An Aikido Approach to Chatbots

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Tools can be useful,
but don’t count on them to think.
Use them mindfully.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that the discussion of guns for self defense all seem to start — and end — with the purchase of said gun. Perhaps a few of those who hold the view that “an armed society is a polite society” (to quote Robert Heinlein) also advocate serious training, but it’s easy to get the impression that too many people think owning the gun is all you need to protect yourself.

I wrote a story about this called “Survival Skills.” In it an Aikido sensei told the protagonist that no tool is ever ultimately the answer. The protagonist had to learn the core truth of that the hard way, though.

I bring this up because all the furor about the AI chat bots has skipped over analyzing them as a tool that has both benefits and flaws. Some people are already using them to replace humans, without paying any attention to some of their significant flaws. (A writing program that makes up facts and cites non-existent articles is not a tool to rely on.)

And the scammers are already out in full force: people are submitting chatbot written stories to magazines. The biggest problem from the magazine POV is not separating them out from real stories — that’s pretty easy — but the fact they flood the inbox, exhausting the editor who has to deal with them.

Nobody’s going to make any money sending chatbot stories to magazines, but someone’s probably making money teaching people how to do that.

My Aikido teacher used to occasionally say, “I teach philosophy,” meaning that Aikido is so much more than a physical practice. I try to apply the principles of Aikido to other aspects of life.

I just applied two Aikido principles to the discussion of chatbots: relying on a tool when you don’t understand what you’re doing with it and acting without integrity. Aikido teaches you to avoid both of those things. Continue reading “An Aikido Approach to Chatbots”…

Meeting Julie Again

personby Madeleine Robins
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My mother (left) and Aunt Julie, sometime in 1953.

I just returned from a flying visit to my Aunt. She is my mother’s sister, and my favorite aunt (my father had five sisters, all fiercely accomplished, but none of them were as flat-out lovable as Julie; I’m not sure that was their goal). The thing about her is that she was also fiercely accomplished: she had an extraordinarily complex job at UCLA for a couple of decades, and oversaw the switch from analog to digital communication and records. She married a marvelous guy, a professor of anatomy who very sensibly thought the sun shone out of her every pore Together they traveled the world and had adventures and made friends–and yet managed to be intensely private and very happy to be by themselves or with the handful of people they loved best. My brother and I were fortunate enough to be on that short list.

Ten years ago my aunt was the sharpest, funniest woman you ever met, able to balance details and organize troops, and make the troops love it. My mother, half-kidding, used to call her “Mrs. Megaphone,” but my aunt rarely raised her voice or got angry. Charm, a sense of humor, and a to-do list and organizational systems made it easy for her to get what she needed to get done, done.

Then my uncle got sick, and for perhaps five years their world got smaller and a smaller, and she became more wrapped up in my uncle as the inevitability of losing him became clearer. After he died she was devastated. She was still perfectly lovely, but broken. She didn’t return phone calls or letters much, she withdrew, and increasingly relied on the assistance of her marvelous housekeeper. And her memory started to fray. It was sort of a perfect storm: her hearing isn’t good, but she never remembers to wear her hearing aids, and when she does she doesn’t wear them long because she’s not used to them, and they annoy her. She used to have an iron organizational grip on the business of their house, but during her husband’s illness she’d put a lot of that aside, and while she expected to go back to it, she just never did. She didn’t want to see many people–family and the occasional friend who wouldn’t take no for an answer. So mental stimulation took a hit. Then COVID struck, and she was necessarily housebound. She is now 97 and unable to live without help–which thank God and all the fish she can afford.

My family went down to visit her over Christmas. My younger daughter lives in the same building as Julie and is sort of my agent in place. My older daughter and my husband hadn’t seen her recently, so they were expecting the Julie of a few years ago–sharp and funny and able to keep up with most of our rat-a-tat badinage. They wanted her to be the Julie of ten years ago. So do I.  Until this visit, when I found myself letting that go.

