Tech and the Present

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Back in the late 1990s, when we were all getting used to email and setting up websites and googling was so new it wasn’t a verb yet, the business pages of our newspapers were full of stories that went something like this:

The internet is fun, but how is anyone going to make money off of that?

Fast forward twenty-fiveish years and we have been overwhelmed by the answer: capitalism. Turns out the internet wasn’t immune to being taken over by people who were more interested in short-term profit than in making cool stuff that worked and was useful to people.

This is an even deeper situation than enshittification. Ed Zitron calls it the Rot Economy and he discusses it in great detail here. (Very long and very worth reading.)

So these days we have constant updates that break things, apps that limit your rights in a way that using regular web browsers does not, and devices intended to steal our attention by constantly intruding.

I remain amused by the idea that the young folks are digital natives because they’ve grown up with cell phones and tablets. What they’ve grown up with are devices that have set us up for the worst excesses of so-called AI, ones that supposedly think for you, only they can’t actually think, so they approximate.

And because those young folks are not also raised with the knowledge of how things work, they don’t always recognize the many errors. Plus they assume – because it’s true of everything they use – that everything will glitch all the time.

As I’ve said before, it’s absurd to lump Boomers, who have been using computers for 40 years and include a large number of people who built their own or wrote their own software, with their parents and grandparents who were approaching retirement years in the 1980s and 90s and didn’t have to learn to use this stuff for work.

I may not be great at Discord, Slack, and online meeting multitasking – in fact, I suck at all of those – but I am very good at recognizing when I’m being bamboozled. And a large amount of what’s going on in the digital world is, in fact, bamboozlement.

Late stage capitalism ate the tech industry and — unfortunately — the internet. Continue reading “Tech and the Present”…

Won’t You Please (Not) Help Me

personby Madeleine Robins
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I have to question whether I am becoming my father.

Okay. To make that make sense I have to explain that on one occasion my father locked my mother-in-law out of his kitchen, because nothing else would stop her from helping. Dad was hosting a holiday dinner for… 20 people, maybe, including my family, my husband’s family, and several of his own sisters. As always with productions like this he had the whole thing planned like a military operation. And my utterly wonderful mother-in-law kept helping, often assuming that she knew what needed to be done, without asking. Which lead to plans and procedures being gummed up, and my father’s increasing exasperation. She was deaf to my father’s pleas that she go enjoy herself and (unspoken) not get in his goddamned way. Finally he blocked access to the kitchen to everyone but me (who was trained in his ways).

I am sympathetic to both parties: I was raised to believe that a good guest offers more than once to help (and I share some of my M-I-L’s “I help therefore I am” impulses).  On the other hand, if you’ve planned a big dinner down to the last gherkin, having to repeatedly stop your flow to explain what you need, or how what seems to be a great way to help is actually going to gum up the works, can be…exasperating.

Christmas dinner is looming. 11 people (plus a visiting dog), all beloved family. Because there are various dietary issues (two people are gluten-intolerant, three people have serious tree-nut allergies, one requires a lower-fat diet, one doesn’t eat red meat) and preferences (my own sainted husband doesn’t like chocolate or coconut)  I thought carefully about what the menu was going to be. And then my younger daughter attempted, in the nicest possible way, to drive a truck through my plans. Because she likes to cook (and her kitchen is tiny and not fun to work in), and because she wants to help. And I had to come down heavily on my impulse to snarl “back off!” I took a step back and let her propose things, knowing that several of her ideas would run up against the dietary needs of some of the other guests. It’s a negotiation, ongoing

And then I talked to my sister-in-law, who wanted to bring many things. We walked about what would fit with what I had planned, and settled on several of her favorite things to make. It is safe to say that no one will go home hungry (and as I pointed out, no one ever complains that there are too many different desserts at Christmas). I appreciate her willingness to advocate for herself and those she loves.

Look: no one wants to go to a meal where the only thing they can eat is crackers and peanut butter–the culinary equivalent of being wheelchair-bound and invited to a party in a non-accessible building. But there is nothing to say that you can’t have stairs and a ramp, or prime rib and tofu. (I dislike tofu, but will struggle it down if that’s the only thing on offer–but I don’t want anyone to feel like their only choice is to close their eyes and think of Julia Child.) And at some point I think it is permissible to say “I take everyone’s preferences and needs into account, but I AM HOSTING THIS DAMNED MEAL”. I  plan to have enough different foods that someone can say “no thanks” to one thing without fearing they will waste away from inanition.

