Rain

Yep. Raining.

Good thing. It's that wintry, Tasmanian rain that comes and goes in fierce bursts, interspersed with drizzle. It's still warmer than usual for this time of year, though, so this rain will bring mushrooms of many kinds. Also, it will push up the grass, and maybe help along all my recent plantings: gooseberries, kiwis, bamboo, mulberries... my orange tree, and even my lime tree.

I've spent the morning writing up a manuscript assessment. Needed a break from my own work anyway, and it's always helpful carving through somebody else's errors. I learn. From this MS, I learned the importance of structuring scenes within a novel, and the rather tremendous power of Point of View. I think probably need to cut back on my feedback a little, though. Including the notes-made-while-reading (which I always include) the whole document ran to nine thousand words.

Luckily that doesn't take me too long. But it's still gotta be daunting to read, no matter how helpfully and supportively it's written. (And those of you now thinking about sending me an MS: I get paid for this stuff, ya know.)

We've got a couple visitors with us at the moment. Natalie's sister is here, with her little toddler-type. They've been here a few days now, and it's been good, what with my lot home over the Easter break. We did the egg-hunt stuff on Monday, not Sunday, and there was much chocolate-fuelled jubilation.

Unfortunately, my sister-in-law has just come down with a good dose of gastro, both ends going. And of course, as Chief Cook, I'm watching in horror, wondering what I've done. Was it the twice-cooked chicken? Surely not! Nobody else has had even a twinge. Was it the charcoal-roasted leg of lamb with crispy new potatoes and green salad? How? How could that be? Was it the free-range eggs baked inside a ramekin lined with locally sourced smoky bacon? I can't see how that could be -- but as far as I can remember, that's the only dish she's had all by herself so far.

Never mind. Nobody seems likely to keel over and die.

The new heat pump or reverse-cycle AC unit or whatever you call it is doing its job admirably. It's quiet and efficient, and despite that it's dark and bleak and rainy outside, we've not even thought about lighting the wood stove. Good. I'm over that thing... smoky, hard to start. Suppose I'll have to keep it around, though. The local power supply is notoriously unreliable. Especially on a Tuesday, when I'm trying to work.

Meanwhile: sword practise - check. Ju-jitsu practice - check. Music on the new whistle Nat brought back from the folky festival - check. Writing - behind.

Gotta go.

A Random Work Of Genius

Best. Fanfic. Ever.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

Really.

If you read science fiction, in this version Harry is smart, science-oriented, and asks every goddam question you EVER wanted to ask about the idiocy of the Muggle World/Wizarding World paradox. And he asks them cleverly, in-plot, with lots of character and sheer fun.

This is the world where Harry Potter isn't a mispelling of 'Hapless Pratt'. It's the equivalent of injecting an intelligent, normal human into a Zombie movie, or a slasher flick. And it's great fun.

Blogger Is Getting Really Buggy

I guess it's probably because I use a Yahoo account to check in. They're trying to Nazi us all into Gmail/Google accounts, probably to try and shepherd us into the ever-expanding cloud of Googlegarbage. I'm not big on social media at the best of times. The only reason I put Dirk Flinthart on Facebook was because people kept noisily inviting me to do it. Now I have possibly the planet's most derelict Facebook page... yippee.

Anyway, I really don't want to try to jump through the hoops associated with shifting the ID on this blog to my Gmail account. But one of these days I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and do it. As it stands, I'm having a lot of trouble lately in commenting on other people's blogger output. If you haven't heard from me in a while, I probably just got tired of error messages...

Meanwhile: it's Day Four of the the Solo Parent Trek. Natalie's in Canberra, at the National Folk Festival. I keep getting text messages with questions about whether I want a silver-and-blackwood whistle (fuck, yes... I mean, is the Pope a Nazi? I mean, kiddie-fiddler? NO! I mean Catholic. Jeez, what an embarrassing set of confusions, eh? Sorry about that, Your Holiness.) and what size tricorn do I think the boys take, and does this electric fiddle make my bum look big? You know: the usual stuff. I think the bank account's gonna take a hit here.

