Thirty-Four Things, Part II

Last week, I wrote out the first half of the list of thirty-four things I knew about myself. Today is my 34th birthday, and as promised, here is the second half of the list. Yorkshire Pudding requested “sex, drugs and rock and roll” in part II. I shall do my best to oblige.

Thirty-Four Things, Part II

18) Sex: I was not impressed by my first kiss (too sloppy). I was not impressed by my second kiss (too aggressive). I was ready to throw in the towel until I experienced my third kiss. It was lovely. I dated the guy for far too long simply because he was such a great kisser.

19) Drugs: The few times in my life in which I smoked had more to do with the boys I fancied than anything else. Each round of cigarette smoking ended up exactly as before: illness a la food poisoning. Eventually, I realized (a) cigarette-smoking really wasn’t for me (b) I needed to have crushes on boys who didn’t smoke.

20) Rock and Roll: When I was 14, I met Joan Jett. Ulric and my mother went with me to the concert, and they were (perhaps) the youngest and the oldest members of the audience. Afterward, I was determined to meet my hero. A newspaper reporter doing a story on Jett had an extra backstage pass, and offered it to me. Not only did I get to go backstage, but the reporter was able to manage it so that my mother and brother could come backstage too. I got autographs for all of my penpals, and Joan Jett gave me a leopard-print bandana.

21) For the first 6 years of my life, I lived in a house in the woods that didn’t have hot running water or flush-toilets. Our house was heated by a coal-stove. I suspect this experience has much to do with my befuddlement over how others find camping “fun.”

22) When I see digital time, I mentally convert it to analog. The numbers don’t mean as much to me as the position of the hands on the clock.

23) I am extremely prone to motion-sickness. As a result, I had mediocre reference skills in grade school and college because I avoided microfiche and microfilm. I am thankful for the full-text articles in databases that became more accessible just as I started graduate school.

24) Before I got together with Bede, I told a friend of mine that I doubted things would work out because Bede “wasn’t silly enough.” At the time, I didn't realize I was just trying to find an excuse for things not to work out, as I had no prior experience with healthy relationships.

25) I decided to become a librarian to save myself from having to train as a teacher. (In my twenties, I would have made a lousy teacher.) Hardly anyone believes me that I didn’t become a librarian because my mother was a librarian, but think about it: how many people do you know these days who actively want to do what their parents did?

26) It’s been two and a half years since my youngest brother died, and I am still incredulous that he’s gone. Some part of my brain is waiting for the joke to be over and the punch-line to be worth it.

27) I don’t tolerate bullies. I don’t have much in the way of brawn or clever, on-the-spot responses, but I do have a long memory and a boatload of patience.

28) Schroeder from the “Peanuts” comic strip and the score for the film “A Clockwork Orange” fanned my love of Beethoven. There was a time when “A Clockwork Orange” was my favorite film. It was incredibly violent, and I didn’t like the violence, but still, I was obsessed with the film. I don’t think I could watch it today.

29) When playing Monopoly, I almost always pick the iron, even though I rarely iron my clothes. I acknowledge the irony.

30) My favorite light reading is spicy historical fiction set in the Elizabethan Era or just before.

31) Although I don’t believe in reincarnation, sometimes I get the sense that I wasn’t always this fortunate.

32) I grew up with three sets of grandparents: my mother’s parents, and my father’s parents who divorced and remarried before I was born.

33) As long as you’re respectful, you can pretty much ask me any question you like, and I will answer it as truthfully as possible (or let you know that I only want to tell you part of the answer).

34) On the calendar of saints, the feast day of Alkelda of Giggleswick is March 28. I gave the name “Alkelda” to a character (Twi’lek Jedi, if you’re interested) I developed as a guest-player in the Star Wars role-playing game.

Booktalk Friday: 3 Illustrated Stories

Zzzng! Zzzng! Zzzng!, by Phyllis Gershator

A long time ago, when the world was new and everyone was looking for someone to marry, Mosquito was not a biter at all, but a lovely singer. However, after being rebuffed by Ear, Arm, and Leg for being "too small and weak," rejection sours Mosquito's song. Will Mosquito find true love, and if so, will it be enough? You may have thought you knew everything you ever wanted to know about mosquitos, but this Yoruba folktale reveals a different side to one of the world's most detested pests.


