Bio Up at Dark Scribe

Cover art ("Monsters in the Closet") by Michael Pucciarelli. Click here for the large view.

Dark Scribe Magazine/Dark Scribe Press has been unveiling -- slooooooowly and torrrrrturously, one day at a time -- the bios of contributors to its Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet anthology, which will include my story "Memento Mori." My bio went up yesterday. You can see it and the others unveiled so far here.

And I've gotten the new flyer for Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory, with my story "Arachne." Contributor's copies are en route and the anthology is available for order. Release is June 1. Click here for more info from Scriblerus Press.


Cover art ("Superstring") by Félix Sorondo. Click here for the large view.

*****Gold Stars***** and hearty thanks go to my Art Center colleagues who contribute to our monthly newsletter, for getting their articles to me on time. My travels have cut the June production cycle by two to three days, since everything goes to the printer the day before I leave for WisCon. The issue is now in review before it goes into final production.

Speaking of book promotions, I got the URL for this gem from Dennis Cass courtesy of Lisa Mantchev's blog.

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, DEAstore, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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[end of entry]

Countdown to WisCon

If all goes well, I'll be getting on a plane in a bit over a week to attend my first WisCon. That means rising early on the 22nd and zipping roughly 80 miles down to Tampa for my flight.

I'm pumped -- and looking forward to meeting a lot of people.

I'll try to ignore for the moment that I haven't flown in five years and change. I'm now registered for airline updates and TSA updates. I've never left my car at an airport before, so that's also new. Thanks to WisCon's blog, I've downloaded and printed out a map of Madison and a list of local eateries, including a grocery store four blocks from the convention site.

Here's what I'll be doing the weekend after next....

Friday, May 23, 8:45-10:00 p.m. -- Poetry reading with the Science Fiction Poetry Association: "Lilacs, Laundry Lists and Lycanthropy: The Magic of Everyday Life," spearheaded by Sandra Lindow, with Jeannie Bergmann and Alan DeNiro.

Sunday, May 25, 10:00-11:15 a.m. -- Panel "Hot Flashes and Power Surges." Description: "In The New Moon's Arms, Nalo Hopkinson gave us a protagonist whose menopausal hot flashes create magic. Carol Emshwiller, Ursula Le Guin, and Terry Pratchett, among others, have also written with force, wit, and creativity about women who have moved into the third stage of their lives. In this panel, crones and those of us currently making the transition discuss the emotional and physical changes of menopause, as well as the ways those around us respond to our changing bodies. Where can we find models for the kind of women we want to be when we grow up? How do we mourn our fertility -- especially those of us who have no children? And how can we be visible, strong, and powerful in a culture where women disappear with the first chin hair?" Moderated by Janice Eisen, with Debbie Smith Daughetee, Karen Moore, and Jamie Feldman.

Sunday, 1:00-2:15 p.m. -- Panel "Writing Working Class Characters." Description: "Many SF writers live in an essentially middle-class world. Perhaps as a result, SF features relatively few working-class characters, preferring stories about warriors, merchants, scientists, military officers, and mages to tales of carpenters, assembly line workers, day care providers, blacksmiths, nursing aides, service center reps, and spaceship janitors. Do we assume characters doing this work don't have interesting adventures? That they don't have interesting thoughts? And if we do write about these characters and don't have a working-class background ourselves, how do we get it right?" Moderated by Paula Fleming, with Eleanor Arnason, Joyce Frohn, and Christopher Barzak.

Sunday, 2:30-3:45 p.m. -- Panel "Revealing Your World." Description: "Now that you've invented the world, you have to reveal it to your readers. Some authors create poetry or myth or maps, some describe clothes in ardent detail, or throw in an invented vocabulary. Some make sure the reader sees everything, while others make it up and then leave most of it off the page. Panelists discuss their personal style, and what they hope to accomplish." Moderated by Amy Thomson, with Betsy James , Alma Alexander, and Alex Bledsoe.