But that’s just the preliminaries. The day comes (the house is prepped, presents will have been opened, and I will have scheduled oven-space and timing). I have learned that it is useful to have half a dozen satellite tasks I can assign–from “could you light the candles” to “the serving utensils are over there, can you put those out?” Things that are small enough that I can do them if I need to, but that can be done by someone else without gumming up the works in my not-overly large kitchen. Ways to let people help without slowing me down.

I will not lock anyone out (in fact, it’s not physically possible unless I get a 4×8 sheet of plywood and prop it across the doorway) but I might have to occasionally point out that space in the kitchen is tight and people need to be somewhere else. And I am making a public vow, right here, that I will hold on to my faith that help is kindly meant (and not a criticism) no matter how distracting it is, and I will appreciate that help.

But you can see why I think I’m becoming my father. Just a little.

Melted Brains

personby Gillian Polack
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These last few days I reacted to all the not-so-good things in my life by writing a story. The trigger was being told about six different interpretations of Dickens’ Christmas Carol in far too close succession. I’m not quite finished the story yet, but I had such a strong reaction to my small reveal that I am sitting back, bewildered.

The tale is set in a world I’ve used before, the same Jewish Australia that provides the setting for The Wizardry of Jewish Women. Judith, one of the protagonists of Wizardry has a boyfriend that people who read my short stories will know. Secret knowledge. Rather important secret knowledge. The story read with that knowledge is quite different to the story read without it. That’s not what my readers were reacting to. I didn’t tell them about Ash, who happens to be the Demon King and to be an outstanding student of Torah.

I still don’t know why these small words elected any excitement at all, I talked about writing “a Jewish Arthurian story, and the narrator is drunk.” The thing is, it being me, it’s not an adventure story. It’s a cosy tale set in the Middle Ages and is full of rabbis and people who think far too highly of themselves. Judith has opinions about everything and most of her knowledge is borrowed. Maimonides and Rashi are both mentioned, far too often and… trust me, this is not the story most people think of when they dream of Jewish Arthurian matters.

There is much Middle Ages in my life again, which is why it intrudes into my fiction. My next novel (the much-delayed one) is partly set in a Middle Ages. Not our Middle Ages, but close to it. It’s not our Middle Ages because I wanted to break away from the standard way we talk about history and bring people to life using… actual history. I always get into such trouble when I do this.

My non-fiction also contains the Middle Ages. Both of them have so much more than the Middle Ages, as does this little story. I think I might be living irony. Or is that sarcasm? We are in the middle of a heat wave in Australia and when the heat melts my brain the difference between irony and sarcasm melts along with it. This means my short story is the product of a melted brain and has a drunken narrator.

Pity my supporters on Patreon, because they will read it sometime in the next week. If they like it, I might consider editing it further and seeing if anyone wants to publish it*.

*I send all my new fiction out to patrons in a private newsletter. For some publishers this still counts as first publication and for others, not. In any case, I never send it out before it’s been given a thorough going-over, based partly on my patrons’ reactions to it. It’s the difference between a good first draft and a story ready to be shown to the world. My patrons get to see who I am as a writer, not just who I am when I have the help of amazing editors. I do not know what they will make of the drunken narrator nor the melted brain.

Words and Movement

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Movement and words. For me, those things are the basics, the two places where I find my core being.

So when I saw a workshop called Writing From the Body, I pretty much had to sign up. It was taught by Joe Goode, a long time dancer, choreographer, and movement teacher in San Francisco.

I admit to having been a bit nervous. The main way my body reminds me that I’m old is with physical limitations. I ache in some spots and have lost range of motion in others.

And, mind you, mine is a body that was never designed for most of the movements associated with dance of the performing kind. I could not do splits or backbends even when I was six.

Fortunately, while there were dancers in the class, the focus was not on those skills. We started with a series of exercises Joe calls “Movement for Humans” that did not require perfection but that, in fact, did wonders for my physical being.

We ended with an exercise that included a motion of throwing things away. And that led us into writing, starting with a thought about what we were throwing away.

This workshop addressed two things that I sorely need.

