editor was hit by a speeding bus.
I didn’t threaten this person directly. That is against the law. However, it is not against the law to openly wish for bad things to happen to people. It is just bad manners and perhaps more importantly, bad for your writing career.
Why?
Well, the editorial community is pretty small and they do talk to each other. More to the point they read the forum comments left by readers and writers. What happened is probably common knowledge.
Now, to date, I have no evidence at hand that indicates that my behavior has resulted in the rejection of my stories. No evidence at all. It is possible that it is a factor, in fact it is probable in some cases that it is a factor. Editors don’t want to be associated with nutters and the like.
However, I’m realistic enough to believe that the rejections I have received pertain more to the same things which caused many of my stories to get rejected. The story doesn’t match the editor’s tastes, or the anthology, they have some quirk or flaw that isn’t worth fixing, that sort of thing. It is, again, part of the game.
I should probably make one additional point.
Folks would probably forget what I did eventually, especially if I didn’t remind anyone about it like I am doing right now. But the thing they won’t forget is this.
I am unrepentant. I do still hope for the eventual replacement of the current editor at Asimov’s. By speeding bus, by retirement, by medical emergency or through getting forced out, it matters not to me. I harbor no good will toward this person who I feel is cowardly, dishonest, unclear and incredibly fickle.
My lack of repentance probably doesn’t help my case.
There are things I could be doing with my career. I’ve been advised more than once to give up on short stories and move off into novels. I’ve got some options I am looking at and I will probably see about that. I’ve been advised to give up on science fiction and try my hand at mainstream literature. I’ve been advised to give up on writing fiction and concentrate on my career as a college history instructor. Given that within a year I will have finally realized a full return on my investment as a historian, I can see that point.
For now, however, I will endeavor to keep writing fiction. I’ll write what I want to write.
And we’ll see how it goes.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Aboard the Battlestar Steven Francis Murphy, BSG-71
Location: Combat Information Center
Mission: Prepping for the Semester’s First Engagement
The Teaching Front
Today we covered more of the Pre-Revolutionary Era which runs from 1763 to 1775. It is, to be certain, a hash of mythology, entangled narratives and a lot of confusing policy wonk stuff.
On the upside, most students have had these lines hammered into their heads.
“No Taxation without Representation.” That is good. But ask them what that means?
“I don’t know.”
So you have to explain the British Parliamentary System. You also, while you are at it, probably better get into the English Civil War (briefly, a little dab will do ya). You might want to mention that the mantra, “No taxation without representation” was not an original notion. Parliamentarians argued about that back in the 1600s.
Then after you line all of that out, you have to explain to them that the Colonials do not have representatives in Parliament. If you want to confuse them, tell them it wouldn’t have done any good to have them there anyway due to the Tyranny of Distance and the time lag in communications.
Next, you have to hammer home the taxes. You should have spent some time explaining the fact that the colonies were allowed to run their own affairs, more or less, up to the 1750s. They are not happy with meddlers and micromanagers. They definitely are not happy with getting the bill for the French-Indian War or making installment payments for the greatly expanded British Empire.
From there you go from taxes and representation to enforcement. That leads to the Vice Admiralty Courts and British efforts to pull away two basic liberties provided for by the common law.
Right to a jury trial and that one is innocent until proven guilty.
So it goes.
Ideally what should happen, if they have been paying attention (and I’m getting better responsiveness out of some classes, probably because they saw the rant in the previous entry) is that they could use the Declaration of Independence as a study guide.
Right now it feels mushy. Sometimes I think what I should do is throw out the current lecture and build a new one based entirely on the Declaration of Independence. Then I can simply go down the list that Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and John Adams hammered out to make their case in 1775. Here is the various tax acts. There is the effort to block the right to assembly. Over here is that bit about the King’s agents and so on.
In fact, the longer I think on it, the more I like that idea. Hell, it can’t hurt.
Sadly, I won’t be able to truly test it out until the next semester.