Monday, May 26, 8:30-9:45 a.m. -- Panel "How Much Is Too Much?" Description: "Unless we're reading or writing about a utopia, the societies in our fantasy worlds are going to have problems. In fact, a culture without problems invariably comes off as shallow and unrealistic. Does this mean we need to include things like sexism and racism if we want to tell a believable story? And if so, are we, as authors, guilty of perpetuating whatever-ism in the real world?" Moderated by Sarah Monette, with Catherynne M. Valente (who had a great interview in the latest Locus), Gregory Rihn, and Guest of Honor L. Timmel Duchamp.

Later on that day I'll be part of the Sign-Out book-signing event. I'll also put in time at the Broad Universe dealer table, probably Friday and/or Saturday. Then early Tuesday morning I zip over to the airport for my return flight. On Friday the 30th I drive up to the panhandle for The Wrath of Con. During the two-and-a-fraction days that I am home, I plan to be a zombie, resting up from WisCon. During Wrath of Con I will plant myself behind the Aisling Press dealer table and do my best to look awake.

WisCon also marks the release of Electric Velocipede #14, which contains my story "Hermit Crabs." You can see a sneak preview of Lisa Snellings-Clark's terrific cover at EV's blog and order a copy here.

I'm traveling light to WisCon -- one checked bag (half of it copies of Covenant), one carry-on, plus laptop. (It also occurred to me that I should try to fit a few books into my carry-on, in case they lose my luggage.) Before I leave for WisCon, I plan to have my extra supplies for Wrath of Con ready to just toss in the car, namely my book poster, standing easel, travel food, TripTik, and iPod speakers for when I lose my classical music signal during the long drive. The only travel food I'm taking on the plane is Power Bars, which weigh in under the Transportation Safety Administration's 3-ounce limit.

Now all I have to do is make myself travel-worthy.

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, DEAstore, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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The future of the planet

Photo credit: Dot Marder. I worked at Women Strike for Peace in 1981-1982 and was 23 when this photo was taken.

(Inspired by the prompt from Sunday Scribblings.)

I grew up in the days of the Vietnam War. My mother taught in an inner-city high school and came home with almost daily reports on on-site violence. She also praised students who fought for their education against tremendous odds. Every day, it seemed, I heard about drug epidemics, riots, the war, the population explosion, massive pollution events, and hyperinflation.

I lived through my childhood in a state of almost constant terror and was fairly certain I wouldn't survive past my 20s. This year I turn 50, which to me means 20 years of pure gravy. I celebrated turning 30 in 1988 and I've been celebrating ever since -- even though I've lately felt a sense of dread about the future of this planet that I haven't felt in almost 40 years (continued)....

A major heart attack almost killed my mother in 1969, when I was 10 years old. She died in 1982, shortly after turning 57 and when I was 23. I've lost other people dear to me who died too young. At age 7 I almost lost my life in a major car accident. As a toddler I dreamt repeatedly that I was dead. No wonder my childhood fantasies included reincarnation as a component. No wonder mortality infuses my writing.

Shows like the History Channel's Mega-Disasters and National Geographic Channel's Six Degrees underscore my emotions. One moment the planet seems distressingly fragile, the next it seems miraculously resilient. One moment I'm learning about the latest archaeological and paleontological breakthroughs, the next moment I'm learning about how they could all be wiped out by one cataclysmic event or another, leaving me with questions like:

What happens to all we are and all we have created -- art, music, writing, theater, the works that live after us -- in the aftermath of global disaster?
and
How many people, species, environments, and everything they've generated, and of which the rest of us have never become aware, have already been lost?

Thoughts about planetary decline, species extinction, and personal mortality fuse at times like these. I often have trouble untangling the threads.

Mary and I try to address those factors within our control. We save and use our gray water. We try to strike a balance between incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. (The only reason why we haven't gone completely fluorescent is because we've heard that fluorescents should be on for 15 minutes or more to make up the difference in their higher energy startup costs. The lights we have on for only a minute or two at a time therefore remain incandescent.) Except for weed-whacking to appease the neighborhood association, we let Nature take care of the yard. We piggyback errands to get more accomplished in a single drive. Our dishwasher is our hands, we use a hand-cranked pressure washer for small laundry loads, and we dry our clothes before our refrigerator's air vent. (When we had gas heat up north, we used our oven's pilot light instead.) My treadmill is a NordicTrac WalkFit, which uses no electricity (that model seems discontinued; I wish they'd bring it back) -- and if there were a way for me to generate electricity from foot-power, I would. Apparently it can be done, at least for small appliances (see, for example, this article, and this one). We've got crank flashlights, crank radio, solar-powered lantern.