Saving Sweetness, by Diane Stanley

When Sweetness, the littlest child of the nefarious Mrs. Sump's orphanage, gets fed up with scrubbing the floors with a toothbrush, she runs away into the desert. The sheriff goes after Sweetness to save her from the terrible trials of the desert. However, Sweetness might not be the one who need rescuing from snakes, scorpions, and the outlaw Cowboy Pete, no matter what the befuddled sheriff thinks. Rescue from the orphanage, however, is another matter.



The Pirate's Parrot, by Lynn Rossiter McFarland

Help! The cantankerous pirate, Captain Cur, has lost both his parrot and his monocle, and the crew are commanded to steal replacements. A mix-up ensues, and instead of producing a parrot, they produce a "girlie" teddy bear. It's a good thing that Captain Cur can't see very well, as he has a terrible temper. Fortunately, Bar, the teddy-bear is up to the challenge of becoming the pirate's parrot. Beware: this story may give you the "dreaded giggles of fear."

Thirty-Four Things, Part I

In one week, I will be thirty-four years old. I was inspired by an entry in someone's LiveJournal (you know who you are!) to write down thirty-four things I know about myself. The exercise was harder than I realized, because I wanted each item to contain a story within itself. So far, I've got seventeen items. I'll work on the other half this week and post the second part of the list on my birthday.

Thirty-Four Things, Part I

1) If I had to pick a fairy tale that reflected my life-outlook, it would be the Three Sillies. I wish it were something more heroic along the lines of The Brave Little Tailor.

2) In high school, I briefly considered choosing astronomy for my college major, despite my poor math grades. A friend of mine said, “You don’t need to know that much math for astronomy.”

3) When I was pregnant, people advised me to keep crackers by the bedside to help with morning sickness. To this day, the sight of a saltine makes me queasy.

4) I’ve said I’d rather endure dental work than read a mystery novel. I’ve had to pay for that remark. My mouth is a dentist’s cash cow.

5) Most of the food items I disliked as a child had to do with the texture and acidity more than the taste.

6) Most of my favorite foods come from the Middle East: stuffed grape leaves, megeddarah (lentils, rice and caramelized onions dish), little spinach pies, thyme/sesame seed/sumac spice mixture sprinkled on top of yogurt spread, lamb kabobs.

7) I enjoy devising cunning plans that are impossible to execute.

8) When I was a teenager, I wanted to be an alien “sleeper agent” who would be released from planet Earth once I had fulfilled my secret mission. I was at a bit of a loss as to the nature of my secret mission, but I hoped all would be revealed in due time. If “due time” included alien spacecraft zapping the meanies in my school, so much the better.

9) I taught myself origami because I hated organizing craft programs for the library, and I wanted to have something to do that was enjoyable.

10) When I was seven years old, I decided that when I died, I wanted to be buried with my dolls and my Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books. I thought I really could take them with me.

11) When I am happy, I like to listen to sad songs. The reverse is not true.

12) I like having gone out dancing more than I like planning to go out dancing.

13) I think getting enough to eat is a right, not a privilege, and that people are more likely to “better themselves” when they’re not starving.

14) I like bats, but I don’t often tell people because then they give me bat-related items. (Please! No more copies of Stellaluna.)

15) My favorite part about acting in plays was the built-in after-school social life. I missed out on a bunch of the cast-parties, but I’m convinced they weren’t as much fun as the pre-performance gatherings in the dressing rooms.

16) When I tell people I can’t swim properly (i.e. the crawl stroke), they think a miracle has taken place when I start dog-paddling.

17) I want to see the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere.

"Galactic" Tourists

Associated Press 13:41 PM Mar, 19, 2006 EST:

Galactic Tourists Pony Up To Ride

Two years after the first privately financed space flight jumpstarted a sleepy industry, more than a dozen companies are developing rocket planes to ferry ordinary rich people out of the atmosphere.... Unlike the Cold War space race between the United States and Soviet Union that sent satellites into orbit and astronauts to the moon, this competition is bankrolled by entrepreneurs whose competition could one day make a blast into space cheap enough for the average Joe.

