Fall Equinox 2012

Fall Equinox 2012 - a reading (on YouTube)

Fe-fi-fo-fum. Frost kills the giant and down he comes.

When we bought this house just over twenty years ago, the real estate listing said it sat on a well-treed lot. When I first stood on the back porch and heard the wind whispering through the pines, I knew it would be our home. The voice of the Green Man calling.

Since then, we’ve sacrificed to that sylvan spirit by planting even more trees, though you wouldn’t think there was room. I remember being told how patient we were, how many people could never wait for trees to grow so never planted any. It’s just something we do, if not for ourselves, for the next people who come along. The Green Man smiled upon us. The survivors include six oaks, two pines, two maples, two crepe myrtles and a spruce.

Until two weeks ago we would have numbered a ficus tree among them. At its prime it soared twenty to thirty feet above the rooftop of house. We had planted it the year we moved in, a houseplant we’d set free. As free as a tree can be. Seventeen years later, it repaid us in shade every afternoon. Its bower provided refuge for squirrels and birds. Its boughs even sheltered the occasional sick raccoon.

On a long winter night two and a half years ago, a rare hard freeze descended from the north. Within days the ficus had dropped all its leaves, some twenty bags full stacked at the curb. That spring, we called in a tree service to trim it back to live wood. The arborist was encouraged it would survive. Though it no longer soared as a statuesque giant, we weren’t too worried. As a sapling, this tree had survived a similar freeze, one that had claimed its companion along the fence. That summer, we saw the Green Man’s spirit still lingered as a balanced course of bright green leaves emerged.

The next winter, Jack Frost again came calling, this time accompanied by the chorus of a stiff north wind. Once again, the ficus dropped all its leaves, barely a dozen bags this time. That spring and summer, it struggled to renew. What new growth sprouted came in much farther down the branches almost exclusively on the sheltered sides. The rest remained as barren as a skeletal oak at Samhain.

That summer, a woodpecker began hollowing a nest in one of the high, thick, dead branches. He or his kin had lost their previous nesting ground when a small deadwood tree at the top of the street finally collapsed and was removed. Unfortunately, the nest remained empty as his handiwork never attracted a mate. As the summer rains settled in, bark began to peel away. Colorful, intricate fungi began to grow along the branches and in the hollows. Midday sun once again caressed almost the entire backyard. Grass that had thinned in the ficus’s shadow wove itself back into a thick, green carpet.

Last winter, no fresh freezes fell upon us. New growth returned though in a deeply lopsided fashion. Ropes of live wood threaded their way around the dead using old, gray branches as support to reach back to the sky. Another, smaller variety of woodpecker bored a nest in a different branch and raised a clutch that sought out their own place in the world come spring. The majority of branches remained barren and denuded. In a late spring storm, one came crashing down on the park side of the fence without damage. That should have been a warning yet we did not heed.

We had intended to cut the ficus back again before summer. We had hoped to balance it and remove the bulk of the deadwood before hurricane season blew in. That was not to be. Our spring was consumed with unplanned travel centered on my mother’s life and my father’s death, quickly followed by my stepmother’s. When we finally returned home, we crossed our fingers, putting off that like many other chores until the fall.

This summer, the rains descended in force, thirty-one inches total, a full nine above average. Most of that fell in five or six inch deluges, with two multi-day inundations spun from tropical storms lingering in the Gulf.

The surviving greenery filled in and thrived. The back porch returned to shade each day by mid-afternoon. The first woodpecker returned to his construction, continuing to make improvements in hopes of catching some female’s approving glance. More bark peeled, more fungus grew. We eyed the deadwood in calculation to be sure that if any more came down it, none of it would clip the porch. By the time we left for Atlanta on Labor Day weekend, we were hopeful our ficus had survived the worst.

A week later, on a Sunday after dinner, the remaining twenty feet of that green hope came crashing down. The Green Man attended its fall, ensuring it landed in the only place it could without damaging anything, missing the porch, the birdbath, the power line supports, the statue marking the grave of one of our cats. It clipped the juniper we had once used as a Christmas tree but only bent it over.

Within days we had another tree service out to cart away the body. Two days later, it was gone. The Green Man must have watched over its final passing. One of the last two remaining branches the tree service dropped came within a foot of our roof. The other did a half-gainer over the chainlink fence without bending the support bar. The wood was too rotted to be predictable. The central stump, between two and three feet across, is an amazing pattern of individual six inch stalks from the original houseplant fused together over time. We will wait until next spring to get it ground to see if an ember of the phoenix lurks within.

We spent the next Saturday afternoon planting a crepe myrtle to honor my father’s and stepmother’s memory. I think she especially would be pleased by the new myrtle’s dark pink flowers. We plan to trim it up to be more tree than bush. One day, we hope this myrtle will shade the back porch like its lavender flowered cousin in the courtyard. Perhaps one day, it too will brighten our lives with fluttering, deep pink rain.

I will miss the ficus but will not mourn it. Death is just the balance of a natural cycle. Even fallen, none of its leaves had even begun to wilt. The only sad part to me is that had it lived in its natural habitat, it might have re-rooted with stringers, or provided a rich environment for a new life to take seed. Its end, while painful, opens space for something new to grow. I see that as a metaphor for most loss in this life.

