All posts by LJM

I write science fiction and sling other memes on the side. You can find me on Wandering.Shop (a Mastodon server) as LauraJMG. Drop a line in the comments!

Storm Chasees

I’m here in Northampton, delivering my daughter to college. We’re being chased by hurricane Irene.

We arrived at our buddy Jane Yolen’s house yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, Jane isn’t here. Her daughter Heidi has been lovely, and we have the run of Jane’s enormous farm house. 

So far, Irene is manifesting only as a soaking rain and a bit of wind. The storm is supposed to roar right over the top of us at some point and we expect to lose power. We are hoping a tree won’t fall on the house. Ulp!

I plan to spend the day working, for the most part… though I’m looking forward to finishing my re-read of Bujold’s A Civil Campaign as well.

I do love New England. For a desert rat like me, the greenery and rain seem luxurious. We get occasionally big storms in New Mexico during our summer monsoons, but in terms of moving water, they are pitiful things compared to these long, soaking rains and house shaking storms. I love the luscious stretches of grass here; these trees that tower overhead. I love how the soil springs back up under my foot when I step on it.

I’ve lived in the deserts of New Mexico much of my life, and I have delighted in its many beauties. But I feel ready for a change sometime soon. I want to move somewhere that it is easier to grow a garden, to be surrounded by ecological abundance.

Most of all, I’m worried for my friends in NYC and along the Atlantic coast. Stay safe, you all.

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Info Miner Strikes a Rich Vein: The Cascadia Subduction Zone

I was (OK–I admit it; *toe scuff*) ego-surfing around the internet and came across a find: the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It’s a quarterly literary magazine that…well, I’ll let them tell you:

The Cascadia Subduction Zone aims to bring reviews, criticism, interviews, intelligent essays, and flashes of creative artwork (visual and written) to a readership hungry for discussion of work by not only men but also women.

I haven’t read their review of UP AGAINST IT yet (and of course I could end up in a quivering puddle of angst when I do *writer brain; sigh*), but regardless of what they think of my own work, I LOVE the fact that there are people out in the world who are casting their gaze onto works by women.

Speaking of which, I was delighted to see that CSZ reviews Andrea Hairston’s fine new fantasy novel, REDWOOD AND WILDFIRE (which by the way, you should definitely go out right now and buy). She’s a writer who deserves a broad readership. Check her out.

In CSZ’s words, here is their mission:

The relationship between readers and reviewers interests us. We want to bring attention to work critics largely ignore and offer a wider, less narrowly conceived view of the literary sphere. In short, we will review work that interests us, regardless of its genre or the gender of its author. We will blur the boundaries between critical analysis, review, poetry, fiction, and visual arts. And we will do our best to offer our readers a forum for discussion that takes the work of women as vital and central rather than marginal. What we see, what we talk about, and how we talk about it matters. Seeing, recognizing, and understanding is what makes the world we live in. And the world we live in is, itself, a sort of subduction zone writ large. Pretending that the literary world has not changed and is not changing is like telling oneself that Earth is a solid, eternally stable ball of rock.

Well said, and goddess-speed.

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To the Moon, A NYTimes Look-Back 50 Years Later

This is very belated, but here’s a terrific article on the 1960s space race in the New York Times: Looking Back at the Apollo Mission, 50 Years Later.

I’ve written here about my own memories of those years. It was a high-water mark for the human race, in my opinion. I share the view of Stephen Hawking and others that ultimately we must reach beyond our own world, if we are to survive as a species.

I feel sad that we face the end of an era, with the retirement of the space shuttles. But I remain optimistic that a new space program will arise eventually. I think the riki-tiki pull of space will be impossible to ignore, over time.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking by it.

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