On our walks, Mary (more so than I) picks up fallen wheel weights and discarded batteries to keep lead and corrosives from contaminating the aquifer. She chases after wayward plastic bags and scoops up littered bottles and cans to wash and dispose of properly.

Baby steps, for sure. We can always do more.

I watch the battles overhead: crows driving marauding hawks away, mockingbirds driving marauding crows away. In our five years of living in Florida, I have never before seen so many hawks in our neighborhood. After three years of being a waystation for flocks of robins in late January, the flocks returned early, in December 2006, and we haven't seen them this year. We speculate about changes in migratory patterns.

The future of the planet plays a significant role in my attitude toward my writing and toward the industry. I've always had trouble reconciling the spiritual component of my craft with its business end and I try to educate myself in the latter. For me it's all pretty much an exercise in blind faith. I make my mudpies, show them off where I can, and hope readers can relate to my corner of the human condition.

A while back I answered a post from someone who had been published but who was dealing with the fear of submitting larger works. This person wrote:

"That desperate need to prove yourself but being deadly afraid of failing and hearing the I told you sos."

One of my favorite ads reappeared in the January/February 2008 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. The ad is for the Author's Guild. It wasn't the Guild that caught my eye, but the way it advertised itself, beginning with:

"Kafka toiled in obscurity and died penniless. If only he'd had a website...."

I love the irony here. Did Kafka think he failed while he was alive? Maybe. Did people tell him, "I told you so," or the equivalent?

Maybe.

Look at the attention he gets now. He and his works are remembered long after he's dead. I wanna be like him when I grow up and push daisies.

Another quote I love comes from Henry Petroski, PhD, PE, who is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering at Duke University. Among other works, Petroski is the author of Success Through Failure: The Paradox of Design (Princeton University Press, 2006).

In an interview with Jeff Stein, AIA, in the May/June 2007 issue of Architecture Boston, he said:

"If we copy success, the eventual result is going to be failure. We don't often understand fully why successful designs work. And they often mask potential failures. No matter how closely we follow successful models, designing something new involves new conditions that require changes in the design."

Petroski was talking about engineering, but for me his quote holds a universal appeal. Following the beat of one's own drummer courts failure. Exploring new avenues and improvising court failure. But taking the well-trodden, "safe" path -- the "successful" path -- also courts failure.

Given those odds, I'd say follow your gut and your heart.

Several years ago I listened to a panel discussion about how SF print runs on average have plummeted for both books and magazines. Years ago, what authors lacked in pay they got in circulation. Now the circulation is also largely gone. And the pay per word has in many cases gotten worse than when I was published 20+ years ago, not counting the effects of inflation.

We might be looking at a collapsing industry and precipitous declines in readership. But we might also be looking at global warming, asteroidal impact, pandemics, and any one or more of a number of disasters that result in massive species extinctions and the fall of civilization as we know it. So even the long term might be moot. In the end we're all a bunch of dust.

So, in the spirit of all that potential futility, I write anyway and send my stuff out. What the heck.

Sergei Rachmaninoff is a cautionary tale for me. From the liner notes for his First Symphony on my CD of Ashkenazy conducting the Concertgebouw:

"It was a fiasco. It earned the composer notices that were almost unqualifiedly unfavorable ... and undermined his confidence in himself as a creator ... for nearly three years. Happily, in 1900 the ministrations of Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a Moscow neurologist who specialised in a type of hypnosis-therapy, led to the spectacular resurgence of creative power which produced the Second Piano Concerto. The First Symphony was not performed again nor the full score ... published in the composer's lifetime." (Christopher Palmer)

Look at it (or listen to it) now. It's a much-beloved classic.