When my uncle was so sick, I was there to support them both in whatever way I could (as their whole family was). But I have come to realize that in some part of my brain I believed that after he died, and after she’d processed the terrible loss, I’d get my aunt of ten years ago back. And I’d been mourning the fact that that isn’t going to happen–which is not unreasonable, perhaps. But that mourning was getting in the way of my enjoying the aunt that I have. She’s still funny, she’s still immensely lovable, she lights up when the people she loves arrives. We don’t have long conversations anymore–it would be more like a monologue, with her trying to catch up. This trip, for the first time, I just sat there, responding when she said something, talking a little, holding her hand. When my daughter came by we clowned around, which utterly delighted her, which in turn, utterly delights me. Somehow, rather than holding on to the person my aunt was, on this visit I was able to just be with the person she is. And it was swell.

My father made to not-quite 98, and had all his faculties until the last week or so when he was actively dying. I’d like to live as long and stay as sharp as he did. But nothing is guaranteed. If I live that long but am not as sharp, I’d like to be like my aunt, full of love and joy, and grateful for the people around her who love her.

 

Ice and Snow

personby Gillian Polack
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It’s zero degrees outside right now, and autumn. Translated for the US, that’s 32 degrees and Fall. This is one of the times of year that confuses our friends in the northern hemisphere. I know this because the number of times a day every single May that I’m told that the weather is warming up is ridiculously high.

Once upon a time only my US and Canadian friends forgot the southern hemisphere had different seasons, but these days it’s parts of Europe as well. December is the worst for this, because we’re told that Christmas is for everyone and requires cold weather to celebrate. A storybook Christmas has cold and snow and a big hot meal. Here, it’s more likely to include a picnic by the lake with black swans demanding their share of the food and with unlimited cold drinks.

Being told to rug up during the summer holidays has a special absurdity, but when it’s negative temperatures overnight (-3.2 last night – I’m typing this at breakfast time feeling that sudden rush of warmth as things become less bitter) every “Isn’t it nice that summer is coming” kinda rankles.

Of all those who forget that the southern hemisphere is not the northern, the most annoying are those who insist that I’m wrong and that winter is not coming. Our autumn is fully settled in late April everywhere, and one in three years is cold by mid-May. This is one of those years. Winter may not be already here, but it’s sent very clear messages that it’s close.

I live in the mountains (inland), so it gets particularly chill here. Canberra is too dry, mostly, for snow (though we had snow in northern Canberra over the weekend) but one of the southern hemisphere’s best ski fields is merely a bit over an hour away. Not that I ski. I did, however once unintentionally provoke the Deputy Prime Minister to fall thirty metres in the snow. That was, however, in summer. The snow was remnant snow and it was the day he gave his particular speech at the top of our tallest mountain and… I put the rest of it into one of my novels, because it’s one of those incidents that sounds fictional and therefore was crying to be used in fiction.

Anyhow, the ski season has begun (just) and I now work late at nights.

Why late? It doesn’t get properly cold until 4 am here, and I would rather go back to bed until my toes don’t curl to protect themselves. This is not typically Australian, and, in fact, didn’t used to be typically Gillian. When I was a child I’d wake up before dawn to walk in the melting frost. As I age, more and more I like going back to bed on days like this.

My work day, in fact, will be shaped around how cold it is over the next three months. And what work does this day entail? Mostly research into how writers develop the worlds for their novels and how these worlds, in turn, can feel more or less real to readers. It doesn’t matter (I am discovering) whether or not the world has magic or if all the plant life is purple with turquoise spots. The world can still feel real when things are not like the worlds we know. It can still feel entirely fake when thing are depicted precisely as we know them. It all comes down to the world building and how the writer pulls that world into the story itself.

My fiction for the next little while depends on my mood. This month’s new writing is all about a light novel where I test some of my discoveries about how writers build and depict worlds. The episode I’m typing when I need a breath of warmth has an almost-human couple discovering that kittens, too, can become vampires. Also that braggarts and fools exist just as much in the world of the supernatural as in the world we know.

This week has a few extras and will be busy. I’m late with my tax, so that’s urgent, and I’m editing, and I’m working on my Patreon papers.

This month’s Patreon essay discusses the very curious relationship between Medieval French epic legends and MCU movies, and I’ll be delivering that paper live at a conference later this week (from my home computer). This month’s fiction for patrons includes the how the kitten’s household semi-domesticates that very cute vampire kitten, and this month’s advice to writers will explain how popular knowledge of famous figures can work in fiction.

And that’s my world this week. It’s busy, but not so busy I can’t sleep for an hour more. Since I started writing this, the temperature outside has gone up by a full degree. Soon the sun will beam loudly into my east-facing work area and everything will be almost-comfortable. I shall take that as a victory, because this year’s winter is going to be cold, if autumn already contains frost and black ice.