We are about to hit the start of the Revolutionary War. They’ll test next Thursday and then we’ll see what we get.
The Fitness Front
Made it to the gym twice this week. If I can get a session in tomorrow and Saturday after class then that will make four.
The Writing Front
I posted elements of my three short story challenge projects at Terri Lowry’s Creative Writing class. They are up a bit early and I suspect it will be a bit before they receive any crits. Of course part of the problem is that sometimes you get a crit that isn’t very helpful. The other part is that I need to crit the work of other students in order to get some likewise response.
Still, they are up and I am ahead.
The more I think on it, the more I think that the key to greater productivity in yours truly is to write the beginning and the end first. Then figure out how we get to the end of the story. The Middle is where I usually have trouble, get lost, lose interest.
Reading
I’m continuing to read Ronald Takaki’s book A Different Mirror. Today I started the chapter covering slavery in American History. Some of this is material I know already. I have to know it if I am going to teach American History 120 effectively since it will lead to the American Civil War. I am not learning anything new per se but I am getting neat little tidbits and details that I greatly enjoy hearing about.
Why wasn’t I exposed to this book? Readers know that I am no fan of political correctness run amok (and there has been plenty of that, especially here lately in the SF field). On the other hand, I can’t see deleting known history out of the narrative. If nothing else, I want to provide a complete survey, or at least as close as possible in the sixteen weeks I have. My students, all of them, regardless of their ethnicity, gender or orientation, deserve no less.
Instead of this book I was exposed to a lot of bloviation and preaching by my instructors at Park College. Instead of this book I encountered a revisionist book called Arming America, which tried to argue that gun ownership prior to the Civil War was a myth. It was the worst sort of book, pseudohistory with falsified, fictional research serving a political agenda (gun control). It won the Bancroft Award and for a long time was held up as the standard by which other historians should orient their efforts.
Turns out the book is pure bunk. Yet you can still purchase it even though most of the book’s assertions have been shown to be false.
Then there is Joseph Ellis and his work. I have trouble taking the man seriously because he lied about his military service. If he lied about that then how I can take his scholarship seriously? He especially caters to the Jefferson/Hemmings narrative which many simply accept at face value.
Myself? I’m skeptical but mainly because there seems to be some room for debate on the matter. I am not skeptical because I’m deeply wedded to the notion of protecting Thomas Jefferson. To me he is just a human being, a smart one, conflicted, and not someone who is above scrutiny.
I wonder, frankly, if I wouldn’t have turned out differently in terms of intellectual and historical development if I had encountered this book sooner.
Full report when I get done with it.
Other Fronts
Completed my Federal Aid Form today. It seems to think that my parents will contribute $80K a year to my education. I nearly fell out of the chair laughing about that. Yes, my parents help a great deal, but they do not have that kind of money. Not even now.
So I suspect I should have filled out that section on the parents after all. I’ll get a chance to change it later.
The objective, right now, is to reenter grad school this Fall. Originally I was thinking about a PhD but it turns out that the C I got fucked with in my last semester at UMKC dropped my GPA just low enough to disqualify my entry into the program.
The gift that keeps on giving. If readers think I am angry at the current editor of Asimov’s, then you have no idea how angry I am at the instructor who fucked me with the C (subjective grading standards, no rubric, and I should have appealed and sued). My anger with the editor at Asimov’s is a mere spark compared to the nuclear inferno I feel about this C.
Which is fine. I know why I was given the C and this sort of bullshit happens in academia. I was given the C to impair my efforts at getting additional graduate hours or a higher degree. There are ways to outflank that and I’ll be making use of it.
Needless to say, at some point, before I depart the planet, I will be getting some measure of revenge (legal revenge).