I wrote to the person who posted, "I believe that as creators we must take the long view because, in my not-so-humble opinion, creativity is larger, much larger, than the people who channel it. It's not about us and never was. It's about the Work."

And then there's the tremendous wisdom of Marge Piercy in her poem "For the young who want to," at http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1610.html.

Whether or not my work survives for any length, or I do, or the planet does, all three are where I live. So I hang onto my blind faith, do what I can to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, and keep on keepin' on.

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, DEAstore, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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Perambulations

Ibis parade in a neighbor's yard

The role of poetry in dynamical systems, the role of the real estate bust in attempts to save the manatee, and upcoming publication and convention doings (continued)....

Thanks to Anna Lovrics, doctoral student at the University of Nottingham, UK, for including my poem "Algebraic Sestina for the Ocean" (originally posted here) in her article, "What is the connection between poetry and maths?" The article appears in the March 2008 issue of STEM Newsletter of the Wolfson Centre for Stem Cells, Tissue Engineering and Modelling at U. Nottingham.

Lovrics reported on the 49th British Applied Mathematics Colloquium, where she first learned about the sestina form in a Dynamical Systems session. I think it's way cool that a math colloquium that included applications in biology and engineering also included poetry -- and a musical performance as well. Anna also included her photograph of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland (similar to this shot from the University of Ulster), whose natural formations tie everything together beautifully.

April is National Poetry Month in the US. I received the newsletter in time to show it to Madelyn Eastlund at the Robert Frost appreciation she conducted at the Central Ridge Library. She also conducted a Walt Whitman appreciation and emceed a poetry awards session for contests geared toward schoolchildren. From the library's announcement:

"Madelyn Eastlund has been a freelance writer and poet for over 50 years. As Madelyn Eastlund Hickey, she was editor of the Beverly Hills Visitor in the 1990s. She was an instructor for 'Creative Writing' and 'Writing Poetry' in her home state of New York as well as here in Citrus County. For the past 24 years she has directed monthly workshops for the Gingerbread Poets Chapter of the Florida State Poets Association. Ms. Eastlund is past president of Florida State Poets Association (1984-1988) and also past president of National Federation Of State Poetry Societies, Inc. (2002-2004). She was the keynote speaker at the 2007 NFSPS Annual Convention, held in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She is editor for Poets' Forum Magazine and also for Harp-Strings Poetry Journal (both Verdure Publications) for the past 19 years. Ms. Eastlund has assisted the Citrus County Library System with their youth poetry program for many years."



I am also fortunate to call Madelyn a neighbor and a good friend. Her format for the Frost tribute interspersed a biographical lecture with readings. Each audience member had a chance to read a favorite Frost poem. Madelyn asked us for our preferences ahead of time and then matched the tone of the poems with the events in Frost's life.

My choice was a poem I'd discovered only the night before the tribute and which blew me away. Many people think of Frost as a gentle, avuncular sort who wrote of peaceful New England farm life. But he had his rebellious, cantankerous side. When I found "The Bonfire" I thought its message at the end was as relevant today as when it first appeared in 1920 in his collection Mountain Interval. And it fit a quote of Frost's that I love, "Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."

I read "Algebraic Sestina..." at Woodview Coffeehouse earlier this month, where I learned about Three Sisters Springs in Chassahowitzka (pronounced "Chaz-uh-WITZ-ka"). The property has been slated for development, but the real estate bust provides the best opportunity yet for it to be purchased for conservation.

Says Savethemanatee.org, "Three Sisters Springs is a complex of three spring areas, with many vents and sand boils that help feed Kings Bay, the headwaters of Crystal River in Citrus County, Florida. These springs also constitute one of the most important natural warm-water refuges for the endangered Florida manatee." The current property owners have plans to develop the property's 57 acres of land into "residences and multi-family residences as well as the potential removal of 'spring water' to be bottled from the borrow pit dug in the 1980s....These same owners have also stated that they would be willing to sell the property for the right price and, in particular, are looking for it to be managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge was initially established solely for the protection of the Florida manatee."