I'm not an "ordinary rich person" (I'm not rich at all!), but I certainly am an average Joe Jane. I mean that in the best way possible. Sign me up.

Update: Bede just finished reading The Forever War, and said to me, "You're not allowed to travel at relativistic speeds." When I was little, my mother said that I wasn't allowed to travel into outer space.

I suspect a conspiracy.

Booktalk Friday: Dogsbody

Blogger has been up and down the past few days. So have I, as a matter of fact. I'm still not well... I seem to get better, and then the next morning I wake up again with a sore throat and cough. Still, I was determined to get Booktalk Friday posted today, since I do want more people to discover this book:

Dogsbody, by Diana Wynne Jones

Picture the celestial bodies in the night sky. There are numerous stars, planets around those stars, and satellites around those planets. Now, imagine that each star, planet and satellite has its own personality, and is a sentient lifeform unto itself. If you can imagine this, then perhaps you can understand what a wretched situation it is for Sirius, the Dog Star, who has just been tried for the murder of a young luminary stationed in the constellation Orion, and found guilty.

Sirius is outraged. He knows he often loses his temper, and even his "small, exquisite and pearly" Companion has testified that Sirius often gets too angry to know what he is doing. Still, Sirius knows he has been framed. The only way he will be able to prove his innocence is through banishment: he will be stripped of all his powers, sent to Earth to live in the body of a creature native to the planet, and spend his life looking for the Zoi, a weapon of mass destruction that the Court has accused Sirius of wielding with deadly force.

When Sirius next regains consciousness, he is a newborn puppy with green eyes. Someone who seems to know who he really is tries to drown him and leave him for dead. However, none of Sirius’s friends or enemies could have predicted that the mortal dog would find a champion in Kathleen, an Irish girl with boundless loyalty.

It is most uncanny: someone in the universe does not want Sirius to find the Zoi.

From what planet did you come?

Based on my recent posts about alien contact, I thought this planet personality quiz might be a pleasant diversion. Thanks to Spinning Girl for the link.

You Are From Mercury

You are talkative, clever, and knowledgeable - and it shows. You probably never leave home without your cell phone! You're witty, expressive, and aware of everything going on around you. You love learning, playing, and taking in all of what life has to offer. Be careful not to talk your friends' ears off, and temper your need to know everything.

What Planet Are You From?

Life update from three 1/2 years ago

Life update posted to my unofficial college alumni listserv:

Thursday, 19 Sep 2002
I've avoided drafting one of these life updates, because what I really wanted to write eventually was, "Guess what! I sold my first novel!" I'm still working on that first novel, but it may be another couple of years before I can share that news. I'm optimistic, of course. But I work slowly. Two summers ago, I quit my 30 hour job at the library to focus on writing and storytelling on more of a full-time basis. Since then, I've done substitute work in my library system and have storytelling gigs from time to time.

Since my original posting, I've learned how to drive a car. I got married. We bought a house. And now, there's a child on the way. I am looking forward to the birth of the child (due in late April), but I always thought I was more of an eccentric auntie who would swoop in from exotic places, play for hours with my nieces and nephews, and then give them back to their parents at the end of the day. Afterward, I would go home, make a cup of tea, and read until I fell asleep.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Michelle Shocked at the Seattle Arts Festival called "Bumbershoot." It was 10 years almost to the month since I'd last seen Michelle Shocked in Chicago. I saw a woman 10 rows ahead of me holding her baby in a sling and dancing while the baby slept. That's the way I want to be, I thought. Michelle herself was great. Her band has brought a lot of African and Latin-American influenced rhythms into their songs. Michelle said that she had gone through a lot of hardship in the past 10 years, but somehow managed to get through it without being bitter. I couldn't help it-- after the concert, I wrote her a thank you letter.



[Note: We had written back and forth on occasion in the 1990's.]

Tuesday, July 6, 2004
I found a postcard in my mailbox this morning that hadn't made it into our Saturday afternoon collection:

***
Dear [Alkelda],
Thinking of you as I'm going through mail that's VERY old and found your sweet note. At the time, you had a little baby on the way. By now I imagine it's a two year old. Thanks so much for keeping in touch. I was playing in Madison a few nights ago and ran into some fellow _____ College alumni. Any guess who it might have been? I don't remember his name. Wishing you the best, hoping your life is rich and rewarding. Lots of love, Michelle Shocked

Sick Leave

I'm going to take a few days off. I'm feeling sick (sore throat and all the fun that goes with it), but I have to get a few things done anyway: a book review is due soon, I have to attend some meetings for Lucia's pre-school next year, and I have a feeling I've forgotten a couple of things...

