Book Review: Mel Gibson

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Mel Gibson: Man on a Mission

Author: Wensley Clarkson

Author's web site: http://wensleyclarkson.com/

(Subject's latest movie: http://deadline.com/2017/09/daddys-home-2 )

Date: 2004

Publisher: Blake

ISBN: 1-85782-537-3

Length: 348 pages

Illustrations: black and white photo spreads

Quote: “Actors only write books when they run out of money. Anyway, there's enough people writing about me...somebody's wandering about talking to everyone I've ever known.”

(Is this one a Christian book? Well...it's about a Christian...)

Wensley Clarkson intended this unauthorized biography to “disturb, distress and infuriate” Mel Gibson. It's not a really hostile biography, just one of those bids writers make to cash in on other people's fame and talents. Does that put you off buying it? It would have put me off buying it, but this is another one of those books a friend who's much better at buying and selling other things, not books, made the mistake of buying and then dumped on me to try to sell.

This book was, of course, written before the real midlife crisis, the breakup of the family, the petty incidents that stirred up swarms of haters. Of which Hollywood was full...

Recap: Apart from a church-sponsored effort to reenact the Gospels, the last “Jesus movie” to hit the theatres had been a tacky unhistorical trifle in which, among other things, Jesus supposedly fantasized on the cross that “there is only one woman” so a man can sleep with “her” in as many different forms as possible...Where was the feminist outrage? Apparently the hardcore feminists of 1987 didn't watch Jesus movies.  

After that, people seemed to feel that enough Jesus movies had been made for another fifteen, almost twenty years, and then up came Gibson with the idea of using new technology to make the horror and violence of the Crucifixion into The Goriest Jesus Movie Ever (without actual harm to actors). Jesus never said he had not come to save the “Mad Max” and “Lethal Weapon” men of this world—in fact the mention of a disciple known as Simon Zelotes suggests that Jesus did indeed talk to, and befriend, that type of men—but I don't care for their company, so I never watched Gibson's Passion of the Christ, which is the topic of the final chapter in Clarkson's book.

But...well, in a Passion Play it's hard to divide the role of “heavy villain” equally. Sometimes in a church group the decision to make Caiaphas or Pilate the heaviest villain may be determined by which of the church men can look scarier. Gibson was Catholic; Catholics tend to identify with Rome, call attention to Pilate's vacillating, and feel that Caiaphas ought to be cast as the really bad man. It's not easy, although it's appealing in theory, to show Caiaphas and Pilate trapped in the same mess of greed, fear, politics, and self-delusion...to remember that the Gospel writers identified the Evil Principle itself as Jesus' first enemy and cast it as the real baddie, manipulating puny Pilate and stupid Caiaphas alike.

Gibson grew up hearing a lot of antisemitic rants but it's hard to claim that he was ever a serious hater of Jews. How do we know? Same way you know your Auntie Pris never was a serious hater of ethnic minorities. If you really hate people you don't go to work in a city that's full of them. Still, there, in the years immediately after his Jesus movie aired, was Mel Gibson, a rather “conservative” Catholic but a fair-minded and tolerant one, having worked with and lived among Jewish people all his adult life. And there were certain Jewish people hating Gibson's Jesus movie and projecting their hate onto him. It wasn't pretty. Gibson apparently suffers from classic Irish-type alcohol intolerance—one drink, one drunk, lot of English guys fall down—and somebody goaded him into a drunken rant about “you'n'ose Jews” and who knows what he intended to say about them. People in the commercial media made sure the whole world also knew about his divorce and the related drunken rants...

Clarkson chronicles the star's years of drunkenness and sobriety up to 2004, the smash-hit action movies, the what-were-they-thinking? movies, the celebrity-trivia bickering. Was Gibson Australian or American? Both, and being above all an actor he could do other credible accents as well. (Clarkson explains how Gibson was born in the U.S. and moved at an early age to Australia.) Did he live by the pre-Vatican-II Catholic rules he publicly advocated for others? (The answer seems to be that, most of the time, he tried...when he was sober.) Was he, in real life, violent? (Not under traditional Irish Catholic rules, where hitting noncombatants was a sin, but “taking your part” in a drunken brawl was normal and spanking naughty children was a positive duty.) What would it really be like to be married to that...For one thing, Clarkson makes clear, Gibson's body was never really perfect; one of the first illusions movie photographers learn to produce is the more or less standard illusion that short-legged, average-to-short actors are tall and well built. Beyond that, the answer apparently always was “None of your business.”

What local readers may be as delighted to read as I was, is that The River may have meant even more to Gibson than it did to us his delighted hosts. The River was a forgettable, one-dimensional movie with landscapes as its main attraction, about a farmer who recovers from a flood and saves his low-lying farm by working as a scab in a coal mine. We remember the filmmakers' difficulty in choosing a real place to film the movie: what they wanted was Clinchport before the 1977 flood, but Clinchport no longer looked like that. Real towns in the Appalachian mountains, a filmmaker complained to local newspaper reporters, were just too clean and prosperous for The River. A riverfront property in Tennessee was chosen for the home scenes, and after strenuous efforts Gate City managed to get Kane and Water Streets looking scruffy enough for the town scenes.

Gibson identified with his character, whose biggest problem, while scabbing, was not the angry union miners threatening his life, but the nights away from his family. While filming The River Gibson rented a farmhouse near Kingsport where his wife and children could stay. “It was to have a lasting effect,and ultimately convince him to enter...livestock farming,” which became Gibson's main offstage activity back home in Australia.

An amusing minor detail of the international story is Clarkson's growing, yet incomplete, awareness that colloquial words have different implications in different places. He sounds defensive of Gibson's wife Robyn in explaining that “'backward'...is purely a Southern States alternative word for 'shy': backward, she ain't!” Yes, but he's already described Gibson's mother as “homely” in a paragraph that defines that Britishism well enough to make it redundant: she enjoyed “a fine relationship with her parents,” “continued living at home after getting a job,” “relished family life and happily obeyed the rigid rules.” 

If I'd been editing the book I would have let those word choices, and a startlingly British use of “frisky” with which I was previously unfamiliar, and a few others, stand as they are, proof that the U.S. and U.K. are still Divided by a Common Language. What I find unjustifiable, and would have excised, is Clarkson's unquestioning use of the claim that “homophobic” means “not having complied with the homosexual lobby's demand that we all do a 180-degree reversal from the attitude toward homosexuality we all were taught when Gibson was growing up.” The facts of the story make it clear that Gibson was not, in fact, irrationally afraid of homosexuals, merely that he's not inclined that way himself and he once recast a character, written as homosexual in the script, as heterosexual in the movie. Considering that Hollywood has constantly recast middle-aged, plain-looking characters as young and cute ones to make it easier for young, cute stars to play those characters (Charlie Sheen as Mitch Snyder?!), and has been known to alter characters' nationalities for similar reasons...bah, humbug. Don't you get tired of the bullying tactics of the homosexual lobby? Real homophobia did society no good and much harm in the twentieth century. Standing up to bullies is, nevertheless, something I admire. I find myself feeling more respect for Mel Gibson after reading this book.