When I was younger, I dreamed of a good income. I also dreamed of living somewhere warmer (northern NSW or southern Queensland) in winter and in my more-comfortable mountains in summer. Now that I can’t pretend to be young, I complain about the weather. The reason for the complaint today is not, in fact, because it’s cold outside, but because someone left the security door open over the weekend and all the warmth leeched out of my flat and so the warmest I can get it is fifteen degrees (fifty nine degrees for US readers). Crunchy cold grass underfoot ceases to be exotic when the warmest corner of indoors is under sixteen. And I’m sure there’s a joke in there… but my brain is frozen. Even the postie (who just delivered a parcel) tells me that it’s brisk outside. If you’re reading this from the part of the planet that careens towards summer, this morning I envy you, so very much. How much is so very much? Probably about ten degrees.

Turning Away Wrath

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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You have probably heard about Jordan Neely, the man choked to death by a another subway passenger in New York City because he was yelling. By all accounts that I have seen, Neely wasn’t doing anything violent, though he was certainly making others uncomfortable.

Elie Mystal provides an excellent account of all the issues involved – including race, mental illness, homelessness, and even the possibility that the man who did the choking, a former Marine, overreacted with violence because he hadn’t received enough care for his own traumas. Mystal points out:

But, to be honest, the racism saturating every part of this story is only the most obvious of its horrors. This murder takes many of the problems we have in our society and shoves them into a giant melting pot.

A lot of homeless people live in my neighborhood, many of them under a freeway and BART overpass a few blocks away, others camped in a nearby park. They are often rousted out and have to find other places to go. Meanwhile, there are vacancies in the brand new overpriced apartment buildings put up all over this area.

The people living on the street can’t afford those places, of course. Studio apartments start at over $2,000/month.

Some of the people on the street are mentally ill. Some are just very broke. I give a few of them a wide berth when I see them, but I have never felt compelled to attack any of them, even the ones who scream abuse at all and sundry. I don’t feel threatened. Mostly, I feel horrified that the richest country in the world does not take care of its most fragile people.

Before the pandemic, I was better at being compassionate, but the need to keep my distance from others for my own health got me out of the habit. I’m trying to get back to being kind again, though I know that a couple of bucks and a word is so much less than they need.

As I read about the death of Jordan Neely, I remembered a well-known story from the late Aikido teacher Terry Dobson, an American who trained in Japan with the founder of Aikido back in the early 1960s. That story too took place on a subway (this one in Tokyo) and it featured a very drunk and abusive man. It was entitled “A Kind Word Turneth Away Wrath.”

I first read it in a 1985 anthology edited by Richard Strozzi Heckler called Aikido and the New Warrior, though it occurs to me that I might have heard the story in the dojo before I read the book. It’s the kind of story that Aikido people love to tell.

I suspect from the title alone you can guess that the situation was resolved very differently from the recent killing in New York, though it was not Dobson, a martial artist then in his prime, who resolved it but rather an elderly and very traditional Japanese man.

Every time I read this story, I tear up.

I could summarize it here, but it is so much better in Dobson’s own words and I was able to find it online here under the title “A Soft Answer.” 

Give it a read, and then give it some deep thought.

We don’t have to live like this.

In Troubled Times: Being Allies

personby Deborah J. Ross
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I started a blog series, “In Troubled Times” after the 2016 presidential election. Folks I trust said that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better. That’s true now, too, so here’s the first in a renewed series.

Recently, I had a conversation with someone I love dearly who, like so many of us, belongs to overlapping groups that have been targeted by the current crop of hate-mongers. So many of the people and causes I support are at risk, it’s easy to feel battered by prejudice, overwhelmed, infuriated, and hopeless. But, in a moment of spontaneity, I found myself saying, “We can be good allies for one another.”

Let me break this down a bit. There is more than enough hatred to go around. There will never be a lack of worthy causes and people in need. No one of us can save everyone.

Thankfully, we are not all crazy (or desperate, or paralyzed by events) on the same day. Progress happens when we are actively pursuing it, but also when we allow ourselves to take a break, tend to our inner lives, and allow others to carry the load. The world does not rise or fall solely based on any one of us. This is why solidarity is essential. Insisting on being on the front lines all the time is an engraved invitation to exhaustion. If we look, we will always find those who, for this moment anyway, have energy and determination.