In the meantime, here is some light reading for you, should you wish for it:

Big Dead Place
This archived website is a satirical overview of what to expect if you should decide to spend any amount of time on Antarctica. (Thanks to Brad the Gorilla for the link.)

Movie Spoilers
This site is helpful for when you don't want to spend two hours of your time watching a film, but want to know what it's about.

You Knit What??
A website devoted to knitting gone wrong, terribly wrong.



The horror! The horror.

See you on Wednesday.

Booktalk Friday: Hatchet

I would like to experiment with hosting a weekly feature on Saints and Spinners. It’s called Booktalk Friday. Unlike a book review, a “booktalk” is an advertisement for a book. The booktalk is the storytelling format of the young adult librarian. In the past, I’ve resisted doing official booktalks except when they were absolutely required (i.e. job interviews), but the fact of the matter is that good booktalks actually work. Sometimes I find that I enjoy someone’s booktalk far more than I enjoy the actual book, but that is a risk I am willing to take. Repeatedly.

I must be crazy to give myself even more homework and deadlines than I already have. I do take book recommendations, by the way, but please keep in mind that my booktalk focus is going to be on children's and young adult novels.

Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen

Imagine that you are Brian Robeson. You are 13, and your parents are divorced. Today, you will fly from Hampton, NY, where your mother lives, to the north woods of Canada, where your father lives. You will fly in a two-person airplane. Before you leave, your mother gives you a small hatchet, which you can attach to your belt. “You can use it in the woods with your father,” she tells you.

Now, you are flying. Your mind is filled with thoughts of your parents’ divorce. You think that’s the worst of your problems. But then, the pilot has a heart attack… and you don’t know how to fly the plane.

If you survive the plane crash, you will be miles off-course in the wilderness. You will have to reply on your wits and your resources. You will have nothing but what you wear and what you find in your pockets.

Will you be able to make a shelter for yourself? Will you be able to find food? Will you be able to keep alive the hope that someone will find you and bring you home? You might.

But first, you have to land the plane.

Don't Talk About the Mars Project

Flash forward from A Page From History...

[My journal of alien contact]

Most of us didn’t know what the Sartereans actually looked like. There were the grainy sketches on the probe that the celestronauts Dogstar and Summit found on Pluto, but those sketches were about as accurate as the ones we sent out on the Voyagers I and II all those years ago. In that time, Earthlings had changed in small but perceptible ways, so it was fair to assume that the Sartereans had also evolved differently from how we pictured them. On the regular TIC channels, etiquette forbade the discussion of appearances. Still, that didn’t stop us from joking about how each of us had imagined “aliens.”

“Sartereans were sure that any intelligent life out in the universe had to have three heads,” Zeke, my penpal, told me. “Many of our artists’ depictions of aliens still have variations on the three-headed theme.”

"That doesn't sound so strange," I said. "For a time, Earthlings were convinced that there were little green men living on Mars.”

“What did you find when you finally went to Mars?” Zeke asked.

“Lots and lots of red dirt,” I said. “When we finally gave up on the idea of finding life on Mars, we had grand ideas of terraforming the planet. That project almost annihilated the ISAP. In fact, the biggest opponents of intergalactic communication always love to cite the failure of the terraforming project. If you ever want to start a brawl, all you have to do is walk into a room full of strangers and say, ‘Mars.’”

Just then, I felt, rather that heard, Mieko Alleyn-Cates standing behind me. “Just a moment,” I said to Zeke.

“Don’t say anything more about the Mars project,” Alleyn-Cates told me.

“It’s fine,” I told her. “Zeke understands that there have been some interesting mishaps along the way and he—“

“Don’t say anything more about the Mars project,” Alleyn-Cates said again. There was steel in her voice.

“Okay,” I said. “Can you at least tell me why? It’s not as if Zeke is in a room full of Earthlings.”