(Fair disclosure: I've had fannish feelings about several celebrities but never about the males who were marketed as “sex symbols.” The idea of an actor or singer as “sex symbol” invariably triggers a reaction like “Hmph...does nothing for me,” and how could he, given that I've only ever seen him as an image flattened out on a screen. I preferred almost any male actor whom I wasn't told I was supposed to consider sexy: Michael J. Fox or George Burns, Roy Rogers, Bill Cosby, Robin Williams, but the “sex symbol” marketing did a lot to undercut my appreciation even of Paul Newman.)

In summary...well, once again: unauthorized biography. I'm not sorry that I read this study of what a notoriously private actor has done to justify some of the emotion people have vented on him. I'd heard that Gibson was an Irish Catholic alcoholic before; maybe reading 348 pages of details about it gave me more empathy, an impulse to pray for Gibson's complex relationship with God—I don't normally pray for actors. Perhaps that's a good spiritual effect for the book to have on me, perhaps on other Christians. So I'm willing to resell this book, but bear in mind: unauthorized biography!

Clarkson is still alive and writing, mostly crime stories these days, so Mel Gibson is a Fair Trade Book. To buy it here, send $5 per book, $5 per package (two books of this size per $5 package), plus $1 per online payment to the appropriate address (scroll down to see the addresses at the bottom border). From this total of $10 or $11, we'll send $1 to Clarkson or a charity of his choice.

Tim Kaine Opposes Graham-Cassidy Bill (Do You See a Video Clip?)

Predictably, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine opposes the Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal Obamacare..."People would lose insurance!" The position of this web site is that the whole United States would gain if everybody "lost" insurance, and our medical care system went back to being based on patients paying for the actual cost of their treatment, with other people helping make up the difference for patients who needed more treatment than they could pay for. Insurance works by collecting enough money to make a lot of third parties, who do not improve medical care for patients in any way, wealthy at the patients' expense; this web site sees no valid reason to allow those third parties to bloat further on the taxpayers' expense too. However. E-mail, other than campaign or fundraising e-mail, from members of the U.S. Congress is part of the public record and will be posted if I get through the in-box and find it reasonably close to the time of mailing.

"

Senate Republicans are trying (once again) to pass a proposal that would repeal the Affordable Care Act and dismantle Medicaid. Families across Virginia will be harmed if the “Graham-Cassidy” plan passes and Trumpcare is enacted into law.

Estimates have predicted that as many as 32 million Americans would lose health insurance under this latest proposal. Additionally, it would end Medicaid as we know it, meaning hundreds of thousands of Virginia’s kids, seniors and people with disabilities would be hurt and potentially without access to critical medical services.

We can’t go back to the days when insurance companies could charge more to people with pre-existing conditions. We also can’t let some of the most vulnerable in our society get kicked to the curb. We need you to make your voices heard now more than ever, and join me in telling Congress to say no to Trumpcare and the Graham-Cassidy proposal.

Sincerely,

"

Friday Song and Status Update

(Status update: Today's sales: $33. Today's remaining financial obligations: $250. If your income in 2016 was above US$12,000, you need to contribute your fair share to this web site. Here are the ways you can do that; note that the easier ones to use encourage you to make this web site more valuable to your web site.

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804

https://www.freelancer.com/u/PriscillaKing

https://www.guru.com/freelancers/priscilla-king

https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking

https://www.iwriter.com/priscillaking 

https://www.seoclerk.com/user/PriscillaKing

You can also mail a U.S. postal money order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322.)

So it was a lovely Friday morning, temperatures around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, pretty white-to-pink-to-red shaded flybush, autumn asters, never-give-up ladies-thumbs and dayflowers and chicory blooming along the way. Not hot enough to be ideal for selling cold drinks, but not nearly cold enough to generate interest in hand-knitted winter gear. I took into market about $150 worth of $1 and $5 items, plus the Monet Blanket, priced at $100. I sold $33 worth of the $1 items. Nobody even looked at the $5 caps.

A woman I know fairly well, who is tall, blonde, and Southern Preppy enough that anything she does in a public place tends to be noticed as A Scene, played a big scene of saying "Here's $1 for a bottled drink even though I don't want a bottled drink." What was there to do, as she strode away looking about forty years old (while being seventy), but pick out a book and thrust it upon her, saying, "You ought to enjoy this one. The writer's 'a nut' and so are you."



This is to be understood as a compliment--nuts are my preferred protein food, and I richly enjoy Mary Daly's wacky wordplay and whimsical approach to the kind of serious activism that was beginning to depress feminists in the 1980s. Pure Lust goes well beyond the scholarly requirements for a Ph.D. thesis in philosophy, but it also includes a "conversation" with cats and at least a half-dozen puns per page. I would not expect most people who shop in the Friday Market to enjoy it. This woman, I think, might enjoy it. It contains lots of big abstract words, but they're printed in big clear type, so for her they shouldn't be a problem.

I do not, however, talk to members of the older generation that way...only to the handful of people in what P.J. O'Rourke calls the senior class of baby-boomers who were born around 1946, became parents before 1966, and like to hang out and banter with members of the freshman class of baby-boomers. I don't have a formal rule about this. Some senior-class baby-boomers, e.g. Hillary Rodham Clinton, have achieved enough gravitas that I feel conscious that they are a good bit older than I am, and some, e.g. my Significant Other, have been more concerned about keeping up with people my age physically, such that I treat them as coevals.

But seriously...the problem wasn't even so much that people were turning up their noses at my wares, although some of them were. I already know that (a) a lot of Friday Market shoppers no longer read, and the ones who do read are guided less by the author, title, reviews, Amazon ratings, or seller's comments than by the size of the print; and (b) some people don't like bottled drinks--even the fruit juice drinks I brought in just for old John Doe turned out, when I sampled one of them, to be quite acid so I could see why Mr. Doe didn't buy a second bottle; and (c) a lot of Friday Market shoppers get their handout money at the beginning of the month, and come to the market, by the third week of the month, purely for exercise. The problem, I suspect, was that the weather was too pleasant. We've had enough mornings this month that were chilly enough that, when told to expect sunshine and afternoon highs in the mid-eighties, a lot of people who didn't have to go to work this morning went directly to the lake. I've seen heavier traffic in the Friday Market when it was actually raining.

So to pass the time I sat on the cooler bin and tried to compose a song parody. What came to mind was the Freedomworks rally scheduled for Saturday morning, Washington, D.C., near Union Station...

Please click here to notify Freedomworks if you can join the rally. "Marching on Washington" involves some security risks. The Capitol Police will be present and want to know how many people to expect. One thing D.C.'s finest have been tipped off to watch for, as evidence of "enemy infiltration," is disrespect for local people. U.S. and Gadsden flags are fine if carried in an appropriate way. Stash all flags somewhere when you hop onto a Metro train and go sightseeing. If this gorgeous weather holds, the sights may never look better, and there'll be tons of fun stuff to do over the weekend...