Recently the Crystal River City Council unanimously agreed to to take a leadership role to try to save the property from development. The Southwest Florida Water Management District ("Swiftmud") is performing an appraisal to see if the property qualifies for financial assistance from the water district. According to this article by the Citrus County Chronicle editorial board, "This issue of buying Three Sisters Springs has come up about a dozen times in the past 25 years, and it has never been successful. This is truly the last chance Citrus County has to preserve one of the most important assets in our community."

A hint of silver lining amidst economic doldrums.

Next month my story "Hermit Crabs" appears in Electric Velocipede #14. Click here for a sneak preview of Lisa Snellings-Clark's terrific cover.

EV #14 will debut at WisCon, the world's leading feminist science fiction convention. I'll be attending WisCon for the first time and am scheduled for several panels, have signed up for a reading, and will be at the Broad Universe book table. I hadn't been back to a con in almost 20 years until Necronomicon in 2006, so I am very much looking forward to this! (I'll be at Necro this year as well.)

Three days after I arrive home from Madison, WI, I'll get my first look at the Florida panhandle when I drive to The Wrath of Con in Panama City Beach. This is an Aisling Press event, so I'll be with staff and fellow Aisling authors at the sales table(s). More events and travel follow these conventions. You can find schedule updates here.

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, DEAstore, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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Muse Fuel

Heifetz Plays Korngold and Lalo. From my collection of LPs that I grew up with.

(For the Sunday Scribblings prompt, "Compose.")

The link for me between music and writing goes back to preadolescence. I'd spent countless hours lying on the living room rug between my parents' stereo speakers, watching "home movies" unfold in my head. Before my maternal grandmother gifted me with a set of headphones when I went off to college, I experienced "telepathic stereo" (as I called it when I was a child) by tuning two radios to the same station and holding one against each ear.... (continued)

I came across this prompt two days after I received a CD that includes John Adams's Shaker Loops, which I'd gotten to update my recording on cassette dating from 1983. Adams's liner notes accompanying the CD mentions the music's role in the movie Barfly (which I have not yet seen), about poet Charles Bukowski. Adams writes of how Bukowski (Mickey Rourke) "holes up in a flophouse room, writing poems in a fit of inspiration to the accompaniment of the insistent buzz of 'Shaking and Trembling'" -- the first movement of the piece.

Shaker Loops drove the writing of my story "Arachne," which first appeared in the Nov./Dec. 1988 issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction and will be reprinted in the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (S. Miller & S. Verma, Eds., Scriblerus Press, June 2008). When I wrote "Arachne" I was headphoned into the cassette tape, which I played repeatedly. Shaker Loops proved the perfect vehicle to transport me into the story. (My process of writing "Arachne," more involved than some, is covered in this entry.)

Music is Muse fuel for me. I can point to individual stories, scenes, and characters linked to a musical "theme." I titled "Another Place" (Amazing, May 1988) after the track by the fusion jazz group Hiroshima, which I also played repeatedly while writing that story. (Thank goodness we now have digital music and auto-repeat!) I wrote much of Appetite, the sequel to Covenant in my Deviations series (and which will be released later this year) to the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara. The CD I have of his Cantus Arcticus, Piano Concerto #1, and Symphony #3 perfectly suited the book's winter settings.

Individual scenes driven by particular musical compositions include one in the early part of Covenant, fueled by Michael Torke's Ash, and one near the end, fueled by Peter Sculthorpe's Kakadu. Individual characters with their own themes include one who answered to Maurice Durufle's Messe Cum Jubilo (especially "Sanctus") and another who answered to the second movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #4. Sometimes, if I was stuck figuring out the next scene, all I had to do was clear my mind and wait for the right "theme" to start playing in my head and that would direct me. I'd then hunt for the CD, pop it in, and let the visions do the rest. Sometimes I got insights about character relationships by listening to the music I associated with them, one piece after the other.