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Lou Antonelli plugs Tearing Down Tuesday at SFSignal.com
I got a bit of snail mail this week from Texas science fiction writer Lou Antonelli with some good news. He gave me a plug for Tearing Down Tuesday in his SFSignal.com Mind Meld contribution to the topic, “Memorable Short Stories to Add to Your Reading List, Part Two.” For those wondering, we know each other from the Asimov’s Forums back when Asimov’s was run by Gardner Dozois and sanity reigns therein. Further, Lou’s was the last story purchased by Gardner before he stepped down.
In any case, here is a link and moreover, here is what Lou said.
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/07/mind-meld-memorable-short-stories-to-add-to-your-reading-list-part-2-of-2/
From the Last Paragraph:
Stories from this century I find memorable include “Sergeant Chip” by Brad Denton (F&SF, Sept. 2004), a well-written futuristic story with a canine protagonist who was honestly depicted; both Sergeant Chip and the story had a lot of integrity; “Just Like the Ones We Used to Know” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s, Dec. 2003), clever, compelling, entertaining and extremely well written; and “Tearing Down Tuesday” by Steven Francis Murphy (Interzone, May 2007) which impressed me with how there are brand new writers out there who can still write the Good New Stuff.
Lou has a new story collection coming out from Wilder Publications called Fantastic Texas. Many of his stories are set in his balliwick of Texas and he is one of the few writers who do not resort of all of the negative rural stereotypes in his stories. If I were putting together an anthology of positive American Midwest Rural stories, Lou would be one of the authors I’d contact.
He is also, for the record, one of the three people who identified Rev. Caldwell J. Robinson for the cardboard character that he is. Though I’d argue that Robinson had to be that way for the story to sell and also as a bit of a red herring for the ending. Still, Lou raises a valid criticism that went largely unnoticed elsewhere in the community.
So, thanks for the kind words, Lou.
The Teaching Front
I spent part of yesterday cogitating on my American History One Lecture Notes, which are very much a work in progress. While my core AH Two notes have not changed a great deal in structure since my first semester, my AH One notes constantly change. To my eyes, it is important to get to the American Civil War in order to tie my class in with whatever AH Two class the students take.
That means summarizing and simply throwing some stuff out. I tend to spend less and less time in the period from 1500 to 1750. The period never interested me a great deal in the first place per American History (Elizabeth is much more interesting back in England) and it chews up a great deal of time.
So what I’ll do is summarize the initial colonization, reasons driving it, and get on to the French and Indian War. That interests me.
I know, I can hear it now. What about Native Americans and the Slave Trade?
I usually give a block lecture on both subjects. Slavery is covered from the the initial start in the 1600s up to the 1850s in the build up prior to the American Civil War. That lecture needs some work but I have a core foundation that serves well enough. The other topic, Native Americans, could probably be best served by giving a block lecture during the Andrew Jackson Administration. I’ve got the Trail of Tears to work with as a theme.
I do talk about Native American/English Colonial relations during the French and Indian War. I have to in order for the students to have some context per the differences between the French/Native American relations and the English. I also tie in the notion that the English, hardened by their experiences in Ireland, bring an attitude of superiority and harshness to their dealings with the Native Americans.
There is an argument that I should spend more time covering the marginalized groups and I agree in principle. However, the fact of the matter is that the United States of America will eventually be created by landowning aristocrats who are also slave owners (depending on their colony). I spend a lot of time on them mainly because, well, they created the society we live in.
How are we going to understand anything else if we don’t understand the folks who created the country?
So it goes. But to be honest, I’d rather teach Western Civilization One. Maybe this Winter I’ll get my shot.
Other Fronts
Nothing much doing. My story characters keep talking to me but I can’t seem to match my spare time up with any actual energy to write. I had that problem yesterday while reading over the chapters on Andrew Jackson in the new textbook. I could cogitate on history but not on writing.
I’ve got to address and mail out the invitations to Trinity’s birthday party, which will take place at the end of August at Sunset Acres. She is looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. We’ve been trying to find a dress for her to wear.
I’ve been brought along on these expeditions but I think we’ve finally reached a realization.
I should not be taken along for dress shopping. It isn’t healthy to the relationship.