The problem with getting unworkable Obamacare repealed is that too many Republicans want to continue working with insurance gambling schemes. I don't think any insurance gambling scheme can possibly work as a medical care plan for a nation, but as long as they leave me out of it, I'm willing to stay out of their bickering about which gambling scheme they want to lose money on. Eventually, as people wake up to the reality that our dear old Uncle Sam has thrown money around too freely and is going to have to become more frugal, I think people will come to agree with me that what this country needs is a plan for paying the actual cost of medical care--not funding a million-dollar, private-for-profit gamble.

So I don't know how many Freedomworks types will want to sing it, but here's the song. The tune that occurred to me is not precisely "Waltzing Matilda" (yes, I was in the U.S. when I learned that song in primary school) but close enough that, when I've hummed or played it to people I hoped would remember what it is, they've said, "Hmm...'Waltzing Matilda'?" Since Freedomworks is U.S.-specific I suppose we're entitled to have an all-American song that fits either "Waltzing Matilda" or a variant thereof.

[Chorus]
Pay the real cost and not one penny over;
Insurance schemes aren't what poor people need.
Pay for the medicine, not for the meddling.
Yes, fund the health care, but don't fund the greed.

[Verses, optional]
Once every now and then gamblers are lucky,
Pay for insurance and use it next day;
When people base a whole business on a gambling game
We know they'll take most of that money away.

Profits can be made from running a gambling game,
If all know the risk and are willing to play,
But the poor fools who bet money on the gambling game
Are only throwing their money away.

I'm sure some other Tea Party can think of better verses, and as long as their verses aren't touting one kind of insurance scheme or other I give them my blessing to improve this song.

Book Review: Many a Voyage

Title: Many a Voyage

Author: Loula Grace Erdman

Date: 1960

Publisher: Dodd Mead & Co.

ISBN: none

Length: 311 pages

Quote: “I was able to find only three recorded facts about Fannie Lathrop Ross, my heroine. These were the date of her birth, the date of her marriage, and the date of her death...There is no doubt in my mind, however, that she must have been an extraordinary woman. She would have needed to be to have lived with...Edmund Gibson Ross, past their golden wedding anniversary. Through him, in one way or another, her life was touched by almost every great national event during those tumultuous years, 1848-1889...”

I've observed more than once, in recent years, that his refusal to take sides in the American Civil War makes John Ross, of Oklahoma, one of my heroes. Enough things in east Tennessee have been named after him to show that others share this feeling. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century another man was making the name of Ross even more famous.

Edmund Ross, of Kansas, was Horace Greeley's ideal young man. Rather than waiting for a job on Greeley's newspaper he bought his own little printing press and “went west to grow up with the country.” Abolitionist, frontiersman, “Indian fighter,” he was twice appointed territorial governor and even elected U.S. Senator. As a Senator he acted out the ambivalence many Americans felt about the Civil War at the time. Although he'd started fighting for the Northern side, in Kansas, long before the actual war started, and showed no particular admiration for Andrew Johnson's frantic efforts to show disloyalty to Tennessee, Ross didn't blame Johnson for President Lincoln's death or think Johnson needed to be removed from office. Thanks to the rules of procedure in use at the time, some blamed or credited Ross for President Johnson's opportunity to finish his term. Later, President Kennedy would list Edmund Ross among his Profiles in Courage.

Should any of the “Indian fighters” be regarded as heroes? Can that question be taken up some other day? In their own minds, by the standards of their own culture, the men who slaughtered the buffalo and the Plains people were brave. Certainly they were tough. Arguably their culture was wicked and they, individually, were its fools—the late Vine Deloria used to argue that position—but Erdman completely ignores arguments about the morality of North American immigrants' unofficial war on their host ethnic groups (and, in some cases, their cousins in those groups) in the nineteenth century. Her focus, like Kennedy's, is on Senator Ross's voting for conscience over constituents.

Loula Grace Erdman was an historical novelist popular with school librarians and book clubs in the pre-feminist mid-twentieth century. The story of Senator Edmund Ross moved her to invent a fictional character for his obscure wife. Although the fictional Fannie whose mock-biography this novel is cannot be positively identified with the real Mrs. Ross, as Erdman admitted in the endnote quoted above, history made it easy for Erdman to spin a story in which fictional Fannie comes through as a plausible, likable character. The endnote explains which of fictional Fannie's adventures seem likely and unlikely to have been similar to the real Mrs. Ross's.

But the writer can never not communicate...even when a writer like Gertrude Stein or Kim Kardashian publishes a book that communicates mainly “I'm so rich and famous that I don't have to write anything coherent to get people to buy my book.” What Erdman put into her fictional Fannie Lathrop Ross was an ideal of sanely submissive wifehood...that worked, because there are sanely submissive, passionately monogamous wives, and they behave like fictional Fannie.

Fictional Fannie is hardly docile, although she always wishes people could calm down and live in peace and harmony. She stands up to slave catchers, Civil War guerrillas, plagues, famines, and riots; after a battle she charges out to help the wounded, soothe the dying, and dispose of the dead. She's “in love” with her husband even into their old age, thanks to a generous supply of hormones (the real Mrs. Ross aged rather slowly, by nineteenth century standards, and died fairly old) and the romantic tension created by his constantly going off on adventures of his own. When tempted to disagree with her husband she's not afraid to do that, but she seems to ask herself “Do I want my own way, or do I want to be with him?” and decide she wants to be with him.

In the 1950s many wanted to believe that that was the way all women were, or ought to have been, or needed to be in order to be really happy in life...and we don't even know that it's the way the real Fannie Lathrop Ross was. The real Mrs. Ross may have been a teacher—Senator Ross went on record supporting women's rights to be fairly paid and recognized as teachers—but fictional Fannie is never employed in that profession. (The old French Socialist ideal of never-employed women being “innocent” of money was still kicking in 1960.) The real Mrs. Ross may have enjoyed travel and “frontier” living as much as Senator Ross did, but fictional Fannie is a homebody who has lost her home. As explained in the endnote, Erdman didn't even really know whether the real Mrs. Ross originally had brown hair, or whether she'd always been short; only one old, bad photo of her in her sixties survived. (In her sixties the real Mrs. Ross was short; in the nineteenth century brown hair was considered as suitable for romantic heroines as blonde, red, or black hair, and in the twentieth century many women wished that were still the case.)

So bah, humbug, I remember thinking when I read Erdman's little propaganda studies of “femi-ninny-ty” in high school. Fannie was admittedly fictional. Girls who wanted to be like fictional Fannie married early, generally got divorced early, and grew up miserable. Girls who wanted to be happy in life went to college, got jobs, and didn't let ourselves need men, even if we did eventually yield to a really choice admirer's really determined pursuit—and never allowed ourselves even to consider marriage with anyone whose life goals were different from ours. I wanted to live in my home town and not have babies; into my thirties I expected that to mean I'd never be married at all. And yet...in my early thirties, when I was finding it possible and even pleasant to live on two of the three corners of Virginia at one time, I started asking myself “Do I want to do my own thing, or do I want to be with him?” and deciding I wanted to be with my husband...in Maryland. Rereading Many a Voyage, I now find fictional Fannie believable. If not based on the real Mrs. Ross, fictional Fannie is based on some real women.