First of all, I always need movement and these days in particular I’m looking for new movement practices.

Secondly, I need to do things that open my mind to new possibilities. You might call this sparking creativity though I suspect it’s much broader than that. Continue reading “Words and Movement”…

In Troubled Times: Numbing Out

personby Deborah J. Ross
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I first posted this on December 12, 2016, right after the presidential election. I’m putting it up again as a reminder of how important it is to take care of our mental well-being in troubled times.

I have long understood the dangers and seductions of overwork. I’ve frequently coped with stress by balancing my checkbook or going over budget figures. Or reading and replying to every single email in my Inbox. It needn’t be intellectual work: scrubbing bathrooms or reorganizing closets works just fine. All these things involve attention to detail and (to one degree or another) restoring a sense of order to an otherwise capricious and chaotic world. I come by it honestly; when I was growing up, I saw my parents, my father in particular, plunge into work in response to the enormous problems our family faced. He and I are by no means unique. We live in a culture that values work above personal life and outward productivity over inner sensitivity.

“Work” doesn’t have to result in a measurable output. Anything that demands attention (preferably to the exclusion of all else) will do. Reading news stories or following social media accomplish the same objective and have the same result: they put our emotions “on hold.”

As I’ve struggled to detach from the waves of upsetting news, I have noticed an increased tendency in myself to overwork. It occurs to me that I reach for those activities in a very similar way other folks might reach for a glass of liquor or a pack of cigarettes (or things less legal). Or exercising to exhaustion, or any of the many things we do to excess that keep us from feeling. There’s a huge difference between the need to take a  breather from things that distress us and using substances or activities in a chronic, ongoing fashion to dampen our emotional reactions. The problem is that when we do these things, we shut off not only the uncomfortable feelings (upset, fear, etc.) but other feelings as well.

The challenge then becomes how to balance the human desire for “time-out” from the uncertainties and fears of the last few weeks and not numbing out. In my own experience, the process of balancing begins with awareness of what tempts me, whether I indulge in it or not. Is it something that can be good or bad, depending on whether I do it to excess? (Exercise, for example.) Or something best avoided entirely? (Some forms of risk-taking behavior, like unprotected sex with strangers.) If it can be both a strength and a weakness, how do I tell when enough is enough, or what a healthy way to do this is? Continue reading “In Troubled Times: Numbing Out”…

Such a week…

personby Gillian Polack
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Part of the annual report into antisemitism in Australia was released last week. Also last week (just before I left Melbourne to come home, in fact) a synagogue was firebombed. Thankfully there were no casualties in the attack. But..

I am now facing the deluge of comments one gets after the news was released. So many of those talking about the attack believe it is by “Zionist Jews.” I want to stand up and shout that every single one of these people is a bigot. They’re using the fourth definition to “Zionist” to replace most of the poison inherent in the words they’re using to replace “Zionist”, such as “Jews.” This definition reflects the emotion and hate in the mind of the user. It does not reflect Australian Jews at all. Take my siblings: some support Israel, some don’t, some are quiet on the subject because they believe it’s not anyone else’s business. And one of us (not me) is Ultra-Orthodox and has links to the burned synagogue. None of us have any wish to burn down any synagogue, much less one filled people books we love and people who know members of our family.

I saw walls of Talmud charred to black and it reminded me of the times when (in Europe) supersession saw Jews expelled from their homeland of hundreds (possibly up to 1400) years, and in other places saw cartloads and cartloads and cartloads and cartloads of Talmuds burned. Those burnings were to make certain that Jewish culture and religion was frozen at the time of Jesus, because that was the only relationship with Jews that these particular Christians could handle. Note I said “these particular Christians.” Most contemporary Christians and contemporary Muslims do not condone barbaric acts. They are not the people crying that all Jews need to be deported from Australia, to make way for a return of the old White Australia.

The ‘old White Australia’ is a fiction. “White Australia” is complex but has very little in common with what those shouting think. I want to sit down and teach them some history. Literally, in terms of people, before Europeans came it was not White at all, and when the First Fleet arrived… there were Jewish convicts on it. The members of the public shouting about Australian Jews not being White and not being wanted here has returned, but I’m still told I have White privilege. Most of those telling me I have White privilege and should be deported came from families who arrived here after my own. And the shouts are louder right now.