It's been a challenging week. I allowed myself to take Monday night off sword training, but made up for it by having dinner with two (totally gorgeous) medical students. When we first organised it, Natalie was supposed to be home - but then all kinds of stuff went pear-shaped, and she realised she'd booked a flight on the Monday afternoon, so it was just me, the kids, the lovely medical lasses... oh, and Mike the Historical Neighbour who dropped by just on sundown as he does from time to time.

Good timing on his part, I must say. We had grilled kebabs of chicken, and separately of vegetables (one of the medical maidens was a vegetarian) with a spicy peanut sauce, and we had a part-stir-fried, part-steamed dish of tofu and Chinese cabbage (the vegetarian medical maiden can cook, as well as being tremendous fun, and cute) and then we tackled the making of profiteroles.

Strangely, that didn't go well. I've never actually had profiteroles not work before. It was disturbing. I think the mix was too runny, and I think I should have set the oven to all-over heat, not just base heat. But it was unnerving. I didn't like that. Neverthless, they tasted damned good, so we ate 'em anyhow.

Wednesday went peculiar because on top of the usual martial arts classes, the primary school had a Movie Night, and Elder Son went. So... on top of the bizarre do-si-do of children (I actually pick up six kids every Wednesday arvo from the school, and take 'em to ju-jitsu. Various other parents get involved in sorting 'em out afterwards, usually.) with Natalie being away, and Elder Son needing to get to the movies... yeah, it got very complicated. Very complicated indeed.

Meanwhile... yeah. Today I managed to finish stitching together and decorating a medieval-style tunic for Younger Son. There's a medieval fair tomorrow over Exeter way. Chances are I'll take the kids for a while. We need an outing, and they'll be delighted by the chance to prance around in their cloaks and hoods. I'll break out the Big White Shirt, dust off my best Elizabethan English, and we'll see what havoc we can raise, eh?

House is in good order. So are the grounds, more are less. Children clean, fed. I'm a bit behind on a range of different work, but I'm doing the best I can on that... Natalie gets back Sunday night. We'll do the Big Easter Egg Thing on Monday, to include Nat's sister, and Little Cousin Zanna. After that, maybe I'll get a bit of time for myself.

As it is, I'm trading off on sleep at the moment. That only works for so long...

Conversations At The Checkout

I was at the Woolworth's checkout this morning, and somehow the conversation between me and the charming lasses behind the counter ticked over to Malcolm Fraser -- quondam Prime Minister of Australia -- and his best-known quote: "Life wasn't meant to be easy."

Once I mentioned that Fraser was famous for that line, we all started to wonder why he'd said it. Naturally, I decided it must have been a result of the infamous Memphis Trousers Incident.

Well, once you start down a line of speculation like that, it's hard to stop. In short order, we began to discuss what other Australian Prime Ministers might have said, found in the foyer of a seedy hotel in Memphis without either trousers or explanation.

Paul Keating: "When I find the *&@!!$ who @$8@&@ my *&@## trousers I'm %#&$ gonna pretend I'm f^&&#$ Julian O'Neill and his (#@#$ head is one of Schlossie's shoes!"

Kevin Rudd: "Oh no! Someone arrest me before I see my own dick!"

John Howard: "Terrorists threw my trousers overboard!"

Bob Hawke: "Strewth. Wish I could remember the rest of the night. Looks like I had a good time!"

Harold Holt: "No worries. I was just about to take a swim anyway."

....and for the Americans, one of the young ladies offered:

Bill Clinton: "...Monica?"

Aftermath

Tree-That-Was: a truly mighty blackwood, probably close to seventy years old. That's near the end of the lifespan of such trees, apparently. The photo shows the Mau-Mau playing what was one of her favourite games with the dog. She liked to climb onto the tree-swing, and the dog would then grab the tag-tail-end of rope that hung from the bottom of the swing. Then he'd drag her willy-nilly back and forth, shaking his head and growling while she giggled and swung and clung on for dear life.

There were a tremendous lot of games around and under that tree. It must have been 25m tall, at least, and it shaded an enormous area. Today, when I walked out that side of the house, I also realised what a windbreak it used to be. The westerly wind pours unimpeded down that slope now. It's cold. I know; I've said it before. But I miss that tree.