I think the secret to being a good ally is to realize that we can be that person for someone else.

This requires paying attention.

It is not helpful to do for someone what they can and should do for themselves. How then are we to discern when “helping” is arrogant interference? When is it a genuine offer and when does it result in telling the other person that they are inadequate and helpless to achieve their goal?

We ask. We listen. We give ourselves permission to appear clumsy and we forgive ourselves when we make mistakes.

Sometimes, the best thing we can ask is “How can I help?” and sometimes it is the worst, laying yet another burden on a person bowed down under them (“Oh god, I’ve got to think of something for her to do!”) Sometimes, saying, “Would you like me to help with that?” is the best, and sometimes it is the worst. Sometimes, “You are not alone” is a sanity-saver. Sometimes, it is a reminder of looming disaster. Sometimes, “I’m here and I care” is all the other person needs to hear, and sometimes it is worse than silence.

We listen. We ask. We pay attention.

The one thing we do not do is walk away. When I think of being an ally, I envision someone with whom I can be depressed, angry, volatile, and just plain wrong—and know that I will be held up by their unrelenting care for me. I can vent my frustration and they won’t abandon me. They will hear the pain and despair behind my words.

I want to be that ally for others. I want to be that safe person. I’m far from perfect at it, though. My feelings get hurt. I sop up the other person’s despair when I know better. I do my best to not walk away.

Listen. Forgive yourself. Take a break. Do what you can, when you can. Then pick yourself up and get back into the fight.

 

Up soon… “This too shall pass…”

On Feeling Better about the World, one email at a time

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m sorry I missed posting last week. I fully intended to write, but then my birthday started (unexpectedly) a little early with a movie, and by the time I took a breath it was Tuesday night my time. I felt much loved. But I missed posting.

The visit to the movie for my birthday is a tradition that began some years ago. A friend admitted he never knew what to get me and I admitted I never got to the cinema. Because my birthday is a national holiday in Australia there are often new releases, and, since both of us enjoy superhero movies, I have seen a number of them over the years, as my birthday treat. This year my friend was away on the birthday itself, so he suggested we go see Kuzume the night before. Not quite my birthday and not quite a superhero movie, but the perfect movie for my current mood and I still have that birthday tradition.

The next day (my actual birthday) I had an afternoon with friends, followed by dinner. And messages. Many, many birthday messages. I still have a few emails to open and answer. I think I’m putting off the last few because I want this feeling of being treasured to last a little longer. I do live alone and these last few years that has taken a big toll. Every friend who remembers me and talks to me is so very, very important.

Other people worry as they get older. I always love birthdays because it’s a day when people around me stop and remember “I need to send Gillian a message” or even give me a gift. There is a special wonder in this for an older single woman without children. For a brief time my life matters.

I no longer get a family time at the Jewish high holy days (it’s a long story and entirely inappropriate to talk about). I have created an extended family-by-choice time to replace it so that my high holy days have love and happiness and much food (except for Yom Kippur, which is alone and foodless), but there aren’t the family traditions of presents and hugs from all the children in the family-by-choice, largely because most of them associate all that stuff with Christmas. Christmas is the festival I celebrate with friends and for those friends – it’s their festival and I have a lovely time, but it’s not about me and never should be about me. My birthday, though, if I can get people I love, a slice of cake and a clinky glass full of very nice Shiraz and a few hugs and some parcels to open… it gives me hope for the whole year. This year I experienced the first full set of hugs since COVID. It was rash of me, because I’m still COVID-vulnerable, but I daring accepted all hugs  then, soon after, the children and I put our heads together and plotted (and also tested a CO2 meter: the verdict was that the best place for me to live ie the safest place with the most oxygen… was the letterbox) – these are amazing things and three years without them was far too long. I had a lovely birthday.

If you know any people who are alone and don’t get a special day, wishing them happy birthday can mean a lot. Unless they’re like someone I know who hates birthdays with a cold-death-glare. You should find another day to make these someones feel loved. May 1, for instance. Or September 1. Find a day and buy them coffee or send them an email or drop in. It’s a handy way of making sure that people who are alone are not actually lonely.