Lots of school libraries stocked Erdman's books in the mid-twentieth century. Lots of libraries have discarded them since; the copy of Many a Voyage I just reread is a discarded library book. But it may be time to reconsider whether Erdman's heroines deserve to be considered heroines after all. Maybe the real Fannie Lathrop Ross never met Jesse James, but then again the fictional encounter between those characters may have something to say to modern readers. Read or reread this book and tell me what you think.

To buy it here will cost $5 per book, $5 per package (four books of this size would fit into one package), plus $1 per online payment. The story is too long, the print too small, to appeal to most children who play with dolls, but adult doll collectors may commission a doll dressed like Fannie for an additional $10. 

Tim Kaine Visits Washington County, Virginia (and Annoys Priscilla)

This web site has no contractual obligation not to call U.S. Senators outright liars, merely a policy. However, this web site WILL ask Senator Kaine why he did not refer these business owners, manufacturers and plant managers to the local baby-boomers who already have the skills to fill these jobs...and the experiential knowlege that time spent mailing out resumes and filling out forms only leads to hostilities. I'm definitely grumpy today--it's my second grumpy day this month, and both grumpy days occurred after I'd eaten natural-wheat-gluten-free but evidently not glyphosate-free Cheerios--but this one was actually right below the e-mail that appeared on this web site yesterday. It just ticked me off. It still does tick me off. Students, schmudents, y'should've told'em to e-mail me. Or Dan. Or Bill. Or Carol. Or Jeff. Or they should just go into the Friday Market and check out a whole crowd of people who may look older than fifty (while being thirty-five) or look younger than fifty (while being sixty-five), and may be coasting on some sort of disability pension or just on unemployment, but who are obviously fit to work. Not all that stupid, either, although some of them are embittered, spiteful, and mean.

"

Wherever I travel through Virginia, I hear the same thing from business owners, manufacturers and plant managers: there are good-paying jobs out there, we just need to train our students with the skills to fill them. I heard the same while in Washington County last week visiting the Utility Trailer Manufacturing Company's factory and sitting down with workers, managers, and local community leaders about workforce shortages.

I was also glad to have the opportunity to tell them about how the Middle STEP Act, a bipartisan bill I introduced last week with Senator Capito, can complement what they are doing to help future workers explore in-demand careers. The future of the U.S. economy depends on a skilled workforce, and exposing students to career and technical education earlier can help train the next generation of workers with the skills to succeed.

"

Yes, those skilled workers I have in mind are in Gate City. And y'know what else is in Gate City? It no longer stops in Gate City, it merely ruins the property values of older buildings, but we still have a railroad in Gate City. It carries just a few coal trains these days. It used to carry passenger trains. It could be carrying workers to jobs in Bristol, Kingsport, Big Stone Gap or who knows where-all else. The company could reasonably be required to do that, just to make the railroad earn its keep!

Amazon Does Not Discriminate Against Political Parties, But Does...

...discriminate against sensible shoppers. Amazon does. They didn't last year, but they do now, and that's why I can't find any of the reviews I posted last year and why the publisher didn't send me any more shiny new books to review.

After last week's post about how well matched the numbers looked for Republicans' and Democrats' popular (and less popular) books on Amazon...

http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2017/09/does-amazon-censor-book-reviews-for.html

...I received an e-mail asking for links to my reviews. I dug up a few and tested them. None of them worked any more. I e-mailed Amazon to ask what had happened. This morning, Amazon replied. The reply went out with a smarmy Orwellian heading that looked like an ad and almost got deleted as I checked this web site's group account, which is also our Amazon Associate account, for something that should have been clearly identified as a response to a complaint.

I didn't copy the text of the reply; basically, it said that Amazon's new policy was to display reviews only after customers had spent $50 with a credit card.

Here's what I e-mailed back:

"
Last year I bought several books from Amazon; I wrote informative reviews, and a publisher sent me several more books for review purposes. Recently someone asked about my reviews. I clicked the links in the e-mails showing where four of them had been posted. They had disappeared. I asked what had happened to them, and was told that the new policy was to accept reviews only from people who'd purchased things with a credit card.

I've never used a credit card, and I never intend to use one. I saw how much trouble they got other students into and burned the "free trial" offers I got in college! Online, any direct use of any bank information, even debit cards, invites even more trouble--fraud, and potentially espionage and terrorism (since this information enables identity thieves). I've bought things from Amazon using giftcards; I would have bought more if Amazon had worked with Paypal to accept fully anonymized payments that trace back to Paypal's company account rather than an individual's bank account.

Although online information about me is information about a registered business not an individual, I'm real. So are my purchases and reviews. I don't like seeing reviews I took the trouble to write for you, free of charge, discriminated against because I've followed FBI recommendations to protect my identity.

You need to base your business on giftcards that can be sold for cash in real stores, and/or fully anonymized Paypal payments that trace back to Paypal's company account rather than any individual's bank account, and/or real money orders sent through real mail. Even debit cards, which are safer for individuals in real life, should never be used online.

And actually, although I think (without checking) my Amazon purchases add up to more than $50...don't you find that people who've bought only one one-cent book are more likely to buy other things when they see their reviews go live? I thought that was one of the secrets of Amazon's success.
"

Gentle Readers, all of us need to stand firm with businesses that may have bought into some sort of lucrative deal with greedhead credit card companies. Customers rule...and customers should destroy any credit cards they may own, before their credit information is stolen and used to help somebody hijack a plane!

Yes, it's ironic that this is going on at what claims to be "America's most customer-centric company," and it's even more ironic that it started during the week of September 11...



We have the best armed forces and the best civil defense forces on Earth...but no country will ever be secure enough that its citizens can afford to post their identity and bank information on the Internet. That's like setting fire to your house just to watch the firefighters at work.

Tepid Book Review: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Women

A Fair Trade Book



Title: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Women

Author: Kristine Carlson

Date: 2001

Publisher: Hyperion

ISBN: 0-7868-8602-1

Length: 264 pages

Quote: “For the most part, women have never had it so good...Along with the many options we have created for ourselves, however, comes some very real confusion accompanied by a sense of being overwhelmed.”

For a short time toward the end of his stress-shortened life, Richard Carlson was pumping out variations on his bestselling first book, Don'tSweat the Small Stuff. He became an industry. He enlisted his admittedly PMSsy wife, a full-time mother, to write the inevitable volume titled Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Women.

It's better, I say, than the first volume, because the Carlsons were finally running out of “We don't give a flip what your problem is” wisecracks, and Kristine Carlson had to move a little closer to the position from which counselling can be useful:

FIX FACTS FIRST; FEELINGS FOLLOW.

There is some actual, practical, potentially useful advice in this book: Garden. Make memories with children. Insist that husbands and children do their full share of housework. Pack light. Step out of your “rut of routine.”

There's also some potentially harmful advice. It would be quite a feat for any writer to generate 100 tips for living a happier life and not come up with something that's likely to help any reader, although what this book has to offer you may or may not be new to you. So there are parts of this book that you'll probably appreciate. But it's not the Bible; you may want to bear in mind that the writer's husband died “old” at a horribly early age.

