Eredien's Journal

While reading the Atlantic after dinner--specifically, the article "What Interracial and Gay Couples Know about Passing," by Angela Onwuachi-Willig, about racial and gender passing in the past and present--I came across the old same-sex-marriage-opponents' claim, that straight partnerships may make life and queer partnerships don't, so therefore straight sex should be privileged by the state by granting it the special civil/religious status of marriage.

I don't know about other people, but my various queer partnerships (and I have to say that I believe all of them are queer in some way, because I'm in them and I'm queer!) have certainly been one of the things that not only made my life continue, but made it worth living, especially during the times when I was depressed. Isn't saving a life just as much a miracle as engendering one? The rescue doesn't have to be dramatic or instant, but isn't less real for all that.

Has anyone else seen this take on that argument? I haven't and wonder if it's out there. I think it deserves to be.

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As you probably know, writing is one of the most important things in my life. This summer, I've decided to dedicate six weeks to it by joining a write-a-thon. A write-a-thon is somewhat like a walk-a-thon; but instead of walking, I'll be writing. Instead of lining up pledges per mile, I'm asking for pledges per 2500 words. My ultimate goal, besides finishing the first draft of my first novel, is to raise at least $20 so I may join a write-a-thon online critique group, all of which are mentored by a Clarion Workshop instructor or graduate.

The Write-a-Thon has been hosted annually for the past few years by the Clarion Foundation, a wonderful organization that provides funding for the highly respected Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Workshop at UCSD.

This year's Write-a-thon focuses more than ever on helping writers write by teaming us up with fellow authors and Clarion mentors so we can share critiques, ideas, encouragement and good writing. It's the same approach they've used successfully for years in the workshop, and I know it will provide me with just the kind of push I need to finish the project I've chosen, my fantasy novel-in-progress, "Woman Wreathed in Amber."

I generally describe WWIA as "the fey novel," since it's set in faerie and many of the characters are fey or other mythical creatures--but it's much more than that. It's about the gradual breakdown of a place called home, even if it's a home you hate; it's about blurring the lines between love and duty; it's about fonts and the complexity of warring desires and what it means to be moral when you're not mortal. And I haven't even gotten to the part about Baba Yaga. (Please read a short excerpt at my Write-a-Thon page, http://clarionwriteathon.org/members/profile.php?writerid=315343).

For those of you who've read the first few chapters in draft and have been wanting me to finish this for the last decade: please help me to do so and support a wonderful cause at the same time. I'm 31; it's time I got serious about my writing career by finishing this thing and making it publication-ready. I know I can do it, but I'd love to do it with a critique group specalizing in SF/F and for an organization I'd love to attend personally someday soon.

Plus it's all for a literally fantastic cause. Clarion is the oldest writing program of its kind, and it is highly respected. Many of the greatest figures in science fiction and fantasy honed their skills and launched careers there. Check it out on the web at clarion.ucsd.edu. Writing programs across the nation are under tremendous financial pressure and Clarion is no exception. The Write-a-Thon's success is vital to the workshop's continued existence. Last year it raised over $24,000!

I hope you'll help out by going to my writer page at http://clarionwriteathon.org/members/profile.php?writerid=315343 and sponsoring my writing. Every contribution that comes through will show on my page and will drive me to do more and better, while also helping out future writers.

Thank you in advance! Please check back often to see how I'm doing and what I've written.

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So for those of you I didn't catch when I was in Boston: my preferred pronoun is now "they." I will also answer to "she," as it does not yet appear to have passed its possible expiration date; it might not have one.

This has been something I've been thinking about for a long time and decided to deal with this year. I do not like the multiplicity of "they" in terms of hard-won integration of my furry/IRL self, but I need it, gender-wise, in terms of all of me.

I appreciate your cooperation.

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So for the past year or so my bedroom was a mess. There was a bunch of sewing stuff in one corner that wasn't getting used at all, and wasn't getting put away, which was reminding me that I liked to sew but also that I had nowhere to do it everytime I opened my door. I went away to a sunny place for a solid month, and when I got back I was ashamed to be living in such grossness. It stayed like this for the better part of February while I got treatment for my newly diagnosed mental health issue (bipolar disorder) and then came the day I had enough spoons and I said, "I am going to clean all the things! I can't concentrate or make stuff with this going on."

The sewing pile area that was is now a new home for my pet lizard, whose cage is way cleaner than before and between my desk and dresser I have a sewing table. Where I can actually, and have actually, sewn things to wear since I cleaned.