“In some ways, he is,” Alleyn-Cates said. “Look around you. ISAP is concerned that you and others are portraying Earthlings as buffoons. You know about the Stop Stupid Earthlings movement on Sarter. If the wrong thing gives them enough fuel for their hostilities, they could shut down the Sarter TIC.”

“I thought we were supposed to have free access to the TIC,” I said.

“Sure,” Alleyn-Cates said. “But freedom has always been a subjective matter.” Alleyn-Cates glared at me. Quickly and quietly, she said, “Look, the money isn’t going to hold out forever. Stick to the chatty public relations with your penpal and leave the ISAP totally out of it.”

I turned back to the TIC. “Sorry, Zeke,” I said. “That was more than a moment. Let’s change the subject quickly.”

“Time is irrelevant,” Zeke said. “Quick change of subject: What are you doing this evening? Would you like to go %$%^%^ and watch the moons rise?”

“Very funny,” I said. “By the time I got there, we’d both be dead. I didn’t understand the activity you mentioned. Something got lost in the translation.”

Zeke paused. “It’s %$%^%^. It’s…” he stopped again. “I can't explain. Let me look it up.”

I waited. It was quite common for things to get lost in translation. The basic language we had developed was still evolving.

“I’ve got it,” Zeke said. “The closest thing I can relate it to is ‘curling.’ There’s a slippery surface involved, and a lot of sliding around, but the rules are a bit different. Anyway, I was just being silly.”

“Silly is good,” I said, and on it went. This was the sort of conversation ISAP wanted us to have. Light, seemingly trivial, even flirtatious. They didn’t want us speculating on the meeting between the Earth and Sarter delegations, even though the projected rendezvous in Alpha Centauri A was some years away. They also didn’t want us getting our hopes up about actually meeting our penpals. Although our spacecraft could go much faster than anyone in the twentieth century could have ever dreamed, we were not making any progress with faster-than-light travel. Frankly, I didn’t think it was ever going to happen.

Alleyn-Cates would have kicked me off the TIC if I had ever blatantly suggested such a notion to Zeke or anyone else. I wasn’t stupid, and neither was Zeke. Many of us had developed little cues and emphases in our communications that ISAP didn’t seem to pick up on. It was the only way we could ever have real conversations with the Sartereans. Zeke and I knew more about each other than ISAP realized. At least, we hoped ISAP hadn’t picked up on what we were really saying.

If Zeke and I ever met on the ground, we might get freaked out by what the other person looked like. I imagined Zeke as some sort of silvery humanoid creature with the face of some handsome actor in an aliens-land-on-Earth film. How did Zeke imagine me? In his mind, did I have tentacles, antennae or (despite himself) three heads? As I said, etiquette forbade the discussion of such matters. I would like to think that if Zeke and I ever did meet on the ground, we’d get past all of the external oddities.

I’ll admit it: we fancied each other.

To be continued.

Glossary

ISAP: International Space Administration Program, pronounced "Ee-sop."
Sartereans: The intelligent species from the planet Sarter in contact with Earthlings, pronounced "Sar-ter-ray-ans."
TIC: Transgalactic Instantaneous Communicator, pronounced "tick."

Golden Record from Planet Earth

As a child, when I first learned about the Voyager Golden Record, I was both excited at the thought of an alien species actually intercepting one of the space probes, and concerned that they wouldn't be able to figure out how to work it. This is a legitimate concern, as I am sure many people today (March 6, 2006) wouldn't know how to work a phonograph record if one landed in his or her backyard. Of all the theories and jokes about what will happen when and if the aliens intercept Voyager I or Voyager II, this is my favorite:

In a memorable Saturday Night Live segment, it was announced by Steve Martin that the first message from extraterrestrials was being received. Once decoded, the message stated, "Send more Chuck Berry."

For more details about the photos that represent the Planet Earth, click here. Surely, the creators have got to be kicking themselves for all time over the photos portraying human beings from the 1970's.

Ansible, Lodestar Resonator, and "TIC"

I had thought it was Orson Scott Card who had created the idea of the ansible (my less-eloquent "instantaneous communicator"). I just found out the concept in science-fiction was created by Ursula K. LeGuin. A number of other authors have picked up on it as well, including Philip Pullman, who calls it a "lodestar resonator." I'm calling mine the TIC. Now, we just need someone to develop it. Some crazy genius, perhaps.