So here's what's left. A mulch heap of truly phenomenal proportions, and a pile of rounds. Some will be taken up to the woodshed to dry slowly. Eventually, I'll give them to people who like woodturning and so forth. Blackwood is a wonderful, beautiful timber. They make high-end guitars and violins out of it.

Unfortunately, it's a bitch to work with. Apparently the sawdust is peculiarly hooked. It gets into your airways, and there it stays, causing all kinds of hideous respiratory issues. The people who work with it use heavy-duty filter masks, and even respirators.

I don't have anything like that. And I'm not nearly enthusiastic enough about woodworking to go through that much fuss. So we let the tree-feller take those sections of the main trunk that he wanted for his own use, and those bits left behind -- well, like I said. Some will go to wood turners. Some will become firewood.

Taking the tree down was, by standards of economy and safety and logic, a good decision. This slice through the butt, about a metre above the ground level, shows several notable things. The most obvious is the big, rotting hole in the middle. But if you look, you can also see the big cracks that go from the hole in the middle to the very edge. And if you know much about trees, you'll realise that this isn't a single trunk. This is actually three or four trunks of one tree, grown so close together they couldn't be distinguished. But there was bark between the trunks: they weren't one, single, strongly-forked piece of wood. They were individual pieces, and each piece was holding its own chunk of that massive, spreading crown -- and it's something of a miracle we didn't see the thing fall to pieces ages ago. Possibly on top of one or more children, or cars, or the cubby house, or the power line, or a mixture of all the above.

Nevertheless. It was a beautiful tree.

And still it serves. Here's the Smaller Son, redoubtable atop Mount Mulch. He's planted his flag, as true explorers do, and he is delighted to scramble up and down, leap off, burrow into, and otherwise lay claim to the huge pile. It's Kid Heaven. The three of them spend hours charging around that mulch heap, playing and climbing... Smaller Son actually stands on top of the pile, and hurls himself headlong into a hands-free standing somersault that sprawls him down the side of the heap, mulch flying in all directions. Daft little bugger.

And there's more. The mulch has already gone into a much-needed soft fall at the bottom of the cubby-house quick-escape slide. I put the slide on the downhill side, and it gets up a fair bit of speed... and since the ground used to slope away at the base, the kids would come hurtling off the slide, plant their feet and then go arse-over in a heap. Scared hell out of 'em. But now, with old tyres around the bottom as a retaining wall to hold a mulch-pit in place, they love their groovy escape slide.

Still more: I put in a small bamboo on the hillside above the site of the Tree-That-Was. The bamboo is a non-invasive kind, rejoicing in the unfortunate name of 'Indian Black-Butt'. It has edible shoots, and the individual stems grow up to 15cm thick and 25m tall. It's used in furniture-making -- and it's very beautiful. I bought two of them today, and they're both going up on that hillside. And to help them grow, I dug swales above them, and filled the swales with mulch. And the first of the two bamboo-babies got nicely mulched into position as well.

Still more: I'm going to put in a proper strawberry patch. Three metres by six metres, with netting and rabbit-proof fencing, and wire mesh to keep out field mice and even grasshoppers. And I'm going to need a lot of mulch, yep. You betcha.

So the Tree-That-Was keeps on giving. The bamboo will grow to frame the space where it lived, and I will put weeping cherry trees there, at the request of the kids, and there are already a dozen new blackwood trees just a few metres uphill, where Natalie and I planted them a few years back. We'll keep the space for play and enjoyment, and every now and again, I'll make sure to remind the kids of the old tree they used to play on.

And there is the first autumn leaf of the year on the little pin-oak I put in place upslope of the Tree-That-Was, Christmas 2006. It's a healthy, growing tree now, and very beautiful. I like to get live trees for our Christmases, and plant them out afterwards. This one is doing especially well.

I'm hoping for plenty more.

The Dad Thing

They're outside my study right now, cutting down trees. Lots of 'em.

I'm very sad.

Some of them had to go, and I knew it. There were trees cropping up under and around the power lines. Trees planted so damned close together along the driveway that they were killing each other, and threatening to fall on the house. Whoever planted them never really gave much consideration as to what they would one day become.