There was a milk crate of files and a bunch of bills and paperwork that got shoved somewhere -- under my window, on top of my desk--instead of me going through my writing, health insurance stuff, medical records, and other paperwork, and filing away what I needed and shredding what I didn't.

Now it's a new file cabinet, organized so I can pay bills, find my art and writing projects current and past, and file everything away properly in the future (thanks to "Home Filing Made Easy" by Martin & Martin for a USEFUL filing system! My taxes are done!)



My desk was a nest of cables and junk that depressed me all the time I sat at it.

Now it's a clean space where I can work and not stress out. The remaining items are projects I am currently working on and need very close to hand. Bonus: filing cabinet top now functions as cat window perch.



My bed...didn't have a bottom fitted sheet on it. I had been sleeping on the futon mattress for about a year.

Now it's a place where I curl up at night and fall asleep in a cozy pillow nest.



My dresser was full of too much stuff that needed to be elsewhere.

Now it's a space where I get ready for the day and express my crazy eclectic decorating style and have a safe place for my great-grandmother's antique Chinese Imperial Scholar lamp.



My chair and ottoman were divorced. One was my bedside table and covered with junk. One was around the corner, and also covered with junk. I never sat on it.

My chair and ottoman are now getting it on. The top part of the ottoman is still covered with books I am actively reading or stuff I do before I fall asleep at night (DS, apple remote for music) but I can put my feet up or sit to put my shoes on. My chair is clean. I sit there to read or my cat sits there to help me read.



I vaccumed. I dusted. I used a magic eraser to take the scuzz off the new filing cabinet. It took about a day a week, for the better part of a month, to get to this state, and one nearly solid day of 20/10s at the very end for the last drawer of the filing cabinet, which I did NOT want to clean out. But my breaks for Kirby on the Wii helped me get through it and the results are totally awesome.

Thanks UFYH! Now to try and tackle the Family Hall Closet of Doom.

This took about a month working about 4 hours every week.

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Ok, I know it's late, but there's only three this year:

Get on a medication that works for my bipolar depression and keep taking it. (This is already started; just have to discuss my med choice w/therapist and start taking it).

Eat fewer processed grains. "Less white flour, more wheat flour." See what that does.

Secret resolution: try new sex thing.

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[I'm trying out Dreamwidth's crossposting feature; if you're getting errors on either LJ or DW please let me know.]

The many books which I find to read often change me. The few books which find me to read them change the me who I am.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, is such a book.

Detailed summaries are everywhere, so I'll only touch on the plot: in the late 80's, the main character is fifteen, and her favorite uncle--a gay man semi-closeted by the kind of silent family agreement that with time becomes a silent family dispute--dies of AIDS. The grief in this book is large, and real, with the quality of startling mundanity that real grief has.

The other characters in the book feeling the fact of the uncle's absence from their lives is what creates the character of the uncle, or more accurately the character of the uncle's absence, for the reader. The book's prose and the characters' emotions are the tools that Brunt gives the reader to feel around for the edges of the hole, the space--once filled, and now empty--in the structure of the story. One miracle of this book is that this whole writing structure is totally unforced, almost invisible, effortless and agentless as heartbreak. A second miracle in prose: this theme of negative space is explored literally in the book by the device of a painting, and that doesn't feel forced either: having the metaphor made concrete in the book seems the most natural of devices, evolving solely from the characters' interests, memories, and conversations.

This theme of negative space is, of course, a metaphor for the secret surrounding AIDS and the family's individual secrets surrounding the larger, half-spoken truth of the uncle's life with his longtime partner before his death. Wolves doesn't shy away from using that metaphor with precision and great sensitivity--and even better, eventually drops all metaphor when confronted with such human, impossible, life-changing, grief as AIDS. The grief in this book is gloriously, purposefully, deliberately angry, made political by personal necessity, and so, so valuable for that: the fact that it evokes the political and moral climate surrounding American queer people in the late 80's and early 90's, and the way that it does so, made me remember watching Philadelphia as a closeted 14 year old and realizing at the time that it was considered an act of award-winning cultural daring for famous people with thousands of dollars and corporate backing to act out love in the way I actually loved, or to act out dying in the way I understood that people like me were probably going to die.

I can't imagine what it would have been like to read this book as a straight person, or even as a younger LGBTQ person (as fascinated as I would be by hearing those perspectives), because the angry grief this book contains made me more happy to be myself and be no one else. Even though I was personally done feeling apologetic, guilty, homophobic, or self-hating about coming out and being out as a queer person, I didn't even know that I still felt apologetic, guilty, homophobic, and self-hating over having closeted myself in the first place. Wolves' finely detailed examination of personal, historical, and cultural grief surrounding the AIDS epidemic allowed me to see myself, my choices, and my unhappiness with those choices in context. I'm able, finally, to show compassion to the closeted queer girl I was half a lifetime ago, am amazed that I have such a capacity for compassion and love, and feel thrilled that it's necessary to continue to show myself such compassion.

