Home

After a relatively uneventful set of flights I am home again. I have plum-and-yellow toes (fading bruise from dropping an iron pipe on my foot) and many aches and pains. The Barn is as clean as it can be without my actually scrubbing everything: I took down cobwebs and vacuumed years of dust. Someone is coming today to take away the beds, for use elsewhere; various representatives of the high school art departments are taking the flat files. A good friend is bringing the culled results of my father's files up to Dad's place in Lenox (20 miles north). While I was there the place passed its electrical and its septic inspection--the last, which I didn't really expect (given that neither Dad nor I could remember when the system was last pumped out, or where the leeching field was, and the State of Massachusetts had come up with rigorous new rules since the system was set up, which rules have to be satisfied at the time of property resale) was a huge boon, as it probably saved us $20K we don't have to throw around. The electrician who looked the place over is a guy from my class in High School, but not someone I knew well. Still, that was kind of fun (it would have been more fun if I hadn't been covered with dust, with my hair pulled out of my eyes and a look of frantic activity like an electric halo) to see him. I filled three dumpsters with stuff. Not good, useable stuff, but junky, sodden, rusty, mouse-stained stuff. Eeew.

My brother was a hero of the revolution--he was the one who went through my father's papers and files to decide which to keep and which to discard. Our friend Rene, who has been a magician, finding places for everything in the house, is going to do an oral history project about my father, so she kept a lot. And then there were oddments. We found a photo of my father and a dishy young woman in a supper club in (from the look of his lapels and her blouse) the late 40s (when he would have been married to his second wife--who the woman in the photo was not). She had her hand on his sleeve in a very proprietary manner. Currious. And since my father can't see, he couldn't identify her for us, so we'll likely never know who and when that was.

Ate well: since I moved away a really good bagel place has opened up about two miles away, so I had really good bagels and lox every morning. And at least two nights we went off and had huge, celebratory dinners at very fine restaurants. I may never need to eat again (but doubtless I will).

It's all over but the paperwork. I am home in the chaotic bosom of my family. This weekend is Baycon here, and I may make it down for dinner, once I'm done sleeping.

How is everyone?

Pap for the Young

Via Making Light, this wonderful and sad recounting of Nick Mamatas' visit to his sister's freshman comp class to talk about his book Under My Roof. My favorite comment comes when someone says, rather irritably, that it's an unusual book, outside the mainstream, and demands to know if anyone actually liked it.

I mentioned the starred Publishers Weekly review and the raves from the LA Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, and The Believer, then I was told that Harry Potter outsold me. Well yeah, he did.

And in the comments, someone sensibly answers the question "what are a writer's obligations to society" as:"Pay your taxes, vote, and write what the fuck you want."

Louisa Alcott once wrote dismissively of her popular books as "moral pap for the young." There seem to be a lot of people--freshman college students, forsooth--who think children have an awfully limited range.