I often object to the way writers confuse “forgiveness” and “releasing the emotions” when you are the one who wants to feel better. “You don't have to believe that what they did was acceptable, just forgive them...” No. That line of thinking interferes with people's ability either to give or to receive real forgiveness. If “they” was a teacher who molested you when you were fourteen, and they're still teaching and molesting students today, you cannot forgive them. What you're likely to feel better for having done is to denounce them, to make sure they can't go on being teachers. Even while you're doing that you might choose to begin to release the emotional reaction you had ten years ago. You would do that if you found it easier to be a hero when you've not reliving being a victim. But none of that has anything to do with Christian forgiveness, which begins with the molester confessing that s/he did wrong and asking for help to change and atone. When we need to practice Christian forgiveness, I've not found that “Just sweep everything under the rug” type thinking helps at all.

Among Christians I've seen substantial harm done by this confusion between the practice of good will and the practice of forgiveness. People who wanted to feel good about “being a forgiving person”were manipulated into hiring a convicted thief as a security guard (yes, that happened; yes, he stole stuff) or admitting confessed “emissaries of the Church of Satan whose mission was to confuse and corrupt Christians” to full membership in churches, and so on. What followed were some good object lessons that Christian forgiveness is a longer, slower, more objective process than a mere decision to let ourselves focus on other things that evoke more pleasant feelings.

The case can be made that the Christian wife who says “I've released the anger I felt about my husband's adultery, but I'm still very hesitant to try to rebuild the marriage” and the one who says “I've forgiven my husband's adultery, but I'm still not willing to try to rebuild the marriage” are describing the same things in two different ways. Does it matter? I don't know how much it matters to those women, but to writers I say that it does matter, because it inevitably affects the way we understand God's forgiveness; it may well determine whether we are able to perceive ourselves in any kind of relationship to Powerful Goodness, and it may well determine whether we have anything worthwhile to say about that relationship to readers. I say that if she's forgiven her husband's adultery, then she's actively working to rebuild the marriage. If she's merely released the anger, she's probably dating other guys.

That's one quibble. Readers who are aware of it can fold a corner of page 83 down over page 82 so they just skip that section, and enjoy the book. Still, there are other sections that may totally not work for you, either. On page 87 Carlson dithers, “I think it would be a good idea if all women had a sign to put on their bedroom doors, which says: P.S.--I'm PMS!” Oh really... “Pre-Menstrual Syndromes” are real medical conditions, but they may be the only medical conditions ever to have been politicized out of all relation to reality from both sides. Many women don't have PMS; when we do, it's a symptom of some sort of disease condition, whether major or minor, treatable or untreatable, and improving our health (if possible) makes more sense than advertising our illness.

It's very easy to be flippant and nonchalant about other people's concerns being "small stuff" as far as we're concerned; Wayne Dyer, his disciple Richard Carlson, and Carlson's widow and disciple Kristine Carlson, notoriously encouraged this undesirable tendency most of us have. On the whole I've not found their approach as helpful as those that focus more directly on physically controlling blood pressure and muscle tension, which can free us to fix facts without the need to write unpleasant realities off as "small stuff." I note that Wayne Dyer died at a fairly early age, Richard Carlson died looking unusually "old" at a very early age, and Kristine Carlson's not looking so good either--which suggests that sweeping unpleasant facts under the rug and focussing on the feelings don't work for those who practice it as a spiritual discipline...

Still, many people find some useful ideas in the "small stuff" books. They're popular. I've been given copies of them to resell, and I can't say they're unfit to resell. Gardening, cuddling children, and training family members to become "self-cleaning" are very useful suggestions for women who want to reduce the stress levels in their lives. Most people who appreciate being reminded to organize and minimize their baggage for a less stressful trip are old enough to spot the less functional ideas in books like this one.

So...I have these books. I've read some of them. If you buy them here, under this web site's rules, since Kristine Carlson is still alive, the ones that are widely available as secondhand books become Fair Trade Books: $5 per book, $5 per package (I think eight of these books might fit into a package, which would cost $45), plus $1 per online payment, and we send $1 per book to Carlson or a charity of her choice. 

Tim Kaine Supports the Troops

(Status update: The writer known as Priscilla King has just finished a cyberchore that's gone on for several weeks, tying up my Internet Explorer window and slowing down the reading of e-mail. I should be reading more e-mail during the next few weeks! Here, from the top of the stack--remember Yahoo stacks the newest e-mail on top--is U.S. Senator Tim Kaine's newsletter.)

"

I’m proud that once again the Senate was able to come together in a bipartisan way to strengthen our national security, support our servicemembers, and bolster the work of our defense community in Virginia.

I was especially proud the Armed Services Committee and the Senate stood with me in support of $10 billion in additional funding for the Navy, critical to Hampton Roads and our shipbuilders. There is always more to do. And though we delivered many wins for our servicemembers in this bill, we still owe them a very important debate and vote on an Authorization for Use of Military Force. There are thousands of American troops fighting across the world, willing to sacrifice so much, and they deserve to know Congress is behind them, not just with funding, but in support of their missions. Instead Congress is punting—allowing the President to wage war anywhere, anytime, against any terrorist group, and for however long he wants.

I’m thankful to Chairman McCain and Ranking Member Jack Reed for helping our committee set an example of how the Senate should work, by passing a bipartisan bill that will make a difference in the lives of Virginians. We need more of this.

Sincerely,

"

Fiction: International Incident on a Peaceful World

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Like yesterday's poems, this short story was a contest entry that didn't win. One reason why it didn't win: although the contest sponsors' web site generally promotes science fiction and fantasy, this bit of conceptual fiction is set in more of an alternative world than a future world, although the whole fictional concept of which this story is part has always been deliberately ambiguous...The "peaceful world" has a global geography roughly similar, though not identical, to ours. It seems to be another side of our world as viewed from the fourth dimension. Is the fourth dimension time or space? I wrote these stories before Hawking wrote his Brief History of Time, when Real Physicists were still debating the matter. The fourth dimension appears in the whole story sequence as a plot vehicle that can be interpreted either way, or ignored. 

Short stories tend to grow out of random thoughts, dreams...In real life I've noticed that air traffic above the Cat Sanctuary has increased dramatically in recent years. My whole family have always liked being out of sight, and (except in very damp weather) out of hearing, range from a paved road. Now the sky is a source of noise and pollution just like a paved road; I'm not pleased. And it occurred to me that in the "peaceful world," where different groups of people have agreed among themselves to adopt or reject new technology for different reasons, and they all respect one another's choices, of course flying over someone else's property would be a crime. 

I erred in sharing this one with "Writers of the Future," since it does involve one of the "futuristic" cultures in the fictional Peaceful World. If we ever do evolve in the direction of peace, I think we will grow to resemble the Peaceful World, or Elizabeth Barrette's Torn World, where some people routinely use aircraft, robots, computers, etc., and others ban them. But, as mentioned in a discussion on EB's Live Journal years ago, I've always visualized the people of this world as an alien humanoid race. At the time when I started writing these stories--with my brother, who wasn't even a teenager yet--the idea of reversing the incidence of albinism and melanism seemed like a clever, satirical way to show that these people are aliens. Or, if they are our future, they're a remote and hypothetical future. Write a hundred penalty lines, Priscilla: WotF should get stories about our future; there's another'zine for tales of the fourth dimension.