Wolves, being built around death and secrets, may seem depressing. But this novel is a truly amazing coming to terms with the necessity of life's eventual end and the loss of loved ones, via the recognition that there is so much joy, color, love, art, capacity for self-exploration, and forgiveness bursting out of a merely fictional loss that it gives one immense amounts of hope for the nonfiction of life.

Please, please read this book; I'd love to discuss it with you, my friends.

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I keep writing these things down whenever I go to a lecture or take a class and then find them months later and think, "I need a better way of putting this information down for reference." Broke it up into basic categories. Probably more to come once lecture series resumes this spring.

Hamilton College Fall Gardening Lecture + Root Glen Walk
Oct 16 2012
by Terry Hawkridge, Arborist

Trimming/Pruning/Sanitation Notes
Early October is a good time to remove and add new plants while you are sanitizing.

Species-specific pruning notes:
Lilies: prune after they are done blooming
Burning bush: 3 ft prune too high, cut down more
Forsythia: first year growth, cut back to ~6 inches; afterwards prune as normal
Most trees/shrubs grow for 6-8 weeks a year, from May-July. In July they set their buds for next year.
Shrubs: keep at least 1 foot away from walls; electric pruning is fast but hand pruning is more accurate. Don't fertilize between mid July and November.
Hostas: a great time to move Hostas around

Fall Tree pruning plan:
Always undercut to keep branches from ripping:
1. Remove dead wood; diseased branches
2. Remove crossing branches
3. Remove suckers from base
4. Remove "water sprouts" (aggressive new trunk/limb growth)
5. Prune at branch collar
6. If planting trees put the trunk flare AT ground level. Slice up root ball with a knife to keep from root binding. Do not encourage tree funguses by planting or mulching too deep.
7. Add if needed symbiotic rhizomes per correct type of tree.
8. Mulch tree base so it does not have to compete with grasses. More than 3 in. mulch is bad; 2 in. ideal.

Fall evergreen pruning plan:
On evergreens with double headers select one to keep; birds often snap the second one off anyway

Fruit tree Fall pruning plan:
Summer pruning, after July, is best for the tree but fall pruning is more practical.

Fall Sanitation plan:
0. Attack dandelions, bindweed, and ground ivy now--you can spray up to Nov. 1st.
1. cut back perennials in early October to about 6 in. from ground
2. Cut out old or unwanted plants
3. Plant spring bulbs
4. Relocate/divide juveniles
5. rake up leaf litter
6. don't prune woody perennials until spring
7. add soil amendments (compost, or aged manure)
8. treat wood pests; treat for white grubs with an insecticide fertilizer applied with the fall fertilizer
9. add in slow release fertilizers such as bone meal
10. if you want to plant a cover crop like ryegrass, till and plant now
11. Mulch
12. Tag spring transplants now when it is easy to see
13. aerate
14. Overseed damaged areas (perennial rye/bluegrass is a good mix but fescue is more drought resistant). Seed when fall rains come.
15. Drain bird baths
16. Disconnect and drain hoses. Shut down inside supply to hose. Open spigot to make sure pipe is drained.
17. Eradicate rodent dens
18. Put up snow guards if needed with pressure-treated lumber; wrap shrubs. Best to protect plants where snow is blown off roof/drifts.
19. Weatherproof decks/outside furniture
20. Take care of gardening equipment

Gardening equipment fall checklist:
Clean
Sharpen
Drain lube/fuel
Pull batteries

Shrub wrapping:
Wrap shrubs as soon as the temperature drops in October or November.
Use antidessicant like WiltPruf before a frost to help preserve tips of evergreen shrubs and woody stemmed plants; keeps wind from dessicating leaf tissues and keeps deer away from plants such as Rhododendrons

Planting Notes
Arid soils are best for iris and other bulbs
A mix of long and short day plants are best for spring and fall foliage in the garden
Now is a great time to plant spring bulbs!

Color Notes
Purple/blue and yellow are a good combination

Soil Notes
Fall Mulching:
Mulching in the fall keeps the soil warmer; roots continue to grow down to a low of 40 deg. F when mulched.

Types of Mulch:
Bark - attractive, effective; do not incorporate into soil
Wood chips - do not incorporate into soil
Peat moss - incorporate into soil; do not just lay on top to dry out; great for rhododendrons.