Late 19th and early 20th century classical music dominated the LPs in the house where I grew up. Those "old friends" included works by Isaac Albeniz, Samuel Barber, Bela Bartok, Hector Berlioz, Aaron Copland, Claude Debussy, Manuel DeFalla, Frederick Delius, Edward Elgar, Gabriel Faure, George Gershwin, Alberto Ginastera, Paul Hindemith, Gustav Holst, Alan Hovhaness, Charles Ives, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Aram Khachaturian, Zoltan Kodaly, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Maurice Ravel, Ottorino Respighi, Camille Saint-Saens, Alexander Scriabin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Ralph Vaughan-Williams, and others.

Over the years I've added my own discoveries to the repertoire, including but not limited to William Alwyn, Arnold Bax, Leo Brouwer, John Corigliano, Philip Glass, Howard Hanson, Herbert Howells, Joseph Jongen, Witold Lutoslawski, Olivier Messiaen, Steve Reich, Ned Rorem, Albert Roussel, Miklos Rosza, Ravi Shankar, and William Grant Still, in addition to Adams, Durufle, Rautavaara, Skulthorpe, and Torke. I'd grown up with and use works of composers from earlier eras as well, like the "three Bs" (Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms). Some of my current novel draft is fueled on Beethoven and Mahler. I've also used jazz, rock, and world beat music as background to my writing.

A short story I'm currently drafting draws its musical fuel in part from music the story itself sent me to find. In my search for something my characters would listen to, I came across and downloaded Tempo 70's "El Galleton," which can be found here.

I am indebted to those who compose music, whose creative energies aid me in composing words.

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, DEAstore, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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Goodbye to a Gentleman Cat

Red went to the Rainbow Bridge on Thursday. So far, Daisy seems to be taking her buddy's absence in stride -- better than the humans in the house.

Having him euthanized was the toughest decision I've ever made. I wanted to make sure I was doing it for him. Mary and I had talked it over for weeks, and especially over the past few days, when his decline accelerated.

He still ate and drank, though little. He still enjoyed the outdoors, though for the past few days I was mainly holding him in my arms and walking him around the yard. When he squirmed to be let down, he struggled to walk, stumbling and falling. Back in October he weighed a bit over 11 pounds. By last month he had dropped to 8. On Thursday it was 7. He had more accidents around the house, solid and liquid. Even when we delivered him to a newly-cleaned litter box, he couldn't stand in it. According to our vet, we had been giving him hospice care.

It was time. And it was hard. Mary and I stayed with Red throughout, and the clinic staff was wonderful. Red passed very peacefully as Mary and I petted him and reminisced to the vet and his assistant about better times. That kind of talk was just what I needed, so that I could say goodbye without falling completely apart. I was most worried that Red would pick up on my upset and my grief, when I wanted my vibes to be those of love and calm....(continues)



Red, shortly after he came into my life and Daisy's. He is about a year old in this picture, taken in my living room in Cambridge, MA.

The gentlest cat I have ever known came into my life in December 1992. The tag on his cage at the Boston Animal Rescue League shelter read that he was eight months old, and that he had been in the shelter for two weeks.

I'd had Daisy since July of that year. She was 12 weeks old when I got her, which meant that she and Red were just about the same age. Daisy had been a diva cat from the beginning, but I was off working during the day and she was clearly lonely. I set out to find her a companion whose laid-back temperament complemented her controlling personality.

Any visit to a shelter is heartbreaking -- so many clamoring for a home, for love, for a few minutes out of the cage. The cat in the cage next to Red's strained against the bars. Red just sat in his own cage, looking sad. When he saw me he stepped up calmly to the front. I leaned in close. He gave me a soulful look, then slowly extended his paw between the bars and laid it, his untrimmed claws completely retracted, against my cheek. I knew then that I had found a companion for my diva.

My Cambridge apartment had a shotgun hallway and enough doors to close off a section of it. I restricted Daisy to one end of the apartment, set up Red in the other, and turned the closable section of hallway into "the neutral zone." For three days each cat took turns in the neutral zone to learn each other's scent. Every chance she got, Daisy hissed at Red from the other side of whatever closed door separated them. Whenever I was with one cat the other one called me, and I spent sleepless nights shuffling between Daisy on the bed and Red on the sleeper couch.