(Actually the history of how Rama, specifically, got written into these stories would be a separate post; whimsy, cliches, and an obscure supplementary textbook I was studying by way of "enrichment" at school, were involved.)

I can't quite imagine our world becoming this peaceful...but we can always keep trying to cultivate this level of nonviolence and respect for others in ourselves, anyway.

Amazon link? Why not...I certainly wouldn't presume to dispute the logic that explains what the fourth dimension must really be, in...

(Fwiw, that picture just happens to make the real Stephen Hawking look like the fictional Shela Vum's father.)

1

As the four girls enter the second decade of life Kaza Mar learns that her genetic desirability score is 13. Shela Vum, with her bright blue eyes and soft dark-blue hair and clear, exquisite periwinkle-blue skin, has a score of 92. Lope Graz, whose nose is too long but whose color reaches a near-perfect purple, has a score of 81. Raza Volram, whose leaf-green skin is marred by pinkish acne, but who is expected to outgrow that, has a score of 75. Kaza’s hair, eyes, and skin barely color at all; to the extent that they do, her color is yellow. Worse than that, she can’t think of anything she would rather do, all by herself, than be with the others at school.

“Shela Vum will be an image crafter,” their teacher says enthusiastically, “and an excellent partner to Peta Rune, who has compatible talents. They should have children. Lope Graz should do well in clothing designs; her designs are beautiful. She will earn a good living, and may have children. Raza Volram might easily be a great gymnast, after which she might choose to marry and have children. Kaza Mar may have a good career as a delivery flyer. She has been scheduled for sterilization on the day 330 of the present year.”

All Rame people take a scientific approach to measurable data. Those who react emotionally to the facts of their talents and desirability are not Rame. Only through constant dedication to the science by which they live can humans live on the large continent of Rama, whose natural climates and ecosystems are not favorable to human life. Certainly Rama is not naturally favorable to Rame life, particularly. Only the discovery of flala, the coloring agent added to drinking water with the disinfectants and nutrients, could ever have allowed people born without melanin to survive on the sunniest land on the planet.

After classes on the day 23, when they receive this announcement, Shela, Raza, and Lope try to console Kaza. They will be in different classes now, of course, but they’ll remember her. They have never seen her as an ugly person. Everyone knows that an orange or yellow color in reaction to flala is a reliable indicator of many undesirable genes. Nevertheless they always rated Kaza’s personality and intelligence well in the 80s. Her life will not be as long as theirs but, while it lasts, they wish that it may be as happy, or happier.

From the day 24 forward they begin growing away from Kaza. By the day 330 they’ll be as remote as Kaza’s own parents, who are quite old for an orange and a yellow Rame, well into their thirties, and beginning to look toward death more than life.

Kaza continues to do the same gymnastic moves Raza does. Raza always did them better. Now they know that the difference is more than a matter of Raza being slightly smaller and having better rhythm. Raza will be famous, will travel far and wide, perhaps even off Rama, and eat fresh fruit every day, and live in one of those compounds where rich people’s domes are linked by covered walkways to their mates’ and children’s domes. Kaza will spend most of her time inside an airship, and will eat an orange or a mango on her weekly day of rest, and live in a small practical dome in a row of identical domes whose occupants probably never speak to each other.

Kaza continues to admire the holograms of beautiful costumes Lope displays to the class at break. The colors glow, the flounces flow, as Lope’s models dance through illusive space. Lope will probably have a selection of dresses with flowing flounces that play up her purple color. Kaza will wear yellow flightsuits, even on her day of rest, all alike and not particularly matched to her amber eyes and pale yellow skin.

Beautiful Shela and handsome jade-toned Peta begin to work as a team, discussing their stories with one another before they tell their stories to other friends. All three of them know that Kaza will be part of a twenty-person fleet, not a two-person team. Lumo Lezar, displaying empathy, allows Kaza to touch his velvety black-rose hair. Once.

Nevertheless Rama allows nothing that might be positively called cruelty or oppression of unfortunate people. Kaza will not live long, or be rich, or be loved; but she will fly. The few great forests left on Rama, the vast deserts and secret jewel mines, the massive raging rivers and the waterfalls that can be heard a mile away, will be Kaza’s daily acquaintances. She will float and dive and bound up into the air, just as Raza does, only her loops will roll on for miles. The whole sky of Rama will be her generation, the airship an ever-responsive attendant to her fast-aging body.

2

At ten Patrice Livorni, of Oxpasture town in southern Obregon, is finally allowed to hitch a plough to a meek old ox and drive it alone. Concentrating fiercely, even going so far as to string guidelines between the fences, he wants his furrows to be as straight as a full-grown man’s, and they are.

All Obregonese people, like the other civilized nations on the Phorian continent, know that a man’s vocation is to serve God through his relationship with the share of God’s earth that God appointed to his ancestors. A woman’s vocation is to crown her husband’s land with a gracious home and a healthy, well disciplined child. Some couples have a second child after marrying off the first; a few couples who marry young even manage three. To have more than one child in a house at any time appears to have been common in ancient times, but it has always produced undesirable behavior—see the fourth chapter of Genesis!—and civilized people now understand that the healthiest and best disciplined children are brought up in continuous adult company, with as little contact with other children as possible. At the very best, children together waste their time on idle games.

As a result Patrice, a healthy and well disciplined child, has only a vague general idea that other children are scattered through the district. Most of his parents’ friends are older and childless. Patrice has a cousin, an infant female he has only ever seen when she was sleeping. Occasionally, at work bees, he has worked beside other boys and tried to do a better job than they, especially when they were older.

It has never occurred to Patrice to spin silly tales, as some children do, out of the inevitable childish misunderstandings of things adults say. What he has told his parents has always been the truth.

That is why his parents are amazed, and appalled, when Patrice reports that he saw the thing that streaked through the night sky like a meteorite, but was not a meteorite. It was like an enormous wagon, only bigger, all made of polished metal, with some parts painted purple, and it was flown by a child his age with short dandelion-fuzz hair and pale skin and pale orange eyes like the cat’s, and that child waved at him.

Such children, they know, do exist; the heathen Rame on the southern continent, deprived of melanin (probably for their sins), have to stain themselves in some artificial way. The Rame also claim, though no reasonable person would believe it, to have ways to shoot themselves through the air like arrows. But the Rame, with all their faults, do at least keep to themselves.

The thing is certainly unnatural, blazing in the sky like a meteorite, returning like a comet, but not as regularly. Even the adults are, in truth, just a little bit afraid of it. Such a thing might easily crash into the earth, doing who knows what damage.

However, speculating on such things is no part of a responsible man’s business. Boaz Livorni has a quiet word with his son, in the field, about the things rational observers have found in the sky: sun, moon, stars, planets, comets, meteors. He also discusses the many peculiarities of the Rame race and the possibility that they may have learned ways to fire objects like wagons and children through the air, though he cannot imagine even a Rame surviving such a flight.

Elisheba Mother-of-Patrice Livorni quietly loads her son’s plate with extra greens at dinner.