A Page from History

[My journal of alien contact]

Before I tell you more of the present, it might be helpful to view a page from the past. My grandparents were quite young when Earth sent its first humanned spacecraft to Pluto. They were in their teens when the SHS Kookaburra landed, and in their mid-twenties when the ship returned. Although the article has been reproduced everywhere, my grandmother, Marisol Yoderkulp-Speyer,* kept the original printout of the news-story documenting the historic landing and our first indication that there was at least one other sentient species in the universe. Here is the copy of my grandmother's printout:



If it's too hard to read the copy of my grandmother's printout, you may read the text here:

Southern Hemisphere Nations land humans on Pluto

Siriana “Dogstar” Janiewski has become the first person to walk on Pluto. The celestronaut stepped onto Pluto’s surface, in the Sunshine Plateau, at 0256 GMT, nearly 20 hours after waking from hibernation-travel. Dogstar had earlier reported the spacecraft’s safe landing with the words, “Melbourne, Sunshine Base here. The Kookaburra has landed.”

As she put her right foot down first, Dogstar’s first words were, “It’s cold! It’s really, really cold.” Dogstar quickly followed up with, “Humanity, welcome to the rest of the universe.”

She described the surface of Pluto as being unremarkably like the surface of Luna, Earth’s only natural moon: powdered charcoal, with the spacecraft leaving a crater about a foot deep.

Dogstar spent her first minutes on Pluto taking photographs and soil samples in case they had to leave suddenly. “This first visit is just a social call,” she joked, ironically referring to the 8 year long voyage of the Kookaburra.

Dogstar was joined by fellow celestronaut, McKinley “Summit” Smith, at 0315 GMT, and the two collected data and performed various exercises to warm up their muscles before planting the Southern Hemisphere Nations flag at 0341 GMT. They also unveiled a plaque bearing President Zindel’s signature and an inscription reading, “Here humans from the planet Earth first set foot upon Pluto at the turn of the century in March --01. We came in peace for all humankind."

Soon after, Dogstar said suddenly, “What’s this?”

“It’s a probe,” Summit said.

“One of ours?” Dogstar asked.

“No,” Summit said.

“Oh. I thought Northern Hemisphere Nations' probe crashed somewhere on Charon.”

“It's not the NHN's,” Summit said. “It’s someone else’s.”

Nothing else came over the system until Dogstar announced that take-off was on schedule for 1750 GMT. Dogstar and Summit will reenter hibernation after the successful launching of the Kookaburra from Pluto. If all goes according to plan, the return to Earth will take less than 8 years due to fortuitous differences in the planetary orbits.


As you can tell, the reports indicate that the voyage wasn't too different from humans' first trip to Luna. You can read that legendary story here: 1969: America lands man on the Moon.



* You may remember that my username for the Transgalactic Instantaneous Communicator is "Marisol," after my grandmother. My grandmother was the one who encouraged me to study linguistics in addition to cosmology and World Literature. "Read Out of the Silent Planet if you don't believe me," she said.

"But Oma, that's science-fiction," I protested.

"That's what they once said about Jules Verne's novels," she scoffed.

Instantaneous Communication: Part II

[My journal of alien contact]

This post continues the story I started two days ago with Instantaneous Communication: Part I. I'm making this up as I go along, so details are bound to change. I'm hoping that the two made-up acronyms don't make your eyes glaze over from resistance to techno-babble. I don't know any techno-babble, and I'm not going to try to slip quarks and parseks into this story. If there is a glaring scientific error somewhere, I'll be happy for you to point it out (or even give me ideas, if you so desire), but I'm not even going to attempt to write in-depth about future technology. I am trying to imagine what it would be like to be a human being in a future century who can talk with with someone who may not be human, but who is definitely a person. Here goes:

Part II: Crazy Geniuses

Who knows how long it would have taken human beings to leave the solar system if it hadn’t been for the crazy geniuses with unlimited funds. Even after we received the Sarterean probe, the International Space Administration Program (ISAP) had dragged its bureaucratic heels on the development of the transgalactic instantaneous communicator (TIC). When Mieko Alleyn-Cates III, the scion of one of the great houses of crazy-geniuses, stepped forward and said, “We are going to make this thing, and I don’t care how much it costs,” she got her way. There was some quibbling over the name of the TIC, but Alleyn-Gates snorted, “We’ve been talking about ‘universal’ values for centuries before we even got to the outer planets. The universe is a big place. In the grand scheme of things, ‘transgalactic’ is a bit smaller. Why not start small?”