At some point Daisy scooted past my legs into Red's end of the apartment and hissed a blue streak. He took one look at her and flopped onto his back. In a moment they were best buddies, chasing each other up and down the hallway. Mary, who moved in with us four years later, called it "swapping engine and caboose."



A sketch I made of Red in 1999.

I called Red my hedonism guru. He was "a sponge for love," to quote Marge Piercy's poem "Cho-Cho." Anybody with a lap was his friend. Mary also noticed right off that if Red miscalculated a jump (especially if the target inadvertently moved) and was about to floop, he let himself fall rather than dig his claws into a pants leg. She also noticed that Red cringed whenever she innocently lifted a small stick to ring a chime that hung in the apartment. During the first few years that Red was with me, he shrank back whenever I lifted a hand to pet him. Mary and I concluded that he'd been abused as a kitten. It took years for him to overcome the urge to cringe, and for him to cultivate a raised "happy tail," rather than one that dipped down between his legs.



At our kitchen window in Dorchester, MA.

M had designed "heated cat beds" for both the living room and our bedroom in Dorchester. The stacking design of open-top plastic storage bins that we'd rescued from the curb gave them "legs" a couple of inches long. The plastic was not solid but cross-hatched, providing ventilation. Mary had fitted old sweaters into the bins and placed each over a heating grate. Their legs allowed for air flow to the rest of the room while the cats snuggled in what must have been the warmest spots in the apartment.

Red is about seven years old in this photo at the window. We don't know how many of his nine lives he'd gone through before he came into ours, but he passed another one when we almost lost him in 1999. He couldn't keep anything down, solid or liquid, and became dehydrated. We rushed him to our Boston vet for subcutaneous fluids. Finally we checked him into Angell Memorial Hospital. All that the vets there could tell us was that at about his age, large tawny cats sometimes came down with that condition, whatever that condition was.

He was in the hospital for six days, fed through a naso-gastric tube until he could eat and keep his food down. In the few short days before he began his recovery, his weight had dropped from 16 to 14 pounds.

Three years later, in October 2002, we almost lost him again. Our landlord was having the house insulated, Mary and I were both down with bad colds, I was struggling through mine at work, and Mary was at home cleaning up the messes the insulation installers had left behind. Our entrance to the house was in the back, through a door that never closed properly. Red found his way outside and went missing for four days.

We put up signs. We patrolled the neighborhood carrying tuna and left more food outside. We found one dead cat in the road near home, hit by a car, but although its coloring looked like Red's it had six toes. Another neighbor e-mailed us a photo of another dead cat he had seen, and it looked enough like Red to have us convinced we'd lost our boy. But that, too, was a different cat.

Daisy, who was far wiser than either of us, kept meowing at the closet beneath the eaves. Red wasn't there, but he had been sheltering deep inside bushes below that spot, and Daisy could smell him. By the time Red emerged from his hiding place, he had been stung on his face by a hornet. After a few days of eating, he was suddenly in too much pain as his face swelled and his temperature shot up to 105 degrees. A cat's normal temperature is 101.

While I was stuck in the office, Mary spent a solid month force-feeding him by stopper, using a formula in one of our cat care books. At first, Red was a rag doll -- more limp even than he had been on his last day alive. We could tell he was getting better when he began fighting the force-feeding. Eventually he resumed eating on his own and was well on the road to recovery in November 2002 -- right when my father died.

Four months later, Mary and I and the cats were on the road to Florida, shooting down the East Coast in a rental van and staying at pet-friendly motels.



Daisy and Red, 11 years old, on our front porch in Florida, March 2003.



October 2005: Red gets comfortable on a shag carpet atop one of our filing cabinets.



May 2006: A Tail of Two Kitties

Red's weight had increased to almost 19 pounds -- what Mary called "a balloon with fur." We were told to put him on a diet and get him down to 12 pounds, and it was torture for all of us. He'd already weighed 13 pounds when I first got him from the shelter in 1992. When he got down to 14.5 pounds we switched him to a maintenance diet. We had no idea how much his weight would plummet and in how short a time just a couple of years later.