3

On the day 126 Kaza Mar considers the ethical aspects of her now frequent night flights, and feels sure that she is doing no harm. Children are supposed to prepare for the work they will do as adults. She will fly airships. And if Raza will one day visit foreign countries, why should not Kaza see foreign countries?

Nevertheless Kaza has a vague sense that it may be best not to tell adults how she has flown over the Central Sea, on moonlight nights, and seen the islands of volcanic rock, and the orange and olive trees growing in dusty Obregon and the chalky cliffs of Debir. The flyer whose airship she borrows is her parents’ friend and has always seemed friendly to her too. And fuel...although the cost of processing must be paid by the flyers, fuel does come out of people and need to be used up. What else would people do with fuel? Sit around smelling it? Dump it, as she’s read of some unenlightened people doing in ancient times, into the ocean?

Still...adults like to make rules. When children think of things to do that seem not to break any existing rules, adults are likely to think up another ten or fifty new rules, just because they are adults. Kaza hopes, as devoutly as any Rame can do anything as unscientific as hope for anything, to grow up different from all the adults of her acquaintance in this respect.

Sometimes she wonders whether she’d like to regress back to the first decade of life, in which all children are equal. She would not. No child ever really wants to be an even younger child.

In any case Kaza does not tell her friends about her night flights. They’re kind enough not to tell her about the things they are now learning and doing in separate classes, without her. Kaza is equally kind.

She knows she cannot expect to enjoy a high level of energy for long. She has a high level of energy now. As long as she spends only one night a week flying, she needs no kla to keep her awake, and nobody complains of her being tired the next day or recommends zoma to help her sleep longer.

Kaza does, however, like sharing her secret flights with one other child, who she imagines is in some way her friend. A light sleeper, the Obregonese boy uncovers his face and looks around the empty pasture where he sleeps when Kaza approaches; he stares wide-eyed up at the airship and waves back as Kaza passes overhead. One night, she thinks, she will land the airship nearby and speak to him.

4

Boaz Livorni has a quiet word with Pastor Amadeus, who has a quiet word with Governor Laurentio, who summons Boaz Livorni to a quiet after-dinner meeting with them and other official of the church and state. Despite their courteous manners and frequent reminders that no one blames any Livorni for anything, Boaz Livorni is visibly ill at ease. He wonders whether he might feel less likely to trip over his own feet if they were walking through the grove, pruning orange trees, or might in fact be more so. All the others are wearing long black robes instead of blue-and-white twill trousers. Every one of them has had at least ten years of formal education beyond the point where Boaz Livorni stopped.

“A child,” Boaz Livorni repeats. “He thought it was a child.”

Ivor Pontio, Governor of Tunaport, hisses aloud. “Could even the Rame use a living child in such an experiment!”

“Experiment be...” Everyone knows what Laurentio would have said if fewer clergymen of rank had been present. “To shoot themselves through our air, our sky, is no less than an act of war.”

“Cousin,” Lucas Lanconi reproaches. “We have only the report of one witness, and that a ten-year-old herdboy, that they shoot anything thhrough the air. Even adults do not always easily distinguish a dream from reality, when awakened at night, and this is a herdboy.”

“One can never take a warning lightly where Rame are concerned. They have no religion. They have been known to open wars...”

“Not within recent centuries.Not since our own ancestors, in their own time of ignorance, became nvolved in...wars.” Lanconi’s whole person seems to draw back from the thought of war. They all do, but Boaz Livorni is aware of an uncharitable suspicion that Lanconi, Governor of Olivehills, may be exaggerating his sensitivity to conceal one of those secret, perverse fascinations that immorality has for some people.

“Let us pray,” proposes Bishop Barnabas, and they do; the clergymen take turns pleading with the Holy One for guidance.

After the prayer Pontio asks, “What come to your minds?”

Laurentio speaks first. “We have weapons that can intercept the type of weapon the boy has described. I propose that we use them...and send the wreckage of this missile back to Rama between two men in a rowboat.”

5

If war between civilized nations had been fewer than three hundred years behind them, no doubt the Obregonese would have been better prepared to charge their antimissile weapons, and Kaza’s last flight would have been her very last adventure.

As things are she feels two direct hits, feels her airship falter, and decides to turn and coast back to the field where the friendly wide-eyed boy sleeps. Only about fifty miles past the field, she lands with time and fuel to spare.

As she reduces speed and altitude she understands at last why adults would have disapproved of her flights. “Something might go worng”—and it has. Now she has no idea whether she can return the airship she borrowed, or whether any of these ignorant foreigners can help.

She has been studying to be able to talk to the boy. Rama uses Latin as its primary trading langue; Obregon uses French. These exotic languages resemble each other much more than either resembles Ramo; both are generally understood to have been invented, along with English, by one eccentric foreign genius. (Why did he invent three languages that looked so similar, yet were mutually unintelligible? Perhaps he was more than merely eccentric?)

On opening the door she realizes that, if the Obregonese ever do collect and use fuel, at best they leave it drying in the sun for days. In the moonlight she can discern piles of fuel lying right on the close-cropped grass. There seems no alternative, though, to stepping on the fuel-polluted ground as she checks her airship.

It is well made, with an outer shell that can absorb the shock of 98 out of 105 known types of crash. Despite an ugly hole where part of the shell was ground into the insulation she realizes that the airship could easily fly back to Rama.

As she circles back to the ladder, the wide-eyed boy bars the way. “Sta,” he says in Latin. “Stand where you are. I want my parents to see that you are real.”

He looks as if his intentions are friendly...but he pulls up the cord at the end of the step below him.

“Don’t do that!” Kaza says in Latin. It is, of course, too late. The ladder slowly retracts, loading the boy into t he airship. Startled, he almost loses his balance—but not quite—while he’s twenty cubits into the air.

He is still inside the airship when a woman runs toward Kaza, arms pumping as if she needed the long skirts gathered about her knees to help her legs move faster, shouting in her native language. As she comes closer she switches to Latin—“Release my son!”

“He will have to release himself.” The thought that the boy can easily steal her airship makes Kaza feel faint. “He sealed himself in. The control box is on the seat.”

“Patrice, Patrice,” the woman begins to scream.

Kaza looks at her and feels amazed that anyone can feel so much more emotional in this situation than she, Kaza, is feeling. When the woman pauses for breath she says, “He can’t hear us inside.”

“Stupid child! Foreign child! Who sent you here?” roars a man.

“No one sent me.” There is some sense of relief in confessing her misbehavior. “No one knew I came. No one told me I was or was not allowed to come here. I never asked.”

6

Patrice Livorni has no use for a Rame airship. After seeing that the thing that all the adults said had to be a sort of meteorite is in fact a sort of room lighted by its own glowing walls, he begins to search the glowing wall that sealed itself behind him for a way to get out again. After inadvertently raising the temperature control to a setting no human could possibly want, and starting an instructional reading of which he understands not a word, he presses a third button that causes the door to reopen and the ladder to slide down. Slowly, so slowly.

His father plucks him off the fourth step, from which he defied the foreign child, whose arms have by now been pinned in his mother’s apron. “Never touch such things! Who knows what foreign pollutants they might carry?”

By the time his feet touch the soil Patrice understands that, much as he might like to talk with the foreign child, the prudent thing to do now is ignore it.