But then there's the Mighty Blackwood, home of the Awesome Tree Swing. Turns out that this particular tree, gorgeous and elegant and aged and wonderful, provider of shade, home to birds, shelterer of my children... it's fatally flawed. And when it falls - which it will, one day - it's going to crush the Pirate Ship cubbyhouse, and take out the electricity line all in one go.

And no: since it's a blackwood, we can't just take out the crown. That will kill it.

I'm devastated, because it's a gorgeous tree and it's meant a lot to all of us. We'll plant something in its place, but you can't replace a tree that's near a century old. Just doesn't work that way.

Ah well.

This year is moving fast, and taking shape. Monday-Wednesday are turning a bit hardcore and feral. Yesterday afternoon, for example... my timetable went like this:

1430 leave house for Scottsdale. Stop at post office. Collect children at 1440. Home by 1515. Snacks for all children. Round up all martial arts gear and weapons. Get boys into scout uniforms. Leave house by 1600.

Collect two other kids from another house by 1610. Drop off the daughter there to play. Drive the four boys to scouts.

1630: commence a martial arts afternoon with scouts. Introduction, demonstrations, show off some weapons, warm 'em up, teach basic body movements, strikes, and break falls. Finish with iai-do demonstration: quick draw into flat, waist-level cut that splits a watermelon, which is then given to the scouts to finish off.

1845: drop off the two extra boys. Regather daughter.

1855: home. Coerce one boy into violin practice. Coerce the other into cello practice. At the same time, prepare Cantonese-style Chicken Long Soup for the family.

Meal on the table by 1920, as Natalie arrives. Feed family. Formal handover of kids. End 'Dad' responsibilities.

Zip into Launceston. Watch 'Franklyn' (damn' strange movie!) with Bruce and the others. Home by midnight...

So. You get the picture. Communcations are likely to be slightly more sporadic this year.

They Convicted Peter Watts

Those of you who know who and what I'm talking about may be interested in reading further:

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1186&cpage=5#comment-18190

Let me add that transcripts and court records are public domain. Anyone who wants to can follow up to confirm. Essentially, Dr Watts has been found guilty of felony assault, in a court which found that at no point did he raise a hand, or offer any kind of threat in any fashion, or even attempt to impede the warrantless, unheralded search of his vehicle by the US border guards. The 'guilty' outcome is a result of the precise definition of the statute in question: very much a technicality. Given the range of things of which he was accused, and of which he was completely exonerated, this is a fucking travesty.

But it's a travesty that makes one point very, very clear. The USA is NOT the land of the free, nor the home of the brave. Not any more. And perhaps not for quite some time now.

If you live in the USA, I wish you the very best of luck, and I encourage you to do all that you reasonably can to help your country rediscover the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, and in that remarkable and wholly admirable document, the US constitution. There was a damned good reason the USA was a beacon of hope for so long -- and that hope is sadly missed in these dark days.

For anyone else: if you choose to travel to the USA, you need to be sharply aware of the sweeping extent of the powers of even the meanest and least significant of (particularly Federal) authorities -- and their extreme willingness to use those powers at your expense. Dr Watts treatment at the hands of the US border authorities most closely resembles, in my memory, the autocratic and authoritarian treatment meted out by Soviet border guards in the bad old days before The Wall came down. At least the USA still has show trials before visitors are found guilty of meaningless charges; I suppose Dr Watts could easily have been 'shot trying to escape'.

I left the USA a long time ago. I've been back a couple times to visit. The way things are now, though... well, I've spoken up publically against the US position on various recent wars, and I've questioned the legitimacy of the so-called 'PATRIOT Act', and I've queried the validity of the 'Free Speech Zones' created under President Bush II. All these things are public record, and I know that various US agencies routinely aggregate data from the Internet.

What does that mean? Well, I would have no qualms about making a visit to Cuba, if I'd gone on record in opposition to the policies of their government. Nor would I fear to visit modern Russia under similar circumstances. China, now... yes, I'd think twice about China.

And regrettably, I think I have to put the USA into the same category. When 'failure to comply' becomes 'felony assault'; when a peaceable foreign national of good public character, from a friendly nation can be beaten and maced for nothing more than asking 'why' -- that's not a country where I feel safe.

Adios, America. You were a nice dream when I was a kid, but I don't think I'll be going back.