Soil & Ph:
Ph scales are logarithmic. In central NY the best soil Ph is around 6.5 range but most sites are about 7.
Peat and pine needles acidify (lower Ph); limestone makes soil more basic (raise Ph).
Change Ph slowly so as not to get root burn on plants.

Garden Soil Mix:
Peatmoss - breaks up clay and adds water
Compost - organic if possible
Sand - should be 50% of mix for drainage; can raise Ph content; coarse or mason sand creates useful draining pockets.

Clay soils:
act like a pot; plant your plant in a larger container in clay-based soil to help the roots spread out.

Composting tips:
Stir pile weekly
Should have 55% water content for correct decomposition
Add materials like wood chips and worms like red wigglers
You can insulate with straw bales for a quick (warm) startup in the spring

Pest Notes
Liquid fence, reapplied every two weeks, stops deer browsing pattern. Large predator scat like bears or lions works too.

Emerald Ash borers, contrary to their name, prefer maple trees.
Watch for Hemlock Wolly Adelgid which can kill evergreen trees/shrubs
Tent caterpillars prefer sugar maples
Crytospara disease looks like a "bleeding canker" on evergreens

This is a great thing to do with the tomatoes that decide to bloom during a sunny october but never ripen. Not that I would know anything about that.

Finely dice 10-15 medium to small green tomatoes (I had Roma tomatoes)
Add to taste: diced onion, celery seed, mustard seed, salt, sugar, apple vinegar

Let sit overnight in nonreactive (glass or plastic) container in refrigerator.

This gets better the more you let it sit, and is fantastic on Mexican food.

My grandfather and grandmother moved from their home in FL last year into an assisted-living facility, when my grandfather's Alzheimers' finally got too much for my grandmother to deal with on their own.

That means that we get mail for them here, at our home, and usually bring it up to my grandmother at her current home, a long-term nursing unit where she lays slowly slipping into decline; my grandfather died in May at the age of 96. I visit her as often as I can, and sit with her as she struggles to breathe.

I won't be bringing her the letter from the FL Focus on the Family affiliate we got today, urging her to vote for Romney as "the candidate who shares your values": Florida Family Action and Citizen Link may think that my grandmother is a bigot, but she loves her queer granddaughter. And I love her.

A few years ago, while living in Boston, I met a wonderful person who cared for me and whom I cared for very much, and came out to my parents after almost a decade of being in the closet. My parents, who had previously seemed neutral on LGBT rights in general and quite supportive of other queer family members, told me I was wrong and should never get married. I was crushed.

They told me never to tell my grandparents: "you'd kill them." I'd been forming a close relationship with my grandparents--the kind I'd never been able to have with them as a child, since they lived so far away and we saw them so rarely--via letter. Rather than elide my partner and my life with them from my letters, I simply stopped writing to them. They were hurting, and I was hurting.

I wrote to them anyway. I told them I was queer. I told them I wasn't supposed to tell them. I told them I was angry at my parents and that I didn't have the family support I had hoped for. I told them that I loved them whatever their response was. I told them that if we were to stop talking to each other, we should at least know why. I told them I was terrified. I sent the letter, and I waited.

My grandmother wrote this letter back.
It's gotten me through the really bad times--the subsequent three-year battle for respect for my relationship from my parents, the loss of a job, my untreated clinical depression, my breakup with my partner mentioned in the letter, my move back to my hometown, my grandfather's death this May and my grandmother's subsequent decline, and the guy today who sat next to me in a government office and called me a carpet muncher to see if he could gay-bait me (it didn't work).

I am really glad that my then-partner, and my current partner, got a chance to meet my grandparents. I am glad to be their granddaughter. I am glad to be their queer granddaughter. And my grandmother is glad to have me, just as I am. I remember that when I'm tempted to give up on love, or frustrated with the daily, exhausting work of being an out queer person, and it makes my life a lot better every day.

I wrote to Florida Family Action, CitizenLink, and Focus on the Family, and asked them to take my grandmother off their mailing list.

She doesn't want your letter. She loves me.

If you are a queer person or an ally, and have received a similar election-year flyer, I ask you to do just two things:

- Write to the group that sent you the flyer, and its affiliates, and ask them to take you off their mailing lists. You have the power to stop their bigoted, ill-informed fears from coming into your mailbox and your home. Stand up and tell them you don't want any part of it.

- If you have a similar story or letter, please write about it. Talk about the hope that gets you through. Be honest with your family, whether they're blood or chosen.

Let them love you as you are and it might save your life. I know my grandma's letter saved mine.