I can give you the old and new definitions of Zionism if definitions can help you deal. I can also give you a photograph. The photograph is more, fun, so I’ll only give you the definitions if you want them (just ask!).

Why the photograph? The Myer Christmas windows are a feature of the Melbourne landscape at this time of year. This year, the pro-Palestinians marchers (some of them are the same people who want me deported and blame Jews for everything that hurts) protested against them. We all looked for reasons. Maybe it was because Myer was founded by someone Jewish… except Sidney Myer converted to Christianity. Maybe they hate all people who have Jewish ancestry? That’s the purity of blood notion, used to hurt those who could not shake off their Jewishness enough in Early Modern Spain and Spanish territories. If you’re not familiar with this long moment in the history of the Spains, look up ‘Torquemada.’  Jewish ownership of business? Myer is not owned by Jews. This means that either the Christmas windows themselves are deeply offensive (and aimed at children, therefore problematic) or those protesting them are idiots. I’ll let you decide:

 

The Irwins looking at parrots in the Australian Outback, Myer windows 2024
Melbourne, December 2024

Predicting the Future?

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Over twenty years ago I wrote a story about a young man who gets arrested on a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras because a blood test shows he has XX chromosomes even though he appears to be male. The Louisiana of that story’s time – which was more or less right now – had passed a law making it a crime to present yourself as anything but your “natural” gender.

He ends up in a jail cell with drag queens, a lesbian wearing male clothes, a trans person who is taking steps toward transition, and a woman not unlike himself – someone born with all the appearance of a woman, but with XY chromosomes.

I told it from his – very clueless, in the beginning – point of view because I wanted the story to be about someone who had never even considered the possibility that he was anything other than a cis man being forced to confront the situation.

It was a great story, but I was never able to sell it. I’ve looked at it over the years and seen a couple of things I’d change as I’ve increased my understanding of these matters, but it’s still a good story.

It’s just too late to publish it, at least as science fiction. It’s basically real life now. It’s obvious that many places are going to be punishing people for being trans or even – shades of the past – for dressing in a way that belies your assigned gender.

Maybe I should make the revisions and try it on a non-genre fiction magazine or anthology. Isn’t realistic a hallmark of literary fiction?

I’m not usually someone who writes science fiction that can be seen as predictive, but it was clear to me more than twenty years ago that there were places in the United States that might well pass laws against people for not fitting into prescribed gender roles.

Of course, I wrote it as a warning. That’s why most people write dystopias, after all. However, given the current fetish of the broligarchs for stupid takes on science fiction and fantasy, it’s easy to believe people would have taken it as a good idea.

I don’t want to live in Margaret Atwood’s Gilead or William Gibson’s Jackpot, but apparently a lot of people do. Continue reading “Predicting the Future?”…

Open House Closed for How Long

personby Madeleine Robins
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For a couple of decades (since the early 1990s) we held an annual holiday open house. When we were still living in NYC this started out as a party for my husband’s recording studio–but me being me and Danny being the boss, I did almost all the cooking, made the invitations, etc–and it was left up to the guys at This Way Productions to buy the drinks, make up the invite list, and ferry all the mountains of food down to Soho where the studio was. When Danny and his partners closed down the studio we had gotten into the habit of a holiday party. In 2002, we had our last NYC-based party–and Danny flew out to San Francisco the next day to start his new job, with me and the girls following two weeks later when school let out. A year later, when December rolled around it seemed entirely natural to have the open house again: the Robins-Caccavo Annual Holiday Party became a thing we did. Since Danny and I comprise two very different parts of the creative world (he’s the Sound guy; I’m the Words person) and two different work communities, it was always fun to see those worlds collide. New friendships form. Vast quantities of food disappear.

Every year we’d have about 70 people showing up somewhere between 2pm and 7pm. Spread out through the house and over five hours this was manageable–and permitted me to deal with my social anxiety by scurrying around refilling bowls and checking ice levels when I couldn’t handle small talk for a few minutes. Those five hours meant a week of planning, buying, and cooking. We might have just ordered pizza, but where would be the fun in that? Every year I made a turkey, a ham, an immense pot of chili (and latterly, a somewhat smaller pot of vegetarian chili). Plus cookies, sweet breads, and occasionally a birthday cake (for myself, since my birthday often fell on or around the Sunday of the party). Bread and cheese, bagels and lox, chips and salsa… I did all this cooking mostly in the evenings, around child-care and work responsibilities. I look back it all now in awe, particularly since the party was usually 1-2 weeks after Thanksgiving, and 2-3 weeks before Christmas: the season of kitchen time. Still, there was something wonderful about seeing this vast mix of people we liked getting to know each other. And no one left hungry.