Now I need to find out a way to remind all those who love me that it’d be nice to see them a bit more and to feel that love more often. I shall work on this. In the meantime, I shall watch the letterbox (not the COVID-safe one – my untested-for-oxygen one). Two friends sent me something fir my birthday and those somethings have yet to arrive.

I do adore this one (very, very extended) day in the year.

Thinking About Work

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Anne Helen Peterson had a piece in her Substack recently about work patterns among people in supposedly higher end jobs. It’s all about how they put in the extra hours, never take all their vacation time, and so forth.

People in less prestigious jobs do not work extra, but of course they don’t get paid well and these days are often stuck with jobs with erratic hours and no benefits.

The solution to both these problems is unionization, as Peterson points out. Of course, people in white collar jobs think they’re too good for that and people in a lot of service jobs are risking their rent and food money when they organize.

It occurs to me that when I went to work as a legal editor and reporter for the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (known as BNA) — a major publisher of notification services for lawyers and other professionals that was at the time I went to work for the only legal publisher in the U.S. that was not owned by a foreign company — I ended up in a white collar salaried job where I worked the stated hours every week and went home and left the job behind.

After some years of practicing law, especially in a nonprofit firm that specialized in low income housing and never had enough resources, it was a relief to go home and forget about work.

Here’s the thing about BNA: it was owned by its employees and we had a union. Continue reading “Thinking About Work”…

On Productivity

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Like way too many people, especially U.S. people, I always feel like I’m not getting enough done. I need to write more. I need to manage my money. I need to clean this house and get rid of lots of stuff.

On social media, I see lots of my friends doing all these things and more and I feel guilty. Though I often also feel exhausted just reading about all the things they’re getting done.

Still, too many things remain undone. I’m not being productive.

But this morning, while I was meditating, it came to me that I am actually doing several things I never used to do, things that take time and are great for my quality of life even though they don’t weigh much on the productive scale.

(I know you’re not supposed to “think” while meditating, but one of the useful things that happens to me during that time is that I suddenly understand something that’s been going on under the surface.)

(I probably need to meditate more.)

Maybe the biggest newish thing I do is that I get a good night’s sleep, usually eight or nine hours worth. Sometimes I have trouble going to sleep or wake up with worries in the wee hours. After those nights, I sleep in.

This is after a lifetime of refusing to go to bed early, even if I wasn’t doing anything but staring at bad TV, and getting up early to do things.

I got up early to go to 7 am Aikido for about a third of my life, just as an example. And of course, even without that I had to get up for things like school and work.

These days I rarely have to get up early to be somewhere and I love it (even if I will always miss the 7 am Aikido class at Aikido Shobukan Dojo in Washington, D.C.). Continue reading “On Productivity”…

World-Building, Dying, and the Memory Lane of Comfort Foods

personby Deborah J. Ross
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I wrote this in 2013, while taking care of my best friend as she died from ovarian cancer. From time to time, I want to be reminded of the wisdom that arises in times of crisis.

 

The brochure from hospice inform me that as a dying person’s body winds down, appetite becomes erratic and diminishes. The sense of taste changes so that formerly favorite foods are no longer appealing. The person eats less when they do eat.  Finally, many dying people refuse all food. This can be complicated because throughout human cultures, offering food is a way of expressing love. The dying person may continue to eat in order to please a loved one, but in the end the demands of the body prevail.

Besides nourishing our bodies, sometimes past the point of health and into diet-related diseases, food is laden with symbolic meaning. We celebrate with festive meals; we soothe ourselves with favorite treats from our childhood; we give candy to our sweethearts. Even the term “sweetheart” refers to sweetness, a taste, as do “honey” and other endearments. Taste and smell are the most basic, “primitive” senses, so our expressions of care go zing! right into the oldest portions of the brain.

For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of world-building is creating different cuisines for each culture or social class, ethnic group or family. While it may be true that just about every cuisine has some version of pancake-rolled-around-filling, stew modeled on the canned stuff in American supermarkets shouts “generic fantasy!”

Just as every family seems to have their own special recipe for spaghetti sauce or meatloaf, you can devise variations on the same dish. Sometimes these variations might reflect notions about what is suitable food for people of different ages, different social status, or even genders (“manly meals” or “kiddy food” or salads-are-for-women). Even within these variations, not everyone has the same taste. Some may be innate (how cilantro tastes is genetically determined), or influenced by personal history (travel, associations with significant events or relationships) and health status.

