Posted on by vermonter

times make the woman

elizabeth Warren is ready to wade right in and impeach the mofo. It’s the first thing I’ve warmed to, about her. Isn’t it generally so — that, given the right circumstances, the right issue, the right moment, any of us shines absolutely? All flash and fire and brilliant resolve. Don’t we all show better under certain conditions, and …less well under others? Maybe the problem is that her ideal conditions are less regularly met.

These events demand a response rooted in principle, and she’s the only one calling us all back to the home fire, demanding that we acknowledge with action crucial First Principles: that ALL are created equal, and NONE is above the law.

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Posted on by vermonter

my society

I ask the cats, do you love me? They just regard me and purr. Do you love me? I ask the dog. His ears go up a little. His tail swings a little.

Certainly, feeding is one of our modes of discourse. But it would be a sign of my own limitations to think it was the sole (or even the primary) axis around which our relationships turn.

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captain’s log

the fiction fairy is off my shoulder these days. I am feeling spent and unmotivated by all current projects. It will come back to me. I just need to keep showing up. I don’t often experience a complete lull like this in the ficting impulse. But when I do it’s like a glimpse into a wasteland — nothing but Nothing as far as the I can see. What could explain it? Has the circus left town? Now what? My battered little cardboard ticket goes limp in my hand. I would turn for home, but: which way is that? I thought home was here.

Posted on by vermonter

<rant>mitch mcconnell, media, our times…</rant>

mitch McConnell holds the ball. Nobody likes playing with him because he is like a black hole on the field. Anything that comes his way — he just grabs it and holds it. He never lets anything past. Which would be a good quality in a GOALIE, but McConnell is NOT a goalie! He is supposed to manage play that involves everybody on the field. Instead he checks your uniform before he decides what to do with your play.

…grown men get the faux vapors over opposition behavior that looks fine to them in their own bathroom mirrors. The sniping is personal, and blunt as a bludgeon.

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a meditation for changing times

the weather in the world is changing. It’s always changing, but…this time is different: the bad things that are afoot in the world spread everywhere and reach everything through our “conveniences.” More than ten years ago, a soulless Russian computer hacker deployed malware that turned a hundred million-million personal computers into a coordinated theft machine. Robbed small businesses, banks, and more. This network exists today. It drapes the planet. Displayed in red on an FBI cybercrime unit computer screen, it looks like lavish blood spatter.


There is still great power in fortune, but no refuge.

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braking spin

what if the media had not covered Barr’s 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th pre-release pronouncements? Or, what if the media showed these things one time, and thereafter simply and flatly reminded viewers what he said, but did not show him saying it, did not augment the message with the thousand trappings of his office that are part of a video picture? Or better, did not repeat, but merely referenced, his prior messaging? What if we put the onus back on Barr to get his own message out and abroad?

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everyday magic

Miraculously, the stub, long dormant, begins to live. Tiny swellings appear at its tip, and at every joint along its length — and these became nubbins, and their surfaces stretch and swell, popping and releasing more tiny things that burst forth fully formed. New things that arrive like leaves, creased and crammed into microscopic packages, and when released to the light and the air, unfurl. Things that open themselves up, just by continuing. Things that must open when they grow too large to remain folded.


Just because naming things is your prerogative doesn’t mean you know enough yet to do so.

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trying to read an old manuscript

I have a box full of old correspondence between my two grandparents — a hundred letters, refolded and tucked back into their envelopes, dating back a century to the start of their story together. And on one crisp, creased sheet of newsprint is a pencil draft of a poem.

… a hundred years on, that’s what is left: this bit of tragic bravery: this mighty effort, unsuccessful, to articulate what seemed at the time ineffable

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Posted on by vermonter

story, not-story

notes: @neilhimself says, in his experience, stories arise from confluence: werewolf lore collides with what we know of goldfish, say — or with chairs — what if a werewolf bites the chair in which you are sitting? What would next seem useful to have in such a story? Gaiman suggests, maybe snow? So the reader may be mystified by tracks of chair legs leading away from a dead body… I can get that far — but only that far. I’m not the sort to follow chair tracks off into a winter night. I would stall there, sitting by that dead thing in the snow. Given the choice, I usually opt to sit down and take inventory right where I find myself. And this is not experience. This is not story. This is explication.


When we are warm enough, safe enough, alone enough, what is not-us may even be rendered invisible.

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