At the end of the day the turkey carcass went in a pot for stock; the ham bone in the freezer to be deployed later for pea soup. I would then wind up with my feet up while Danny bundled up the leftovers and did the lion’s share of the cleaning. I married a very good man. And round about November of the next year people would start asking “are you going to have your party again this year?” And the answer, until 2020, was always “of course.”

Covid changed a lot of things. We haven’t had a party since 2019 (oh, those days of innocence). Would we like to do it again? Yes. But I’m not sure how many people want to attend closely packed social events with people they don’t know well (I mean, I am pretty certain that everyone on our guest list would be fully vaccinated and smart enough to stay home if they were sick, but can I promise that?). We could invite fewer people, but part of the joy, to me, was inviting everyone we knew and seeing them interact. It’s the social scientist in me.

Then there’s the… well, to be frank, the age thing. I consider throwing the party and part of me notes, in the immortal words of Danny Glover, that I might be “too old for this shit.” I’m pretty active, and I take joy in getting things done, but… turkey, ham, chili, baking, cleaning, organizing… It’s a lot. Do I actually want to be doing all that?

At the moment the answer is still yes.

And some things might even make it better. For one thing, we now have a relatively huge back yard that is civilized and attractive, where people who are not comfortable gathering inside the house could hang out. This might mean it’s a better idea to have the party in July than in December–summer in San Francisco can be chilly and foggy, but it’s less of a gamble than relying on a December day to be sunny and not prohibitively cold.

The window for this year’s party has closed (you can’t just gin something like this up in a week). But maybe next year we can try again. Maybe I’d better start planning now.

Melbourne

personby Gillian Polack
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Right now, I’m dreaming of my childhood. At an unholy hour tomorrow morning (6 hours from now, in fact) I will take a bus to Melbourne and … that’s where I will be on Monday, when you read this. I could finish packing, or I could tell you all about my childhood. I choose to finish packing. This is because my mother will give me a Look if I appear without clothes.

Why have I not finished everything at this hour on this day? Because I was very silly and fell over and damaged myself. Not badly, but sufficiently so that everything has been slow this week.

What will I be doing right now, on Monday US time? Some research at the State Library of Victoria. I have a list of books and every one I read is a tremendous help. Dinner will be with a group of old school friends I’ve not seen in forever.  Melbourne is the most European of Australian cities and I have the tough choice of eating well or eating very well. I will pack very loose clothes. My excuse will be that it’s summer.

Now you know where I’ll be and what I’m doing… I’d better go prepare.

Learning to Look at Nature

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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A sketch of a crow sitting in the sun on the street.I took up drawing this year. I’m still very much a beginner, but I am getting much better at really looking at something and seeing it at the level necessary to draw it.

One of the things I do is take pictures of things I think would be interesting to draw, so the sketch accompanying this post was made from a photo I took of a crow standing in the street on a sunny day.

My sweetheart and I feed the neighborhood crows, so I’m always looking at them. And, as with drawing, I find that the more I look, the more details I discover.

Years back my sweetheart started carrying some cat kibble in a small pouch so he could try to make friends with the crows. However, this was a hit-or-miss system and it didn’t really take off until during the pandemic, when he joined me on my regular walks around the block. The crows took note of us because the pattern was more regular.

After awhile, I had to start carrying treats, too, because they associated me with my sweetheart. They come to our bedroom window most mornings. We now feed crows within a four-or-five-block radius of our place.

Today, though, when we went for a short walk, none of our crows were nearby. However, there were large numbers of them in the sky, all flying the same general direction.

I’m pretty sure there’s a big crow meet-up somewhere downtown. I know crows have meetings from time to time. Sometimes they have them in a big tree in our neighborhood, but whatever they were doing today involved more crows than that.

Crow business. I’d really like to know more about crow business, but I don’t speak Crow, more’s the pity. Continue reading “Learning to Look at Nature”…