Weatherwise I have to say we didn’t get much of a traditional July summer. We got Fall weather for the most part, which has been fairly depressing. The summer wasn’t as bad as last summer (where I had a relationship on meltdown) nor as bad as the Great Washout of 2005 (where June and July were exchanged for a South Korean Monsoon Season). Still, it hasn’t been a great summer either.
I’m eager to get back into the classroom and teach. The strange thing is that the only time I forget about all of my problems is while I am teaching.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Tearing Down Tuesday Photography
I’ve got some more shots today. Perhaps I should start by saying that just about everything I used is a combination of two or more real world elements. With the exception of Ketchum Road, I almost never used something whole cloth from our own world in Tearing Down Tuesday. The town of Circeville, Missouri, to my knowledge, doesn’t exist. But the primary model for that town is Maysville, Missouri up in DeKalb County.
I suppose some folks will insist that this is a Mary Sue story. I don’t think it is but then you can’t control what others say. And frankly, so what if it is a Mary Sue story?
Ketchum Road
I had to edit this photograph to a degree due to under exposure. This is the road Kyle travels down at the start of the story. The sky would have been clear but roughly the same hue. Obviously the wind turbines, the razorbrush and the snagglethorn are missing, but otherwise, this shot pretty much shows the road I had in mind.
The Driveway
In the opening, Kyle makes his way down this driveway past the first two robots we encounter, Saturday and Sunday. They are working on a series of salvaged wind turbines. Obviously the turbines are absent, but the driveway is there.
Abandoned Tool Shed
This was another inspiration for The Tinkerin’ Woman’s Shop in Tearing Down Tuesday. Though it has fallen into disuse, it was the original tool shed when I was a kid. Much of the clutter you saw in a previous entry was present in this shed.
And it did have a beer fridge.
The Weatherby, Missouri Post Office
This is the post office in nearby Weatherby, Missouri. Circeville probably would have looked more like this image here, very worn down, tired and battered.
The Dry Hole Bar and Grill, Circeville, Missouri
The Dry Hole Bar and Grill
Andrew Leroy, Owner
Dry before Five and Wet until Last Call
Whenever that is.
This is half of the Dry Hole Bar and Grill, the Maysville Town Diner, which has changed names over the years. Since it was Sunday morning we weren’t able to go in and even if we did, it would not represent what the interior of the story’s Dry Hole Bar and Grill looked like.
The interior is actually inspired by The Quaff down off 10th and Broadway in Kansas City, Missouri.
Not everything came from the Country as it were.
Other Shots
Additional Photography can be viewed at my flickr link, http://www.flickr.com/photos/30730762@N04/ . Someday when I grow up, I’ll be able to hotlink it.
I’ve also got more photographs to add as time permits.
Perhaps it is a bit self indulgent to go through this exercise, or maybe a bit too self promotional. Well, I am a bit shameless in that respect and I have to admit that I wish I saw more material like what I am putting up. I’d like to see photographs and images of what inspired my favorite writers. What are they drawing upon when they create my favorite places and characters?
So it goes.
The Writing Front
I wonder if I am not building up for a return to the Tearing Down Tuesday universe? At the same time, The Limb Knitter universe continues to speak to me. I should take pictures of things which inspired TLK at some point.
I did work up some plot info on a possible project but it turns out as I work on it that I’ve probably got yet another novel length project on my hands.
Perhaps what I need to do is pick up at copy of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and read some of my favorites for inspiration. The 26th Edition is out and Al Reynolds has a story within so that would be worth the price of admission alone in my book.
The Teaching Front
I’ve got to work up my American History One notes over the next few days. I’ve got a gap where Andrew Jackson is at on the timeline and I still need to figure out exactly what I am going to cover.
Teaching assignments will probably arrive in the hopper shortly before classes start. I’m pretty sure I’ll get two classes at the minimum, hopefully three to four. I’m hoping for four classes.
So it goes. I’m chomping at the bit.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Those that done said stuff