Category: essays

Treading Lightly: Growing Greens

personby Pati Nagle
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Here in the Treehouse, we have to get by on what’s at hand. This series explores simple, nature-friendly alternatives to conventional products and practices.

When you’re in a treehouse, in the middle of the woods, there is no popping down to the corner store for last-minute whatevers. Our excursions are few and far between, so we are coming up with ways to compensate for the lack of easy access. We find this has also led us to try some more eco-friendly methods – in this case, for acquiring greens.

Gardening at the base of the tree is not an option. Never mind the climbing up and down; anything we might try to grow on the forest floor would be quickly snarfed by the local fauna. But I want lettuce. Fresh green things to eat. Greens that I know are uncontaminated.

Hydroponic tower garden

So I started growing lettuce in my office. This tower rack sits in the corner, taking up a 2’x3′ footprint. It’s got lettuces up top, seedlings in the center, and bok choy and basil plants on the bottom. All of these (well, not the seedlings yet) produce amazing amounts of wonderful leaves.

Fresh veggies, especially greens, start to lose nutritional value the moment they’re picked. In 24 hours, they’ve lost 90% of their nutrition. By growing them here, I have clean, absolutely fresh greens year-round, with a carbon footprint of…well, probably zero. The lights are LEDs and are powered by our solar system. Each lettuce plant uses around two gallons of water during its lifetime, compared to more than twenty-five gallons it takes to grow a head of lettuce in the ground.

The low carbon footprint is important to me, almost as important as the clean food. That Romaine heart that I used to buy for a couple of bucks had to travel from California, and was probably over a week old, maybe a couple of weeks old, by the time I brought it home. And while a couple of bucks seems fairly inexpensive, it’s a lot more than the cost of my lovely home-grown lettuces.

Growing these darlings is a bit different. You don’t wait for the lettuce to get big and then yank it from the garden. Instead, as soon as it’s big enough, you start harvesting the outer leaves, a few at a time. (I have been known to snack on a leaf now and then.) The plants get harvested this way for two or three months. When they’re tired, they bolt, and I retire them with thanks and a bit of ceremony. Each plant has probably given as much lettuce as two or three commercial lettuce heads, by then.

It’s a different way of gardening, and a different way of interacting with food. I’m very aware of the interdependence between me and my plants. I feed them and make sure they have enough light and don’t get too hot, and in return they feed us. Mutual giving.

 

On deciding what to read

personby Gillian Polack
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I was working on a novel (questing in a strange world is not the same as anyone expects it to be, including the inhabitants of the city in which a group of people quest) and the obvious hit me over the head, hard. I’m going to hit you over the head with it, because I’m kind in that way.

Any novel contains world building. We, as readers, enter the world the writer has written.

That was not the head-hitting thought. That’s an element of my current research. A tiny one.

All writers build worlds. Some of us have worlds that look like our own world (for example, in literary fiction) and some have strange worlds where it’s unsafe to walk (in horror, in science fiction, for instance). Most writers find their place in between the extremes (for extremes are harder for readers – I’ll get to this, it’s part of the head-hitting) and their novels fit into a genre partly according to the nature of the world and how it’ written and partly due to the complex processes of marketing and sales.

The reader finds their favourites and devours book after book and everyone’s happy.

Except… that’s not true. Which bit of that last paragraph isn’t true? The ‘everyone’s happy’ bit.

When we don’t want to use too many tricks to lure people into our worlds or when we want the reader to feel comfortable in the world of the novel or when we want the reader to focus on the action and not the background to it, we draw from mainstream culture. We draw, mostly, in fact, white male US culture. It’s the easiest to draw from and it’s also the easiest to market. Continue reading “On deciding what to read”…

How Many Alligators Are There in Florida? 1.25 Million!

personby Amy Sterling Casil
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So, what happens when you take a 5th generation southern California native and uproot her 2600 miles away to the semi-tropical southwest Florida gulf coast?

Well … these are the “selected” shells. I limit myself to one handful per trip, only ones I’ve never gotten before. I now know the names of many of these. The orange ones are scallops. Like the little ones we eat.

So I really like Florida. It reminds me of when I was a kid in California. It’s not crowded like L.A. and Orange County have become. There’s still plenty of room for enthusiasm and exuberant displays of individualism.

This here is Gatorz in Port Charlotte. A homey, down to earth kind of place.

 

This here below is a “gator” as in 6-foot alligator I saw crossing a divided 4 lane highway in Englewood. We have a small one that lives in one of our nearby ponds.

So I was driving down the highway on the way to walk around downtown Venice, FL and this car is stopped in front of me. Why is he stopped? What’s going on … Continue reading “How Many Alligators Are There in Florida? 1.25 Million!”…

Clarinetist Anthony McGill Takes Two Knees

personby Jeffrey A. Carver
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Following the Boston Pops musicians-at-home tribute to COVID-19 first responders, I was blown away today by this solo performance at home by the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinetist Anthony McGill, of “America the Beautiful”—beautifully and subtly re-tuned to convey Mr. McGill’s sorrow and anger at racial injustice. Watch and listen to it on a device with good sound; it’s worth it. McGill ends the piece with… well, I’ll let you watch and see.

McGill’s statement inspired this haunting and inspiring rendition of Sebelius’s Hymn from Finlandia, by music students and faculty from four different music schools, all taking two knees in protest of injustice.

The story appears on NPR’s Here and Now, with an interview by WBUR radio’s Robin Young. The interview is well worth a listen:

 

A moment of thought

personby Gillian Polack
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This fortnight I’ve done so many things that I’ve lost track.