By May 2007, a button-shaped growth had swelled and was seeping on Red's front right paw. We had it removed, and his paw recovered quickly, but soon his rear legs began giving him trouble.



By October of last year, Red's weight had fallen to a bit over 11 pounds and he began to have trouble walking. His rear knees kept coming out of joint, or at least that's what it looked like to us. One vet diagnosed a bad case of arthritis. Another diagnosed a congenital condition that didn't show up until advanced age. By the time I took this pair of photos in our back yard, Red's decline had begun. We had a senior wellness panel done on him in October and then again last month. Elevated calcium readings pointed to possible cancer. Elevated pancreatic readings pointed to possible pancreatitis, something that the vet on Thursday thought might have played a role in Red's long-ago hospitalization. Such tests weren't generally conducted then.

At Red's age, we were told that any invasive procedures would probably do more harm than good. Mary and I entered, gradually but more and more deeply, into a death watch mode. Our top priority was to keep Red as comfortable as we could.



I took this photo of Red on the last day of his life. I spent much of his last night holding him, except for when he wanted to go back down on the rug. Sometimes, no matter how gently I set him down, he flopped to the floor and spent a minute marshaling his strength before he could stand. He'd spent the last few weeks of his life alternating between frailty and a temporary rallying, even on Thursday. For all his suffering he still had some spirit left, and that made my decision especially hard. As Mary put it, we had entered into an experiment to see how much longer we could keep him alive. I didn't know if I was condemning him to death too quickly or prolonging his suffering for too long. I knew only that I wanted to do right by him.

Mary said, "He's done everything that we've asked him to do."

I called and consulted with the vet, who said that it can be very hard to tell with cats. They are stoic, they don't tell you when they're in pain, and they (and other animals) rally. We had to ask ourselves the question: how far down has Red's quality of life gone from what we would consider his normal state? Most people tended to choose euthanasia when that figure dropped below 50 percent.

M and I agreed that Red's quality of life was considerably below 50 percent of what it had been. When the vet said that we were effectively providing hospice care, we agreed that it was time to let him go.



Imprints of Red's front paws, taken after death.

Red
1992-2008
Goodbye, old friend.

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, DEAstore, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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Catching Up With Nature

Total lunar eclipse, photographed on February 20. We had solid overcast leading up to totality, but the sky cleared just in time. It completely clouded up again before the Moon left umbra.

Here, we are a few minutes past totality. Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, is above the Moon. Below the Moon is Saturn. A shot showing just the Moon is here.

Back on February 6, I joined the Art Center Camera Club on a trip to the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park.



Barred Owl.



Sandy Valente feeds sweet potatoes to manatees.



Flamingo display.

The complete photoset of the day trip is here.



During my walk to the post office on March 2, I spotted this male Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis, Family Turdidae) perched atop a Stop sign. I was especially happy to see it because we haven't had the flocks of robins this year that we've had in the past. I don't know whether that change is due to drought conditions or to other factors. If we can't have robins this year, at least we have bluebirds.



Oak Beauty moth, spotted outside the supermarket, high up on the wall, also on March 2. Phaeoura quernaria, Family Geometridae (Geometrid Moths). According to Bugguide.Net, this species ranges across southern Canada and the United States east of the Rockies (Nova Scotia to Florida, west to Texas, north to Alberta). Thanks to J.D. Roberts at Bugguide for the ID.



That same day, I spotted this yellow sulphur butterfly in our front yard. I haven't yet narrowed down the species.



That night I spotted this snail when I brought our compost out to the bins.



Salt Marsh Moth, Estigmene acrea, Family Arctiidae (Tiger Moths). This one was hanging out at our community theater around 1 PM on March 6. According to Bugguide, this species ranges throughout all of North America except Alaska and Yukon. Habitat includes open wooded areas, meadows, farm fields, weedy waste places, prairie grasslands, and marshes, including salt marshes. Thanks to Will Chatfield-Taylor for confirming my guess as to the ID.

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, DEAstore, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. The Deviations page has additional details.

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