Freeze, thaw, refreeze

The fountain is twice as tall as me.  And blue.

Due to shorter waits than I anticipated, I am reading too many books at one time.  In audio, The Man Without a Face, a biography of the current leader of that country that is about to ban all homo promo, by Masha Gessen.  It's been interesting to find out how little I really know about the glasnost years, despite studying the language at that time.

I'm reading The True Deceiver by Tovw Jansson, of Moomin fame.  The intro by Ali Smith is whetting my anticipation.  Jansson uses few words, but to great effect, and this is a tale of outsiders in a small town, a very Nordic town.

Then there's The Married Man, by Edmund White, alongside Nights In Aruba by Andrew Holleran.  The Violet Quill stalwarts do have a way with words.  I am slowly working through both their oeuvres, trying to savor them.  Holleran's prose really is magical, and he has intriguing insights into people's quirks and obssesions.

Otherwise, there is a lot of fresh snow.  Sneg!  I might be uninjured enough to ski, we'll see...  The writing project is slowly percolating, seems to be on track, if I can keep from jinxing it by saying this... 

MLK Day

Is tomorrow, so I've been listening to Nina Simone.  Natch.  "Sunday in Savannah," "The King (of Love Is Dead)," and a good dose of "Mississipi Goddamn," cos no one captures better that moment, the shock and horror of having to go into the future with only an idea left of the complex man, knowing ideas get twisted around, bent, and razed to the ground, like places and people. 

Then I've been watching Amy Ray sing her new songs in concert and old duets with Brandi Carlisle, while trying to get through Dale Carpenter's book Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas.  It's very readable - I love "behind the scenes of the big court cases" books, and this one has a fascinating back story.  Especially the part where Lawrence and Garner probably never broke that law together, and the whole thing was just one fluke/stroke of luck after another... 

Ray and Carlisle provide a good soundtrack, with Amy's southern grit and Carlisle's fiery hopefulness.  I grew up on Hardwick's hateful clinging to tradition to trump over all precedent and Constitutional analysis. I never have quite been willing to pay attention to Lawrence, as it seemed like a momentary lapse, or something.  So it's really interesting to actually read about what made it happen, with Carpenter's speculation about it's import, slightly jaded yet somewhat triumphant.

Another interesting thing about Lawrence I hadn't really noticed, in ignoring the whole thing, is that this was hardly a perfect test case thanks to the racial and class complications.  It's not the case the gay aristocracy made it out to be, kind of like Stonewall...

I'm also reading a novel by Tove Jansson (of Moomintroll fame), about artists and their oddities, Fair Play, translated from the Swedish (she was part of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland).  Ali Smith wrote the introduction, and it's very terse and understated, yet intriguing, like Smith's works but, honestly, more readable to me...  Can't wait for The Summer Book, which has more family drama.

Otherwise, I am being very antisocial while actually getting some writing done and still working out.  An artist friend calls it 'hermiting.'  Yeah.  Hopefully I can keep this momentum going without losing all my friends...

Some legal sanity

Apparently, although a corporation is considered a person under the law of California, a corporation does not count as a passenger when it comes to satisfying a car pool lane requirement that a vehicle contain two or more people... The details are actually kind of funny, 'cos it's a political stunt.   More here. 

This is an issue with many science fictional implications, as has been explored to some extent.  I feel like I haven't read a really good takedown, though.

Some Kind of Fairy Tale

I devoured Graham Joyce's new book, Some Kind of Fairy Tale, appropriately enough, sandwiched between two researchy  books about psychiatric ERs.  It earned the hype it's been getting.  (I was underwhelmed by The Silent Land, and therefore somewhat apprehensive.)

In a nutshell, teenage Tara goes missing and does not show up again until 20 (IIRC) years later, and her explanation is that a fairy man - though of course they abhor that appelation- abducted her (willingly, in the fairy sense of such things). 

As you might expect, a good deal of the book involves psychotherapy, with an oddball doctor who once subjected a village woman to shock therapy for a very similar story.  This was vaguely interesting, though his theories were purposely predictable, but the povs of the family and ex-boyfriend and their interactions with Tara were engrossing.

What do you say to such a story, in the English countryside, when so much rings true?  Lots of food for thought and clever language, without as much of the over- the- top grotesquerie Joyce often employs in the name of realism (like in The Tooth Fairy and Smoking Poppy).  I like his often grim, stoic character povs, as befits their stories, but a little more lightness was welcome here.

That said, though it might be a mistake to listen to this while falling asleep, next up for aidiobooks is Hell House by Richard Matheson.

Water takes time to freeze

Water main break downtown at 10 degrees F, but that's a lot of water... 

Some dramatic photos here, including the awesome one taken by Jim Llanas above.  I only saw lots of sirens and stalled traffic, trying to keep working...  Got lucky and the water started working again before I got done... 

The businesses all over downtown had no running water, and the library shut down, sending people out into the cold night early.  (Thursday night shelter til 9 pm)