I’ve written the poorest drabbest first draft of a novel so that someone can check something in it before I polish the novel up. Last time I did this, the novel was approved of by the friends doing all the checking and I edited it lightly and suddenly it was in print (that was The Year of the Fruit Cake). This novel will need more editing that than because my gut says that it has a sagging middle. The story tells of a group of strangers that meet on a dying island and do the hard work to make themselves into such a group of friends that they will all get through the impossible even if they have no idea how they’re going to get through that impossible.

I guess I need to find a publisher for it after I’m happy with it, but that’s then.

Some writers write under contract. Me, I really like writing work that balances and expresses my research. That means it’s fairer on publishers if I have a complete novel to offer them, so contracts generally come after my work is finished. It also means I can write what I need. If it doesn’t get published, that’s my risk – so far this hasn’t happened. So far small and medium press have been very happy to take my work. (it doesn’t matter how published I am, I feel it’s always ‘so far’ – I can’t predict tomorrow.)

My novel doesn’t read like research. It’s not supposed to. Continue reading “A moment of thought”…

Now I Can Cross Watching Astronauts Blast Into Space Off My Bucket List

personby Amy Sterling Casil
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I never thought I’d see a crewed rocket blast into space at Cape Canaveral, yet — here I am. I also never thought I’d live in Florida, and likely would never even visit the state, yet — here I am.

I do remember Apollo 11 landing on the moon and I remember Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planting the flag. I recall sitting on the living room floor in our house in the orange grove cross-legged, eating an Oreo and drinking a 6-oz glass of milk. The living room walls in the grove house were cedar panels. I remember Rebel sitting next to me, his big head and floppy ears resting on his big old paws. Rebel was a phlegmatic Basset hound with deep brown, mournful eyes. I had learned to walk by clinging to his ears and toddling.

It seemed very easy for these two guys to hop out of the Lunar module and caper around the moon. At age seven, I thought the big rocket was just like the small rockets one of our teachers had launched at school. In my mind, flying to the moon was maybe a little farther than flying to Paris. My child’s mind told me that the astronauts were just like The Little Prince only instead of a nice costume and scarf, they wore puffy, funny suits.

The Little Prince by Antoine St. Exupery

This is in my child’s mind. All through school, we drew peace symbols, stuck “ecology” stickers on our notebooks, and learned about the Apollo astronauts. I was certain that by the time we were all grown up, the world would be a beautiful, green, peaceful place, and astronauts would be flying all over the universe.

Just like Star Trek.

Continue reading “Now I Can Cross Watching Astronauts Blast Into Space Off My Bucket List”…

A Little Bit of Hope

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I felt a little hope this week.

The uprising in the streets of our country (and much of the rest of the world) brought me that hope.

Or more accurately, the reaction to that uprising, which for once veered away from the usual tut-tutting about property damage and instead focused on how the police attacked peaceful protestors. The blatant racism and casual police violence that have always been a part of our society are now under serious scrutiny.

There is a call for real and systemic change in how we handle public safety, something I’ve wanted to see for many years and yet never expected to see. Sometimes, despite being a science fiction writer, I lack imagination when it comes to change in my own world. Continue reading “A Little Bit of Hope”…

Sewing as Fast as I Can

personby Madeleine Robins
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When the pandemic hit and the museum I work at was shuttered temporarily, I decided that I would make masks for medical workers and others who need them. Remember back to those long-ago days three months ago (!!) when frontline medical workers couldn’t get PPE for love or money, and were wearing their N95 masks over and over? So I did some research, trying to find out what style and features the local medical folk preferred–and got a lot of conflicting advice. Finally I settled on a pattern that could be made up fairly quickly, with fabric I had on hand, and started sewing.

I should note that the fabric I had on hand was, some of it, interesting. Almost two yards of fabric with 1930s-40s SF pulp magazine covers on it. A yard or so of what looks like a Candyland game board. An abstract star-scape. You ask a science fiction writer to make masks, you are likely to get interesting, if not downright eccentric, material choices. Continue reading “Sewing as Fast as I Can”…

Rage. Fear. Center.

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Toward the end of April, as people began to plan WisCONline — the virtual WisCon — I got a notice that my academic paper for the con had been accepted and that they wanted a video presentation.

About the same time, I saw that Story Center was offering an online class in using WeVideo. Although I took one of their classes in digital storytelling about four years back and learned the basics of WeVideo, I had a lot of gaps in my knowledge since I hadn’t done any new videos.

I decided to sign up for the class with the goal of making a video for WisCon. That way I could do something besides a talking head of me reading the paper.

There were two problems with this plan. First, the 15-minute presentation would be considerably longer than the usual 2-3 minute videos Story Center works with.

Second, the paper wasn’t written yet. Once WisCon decided to cancel the in-person convention, I hadn’t expected them to want a paper. Also, in my previous academic papers for WisCon, I had still been putting the final touches on the paper the day of the presentation.

But I felt inspired and signed up for the class, even told the teacher my grandiose plan at the first meeting. Continue reading “Rage. Fear. Center.”…

The Grand Silence

personby Pati Nagle
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Step outside the house, into the forest. Take the uphill path through the woods. Notice the plants to either side: pine trees, oak, poplars, berry bushes, cactus, wildflowers. A flash of movement; a bird or a lizard. Glints of bright color in a tapestry of shaded greens.

At the top of the hill, pause and breathe. Here you can see into the distance: thunderclouds gathering on the horizon, silent for now. Angel wisps of pale cloud overhead, melting and morphing as you watch. Look up at them and turn full circle. See the whole sky.

And listen. Continue reading “The Grand Silence”…