“What we have for a governor,” his father says, “spoke of war. I would like to see his face when he learns that this was the prank of an undisciplined child.”

Patrice’s mother smiles. “Girl,” she says in Latin. (Patrice is disappointed; he had imagined that the child would be a boy.) “Have you any device we can use to send a word to your parents?”

“None,” says Kaza Mar.

This, Patrice reads in her face, is not really a lie. People who can make houses fly through the air can write without paper and ink. Very likely the girl’s means of doing that is in her flying house, not in her hands. The important part of what she means is that his parents can’t use the device.

Patrice has never used such sophistries in communicating with his parents but now, as he imagines their potential, a multitude of other sophistries suggest themselves to his mind.

7

The airship’s own distress signal, of course, awakens Shalo Shoka, vibrating his wrist, shrieking up into his face that his airship is in distress at a point in...

“O-bre...” Shalo Shoka breathes. He has never seen Obregon. No flyer has, so far as he knows. To fly over countries where people have chosen not to use airships is a crime. The thief is violating international law, and liable to punishment under the harshest of the laws of the countries involved.

Shalo Shoka will probably lose his job, and if the medical system has any say in the matter he’ll not last long without it, merely for letting his airship be stolen—but he has to report that it was stolen, and flown to one of the most resolutely anti-technology countries in the world.

8

Waking, Patrice Livorni remembers that something special happened during the night. As he begins to milk the cows he remembers the flying house in the field further west, the foreign child in his parents’ home. He still wishes it had been a boy. Girls are brought up by their mothers, boys by their fathers. Girls are taught the things boys are not taught. A boy would be like him, therefore surely a friend. About a girl, who knows?

Patrice Livorni is a well disciplined child, not as big, as strong, or as experienced as his father, but no less sensible. He allows no thought even of the foreign child to interfere with the morning’s milking and leading the cows to the right field for this day, not the field with the flying house.

9

“Pare,” says Elisheba Mother-of-Patrice Livorni to Kaza Mar. “Were you not taught even how to pare potatoes?”

“Those are potatoes?” Kaza knows potato flakes and potato starch. Neither looks much like the objects on the table before her.

“Those are potatoes...Child, what were you taught?”

“To fly airships. I can get a license at fourteen.” People like Raza Volram and Shela Vum will be schooled up to the age of twenty-five or thirty, because they are likely to live thirty or fifty years after that. People like Kaza are allowed to finish school at fourteen, because they are unlikely to be able to work after age forty. Kaza’s Latin is not up to explaining this.

“Pare lightly,” says Elisheba, marvelling that people live without potatoes.

Kaza is interested, but her mind wanders. She does not imagine Shalo Shoka in any great hurry to report the theft of his airship to corporate headquarters, but she knows she needs to return the airship.

10

At school Kaza Mar is missed. the teacher sends messages to her parents. Both reply indignantly that Kaza ought to be in school. Both are, in fact, worried.

Shela and Peta start a new story. Their characters are searching for the lost Princess Goldendawn, whom Shela has drawn with a face shaped like Kaza’s.

“A yellow princess?” says the teacher. “Do try to make your plot believable.”

11

The biggest breakfast Kaza Mar has ever eaten finally reaches an end, and she gets permission to go back to her airship to change suits. “No dawdling, Patrice,” his mother says. “Go directly to the pasture.”

“Yes, Mother.” Even one day ago, Patrice Livorni would not have made a mental note that his mother did not say “Go directly to the pasture where the cattle are to spend the day.” He will, of course, go first to the pasture with the flying house in it.

Along the way the children get their first good look at each other. Both can be said to have yellow hair. Patrice’s hair is darker, and longer, but not much. His eyes are brown; his skin is tan. Kaza’s skin is almost the color of old paper; dark glasses shield her yellowish-reddish-pale eyes from the sun.

“I’m Patrice. I’m ten years old.”

“I’m Kaza. I’m eleven.”

Patrice bows slightly, but wants the visitor to know, “I herd twenty cows and two horses. Eleven of the cows are giving milk.”

Kaza recognizes the words for domestic animals but has no idea what the animals are like. “I fly airships.”

“Is it hard to learn?”

“Navigating is as easy as steering your greshu down the street.” Patrice, Kaza sees from his face, has never used one of the transport-robots Rame children learn to steer before they learn to walk, and has seldom seen even a street. He looks more deeply impressed than she hoped. Nevertheless, she wants to admit: “Being a child is hard. If I were an adult I would have been back home by now, before the airship and I were missed.”

Patrice admits, “I’ve never talked to another child who was only one year older than I.”

“What? No school?”

“I’ve never gone to school. I do lessons while I’m out with the cattle. My parents correct and explain at meals.”

“All Rame children always go to school.” Kaza cannot imagine life without school. “We learn to steer our greshu and walk and talk at school.”

“What do your parents talk to you about then?”

“Mine don’t talk much. One is orange, and one is yellow, so they’re already old and weak. In the evenings they sleep, mostly.”

“I wonder why people who are weak would want to have children.”

“I would not know. I’m scheduled to be sterilized soon.”

“At eleven?”

“They say it hurts less at an earlier age.”

“Sorry,” Patrice mutters. (He has caught himself thinking, lately, of how all sorts of other creatures, even objects, might perceive the world. He is not sure why he’s been doing this, whether he likes it, or how he might be able to stop.) He picks up a stone and makes it skip twice on a pond. Kaza pauses to make a stone skip once before hurrying on to her airship.

At the sight of it her knees wobble with anticipation. she swarms up the ladder on all fours, not trusting her legs. “I’m sorry I trespassed in your air. I won’t again.”

“Could we write letters?” Patrice asks.

“I wish!” Kaza tugs on the cord to pull the ladder up behind her. “I will already be in trouble, being so late?”

Watching the hatch seal itself, Patrice thinks that he’d like to do unauthorized things, the way Kaza evidently does, but he doesn’t like the sound of that word “trouble.”

12

Patrice has no more strange dreams, no more extra portions of greens at dinner. His life returns to its regular routine.

Shalo Shoka’s company orders him to leave the airship at company headquarters, henceforward, and crawl to and from work in his own private greshu. On the whole he feels relieved.

Kaza is banned from school, and ordered to participate in long, boring counselling sessions, for a month. She limits her part in the counselling sessions to one-word answers to direct questions. Hints are dropped about futures less appealing than flying airships. In view of Kaza’s obvious talent and her unfitness for better-paid jobs, these hints do not go far.

Bishop Barnabas, himself, delivers the formal rebuke of the rest of the council to Governor Laurentio for having worked himself up about “war” over a child’s prank. However, since no one can prove that Laurentio’s recklessness did any damage even to the Rame airship, this rebuke likewise does not go far.

Patrice Livorni lives a long healthy life, with one wife, two children, several thousand cattle over the years, and at least three truly memorable horses. Between the ages of thirteen and thirty-nine he receives strange letters from Rama, with cards that hum tunes and paper that smells like flowers and similar extravagances. Up to the age of eleven his daughter, Cassianna, helps him reply, with long friendly letters and drawings and song lyrics, to his friend in Rama.