Despite the protests of world leaders who said Alleyn-Gates was wasting precious funds on publicity stunts, we had pen-pal stations set up all over the world. Alleyn-Cates was concerned that Earthlings not be represented by one small privileged group of humans. We 20 humans were part of Alleyn-Cates’ penpal club. You couldn’t buy your way into it, and you certainly couldn’t get in by any claims of who your ancestors were. We all met some sort of criteria, but Alleyn-Cates wouldn’t tell us what it was. Some politicians protested at this secrecy, citing possibilities of discrimination, but Alleyn-Cates said, “Back off! This is my project and I’m funding it. It’s not as if your lot ever cared about ending discrimination, anyway.”

Thanks to Alleyn-Cates, I had unfettered access to the TIC except when it was down for maintenance. I could write anything to my Sarterean penpal with the understanding that nothing was private. I will spare you the in-depth explanations of how Earthlings and Sartereans devised a language that was easily accessible to us. Unless you’re a linguist, you’d find the whole thing tedious. Suffice to say, I had two years of intensive study in the language before anyone let me near the TIC.

In the beginning, we all had sets of questions to ask and answer to ease us into conversation. We got to choose screen-names for ourselves (we weren’t allowed to use our real names). Alleyn-Cates rejected my first three choices on the grounds that they sounded too “old-timey science-fiction.” Apostrophes were absolutely forbidden, as were hyphens. (Was the irony of the second rule lost on Alleyn-Cates herself? Somehow, I doubt it.) I finally settled on the name “Marisol.”

“’Marisol’ sounds a bit spacey to me,” Alleyn-Cates said.

“It was my grandmother’s name,” I said, and Alleyn-Cates let it drop. Any references to Helios-G2 as “Sol” or “the sun” were embarrassing. We didn’t like to be reminded of the times in which we thought we were at the center of the universe. In fact, ISAP would have been quite happy had we not mentioned the matter at all to our penpals.

“Propriety is important,” ISAP said. “You are responsible for representing Earth in a positive light. Don’t make us look stupid.”

“Are you kidding?” Zeke, my penpal said, when I told him of the whole interchange. “We still have factions on Sarter that insist we’re the only planet in the universe with sentient life. Arrogant stupidity is not exclusive to any one species. We’ve got people constantly trying to cut funding for the TIC.”

“What stops them?” I asked.

“Crazy geniuses with unlimited funds,” Zeke replied.

Next: In which I attempt (in vain) to conceal my crush on my Sarterean penpal.

Ash Wednesday and Aliens

I have not forgotten about the aliens. These past two days, it's been challenging to sit down and write something creative. Lucia has required a lot of attention. To put it bluntly, she has been whiny and prone to meltdowns.

Lucia helped me clean up the bedroom yesterday, and I did get a lot done: items boxed and labeled for pickup, craft supplies sorted and winnowed, and dust-bunnies banished to the outside of the house. However, when she discovered the sticky-notes, I let her peel them off one by one just so I could have 10 minutes of focused quiet. Last night, for the first time in awhile, we had to put the safety gate up in the doorway of her bedroom. Bede was running a gaming session downstairs, and came up periodically to find out how we were holding up. Lucia finally went to sleep around 10:30 pm.

That was how I spent my Mardi Gras. I hope you had more fun!

Today is Ash Wednesday. During these 40 days of Lent, I'm giving up sweets and limiting myself to one cup of coffee day. I admit, the impetus is more for dietary reasons than spiritual ones, but perhaps (as some have suspected) they are linked. I don't know if I will make it to Ash Wednesday Mass this year. Last year, I brought Lucia to Ash Wednesday Mass, and 40 minutes later, we still hadn't gotten the ashes on our foreheads. Guess who had a meltdown.

Enough grizzling and groaning on my part. No more excuses. I'll work on a story today. The aliens are waiting.