Which brings me again to caring for a terminally ill friend, in particular providing meals for her. She jokes about taking a trip down the memory lane of the foods she’s enjoyed during her life. Her tastes have become nostalgic, erratic to the point of whimsical, but fleeting. Some of the things she’s asked for are cream of mushroom soup, watermelon, Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese, buttermilk biscuits from scratch (which I do know how to make), hot dogs with sauerkraut, salami, and vanilla ice cream with lemon sorbet for breakfast. No pickles with the ice cream, at least not yet, although she jokes about the food cravings of pregnancy. Life is indeed uncertain, so she eats dessert first.

The food comes with memories, of course. “Do you remember the time we ate this when we were students and…” or “I made this recipe while horse camping on Mt. Hood…” or “my father used to cook this for a special occasion…” I think the same is true for everyone, but the awareness that time is limited, that the number of times you will eat this dish or reminisce over the adventures that once accompanied it are not limitless, adds a special poignancy. As my friend’s appetite wanes, she eats less in amount and frequency. There’s a shift from the fullness of having eaten to the sensory pleasure of eating to the anticipation, the idea of that particular food. If there is a sense of re-visiting the past – comfort and celebration, adventure and sharing – there is also a gradual farewell.

Charming Synchronies

personby Gillian Polack
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Yesterday I found my research self and my fiction-writing self in perfect synchrony.

My research self is looking at old tales newly told, from a number of angles. I’m focusing very closely on how writers build the world for their novel. One of my favourite techniques is to look at the various roles food and foodways play. There’s not enough work in this field for me to rest on the work of others, so I spend a lot of my time in an alert state, watching different kinds of narratives and checking the role food and foodways play so that I can deepen my research.

Over time, this alert state has given me a lot of questions that need answering. For instance, in K-drama, there are a number of ways people drink and they are connected to different drinks The most formal ‘proper’ way of drinking was easy to determine, but it wasn’t until I obtained flavoured soju and drank some that some of the more casual ways people drank became clearer. Flavour, mouthfeel, level of alcohol all play as much of a part in how characters drink on K-drama as tradition and courtesy.

For my fiction, I begin with recipes and the food itself. Then I start thinking about what the appropriate ways of presenting the food are. This approach was sparked 30+ years ago when a favourite writer had people throw food that would have been dripping with honey, in a social group that has given us no historical evidence for treating food that lightly. Several possible messes entered into my visualisation of the scene: honey everywhere, and the very important personages acting as ill-disciplined overgrown children. I talked to the writer about the scene and she had not considered either aspect. The throwing was in the modern American cultural sense of being light-hearted and the characters were demonstrating how close they were to each other.

This was the first time I discovered just how much of our own culture we place in our constructed worlds and how, unless we consider things really carefully, we echo what we think we know and it is our own way of doing things.

I started to do two things at that point.

The first was to find out what my own cultural nuancing is and where it comes from. How do I assume people eat and drink in various circumstances?

Just like almost every other fiction writer, I draw the worlds for my novels from places I’m always ready a bit familiar with and many of them echo my life and experience. The difference is that I do this while aware. That state of alert becomes increasingly handy. I watch television and go to movies partly to continue this dialogue with myself.

This helps inform the second thing I do, which is research and teach. My most recent research thingie (I hate the words “outcome’ and ‘output’; ‘research monograph’ doesn’t work when the book is available very cheaply to anyone who wants to read it and is written in ordinary English) is, of course, Story Matrices. (At this point I’m supposed to remind everyone that it’s Hugo eligible and to suggest that you think of nominating it. I normally don’t do this, but in the case of Story Matrices, I want people to read it and they can’t read it if they don’t find out about it and the Hugos are a really good way of letting people know a work exists and that it’s worth a look.)

So how did everything come together? The soju and my thoughts about it gave me an ‘aha!’ moment for my research. One of the writers I’m focusing on always gives precise cultural places for drink, another does but they’re historically incorrect, and the third doesn’t at all.

This ‘aha!’ moment made me realise I have not worked on drink for either of the novels that I’m slowly, slowly writing. The novels will be out way after the new research, because the new research takes priority, due to there being income attached. I do love it, though, when they talk to each other while I imbibe someone else’s foodways.