The equinox is a time of balance between light and darkness, a twilight buffer between the summerlands and the land of the sleeping dead. In autumn, the Green Man dons a brightly colored mask, reminding us to celebrate not to mourn. We will see these souls again if only in different guises.

Fe-fi-fo-fum. Frost kills the giant and down he comes. Be he live or be he dead, may he rise again to shade our bed.

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Democracy at Work

Yesterday, I attended my second political rally at Obama’s Seminole, Florida whistle-stop. Back in ’83, I heard Gary Hart speak at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana before some monkey business derailed his candidacy. Yesterday was Karen’s second time seeing a President. Her first was a speech in ’88 when Reagan bribed and bussed in a bevy of federal workers to the Capitol steps so his speech wouldn’t seem unattended. Ah, the good old days of graft.

Were the President not speaking within walking distance, I doubt either of us would have gone. I am half a political junkie though I prefer the clarity of transcripts and certain insights on the internet to partisan rallies. But how often in this life would I get to see a sitting President in person? Not very. Four years ago, friends of ours made the pilgrimage to witness his first inauguration. Theirs was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

So we braved the line at SPC Seminole on Wednesday evening to get tickets then wandered down on Saturday morning two hours before Obama’s speech. Like the President, we approached from the north. By the time we hit 113^th, the road was already closed and guarded. Police, parks and community officers manned the intersections and outposts. Red and blue lighted sedans, SUVs and pickups lined both sides of the road.

Once on campus, we were greeted by a sea of diversity, with a fleet of busses crashing like waves upon the shore, each moment disgorging more. Across the street, a Civil War skirmish line of protestors, perhaps a hundred, shouted their rallying cries, armed with the same battle flag that adorned our side.

A Disney-esque line snaked its way through familiar parking lots. A lone helicopter circled overhead. Pinellas’s finest were in charge of the somewhat chaotic crowd control, complete with conflicting lawful orders. As President’s motorcade crept nearer, they diverted and rediverted the line back and forth from the road to the sidewalk before deciding where we posed the minimum threat.

We formed an instant bond with the party of twenty-somethings in front of us who came up from Sarasota. Their day had started early. They were witty and knowledgeable, the perfect companions for our wait. They even tried to convince a deputy we were among their merry band of brothers when he broke the line just in front of us. But we came together again soon enough. The only problem we encountered was a herd of a half dozen self-identified and seemingly self-entitled fifty-something Republicans trampling their way through the line. We ignored them as their t-shirts professed they were engaged on the correct side of the argument.

At the end of the line, a mobile, scissoring sheriff’s watchtower overlooked a gatehouse garrisoned by a company of uniformed Secret Service. We entered a portcullis of a dozen metal detectors complete with magic wands. The whistle and mini-flashlight on my keychain garnered extra attention but otherwise there were no issues. A clutch of forcibly abandoned umbrellas lined a table just outside like an impromptu, OCD garage sale.

The cordoned field enclosed a crowd eleven thousand strong. Black uniformed silhouettes on the rooftops scanned us and the nearby woods for threats through their binoculars. Inside, as in line, volunteers distributed free water as light shields against the Florida heat. Though the staffers trying to energize the crowd met with more muted success. Despite the cloud cover, it was just too hot.

The day had dawned cloudy but not threatening. The field was muddy, humid and stifling from a deluge two days before. The pleasant breeze died as the sun emerged just in time to bear down upon the public press. We later heard one hundred people collapsed from the heat, ten of them hospitalized. One young woman was carried from the field by EMS like a wounded soldier about ten yards in front of us.

The President was a fashionable fifteen minutes late, which allowed most of the line behind us to file in. In later reports, we heard some were turned away when we hit capacity. We were lucky to get in. Perhaps we should have started our trek earlier.

Charming Charlie Crist performed the introduction. I will resist using his other sobriquet as he has become an ally rather than an adversary. He stood before the crowd as a former Republican governor citing how his erstwhile Party had abandoned him. If nothing else, as a former Rockefeller Republican from decades ago, I could empathize. The follies of my youth.

Here is where I must come to full disclosure. I am a Democrat. Although Obama wasn’t my first choice, I want him to succeed. I have a laundry list of reasons that it is unlikely I will ever again register as a Republican, at least until they undergo some very serious reforms. In that party, in my estimation, change must come from within. Still, I try not to let that distort my lens.

After a series of chants and very eerie “four more years” salutes from the crowd, Obama alighted at the podium. First, he recognized his allies, Gov. Crist, Sen. Nelson, Rep. Betty Castor. Of those three, Crist received the loudest cheers even though, unlike the other two, he is currently without portfolio. Nelson’s name received only a slightly worryingly, tepid response.

Unlike Crist, the podium was not miked well for Obama. The President was witty and interactive, improvising with the crowd. Unfortunately, that meant each time he turned to speak to an individual supporter, he turned away from the mikes at times leaving the rest of us in a Monty Python skit. ("Blessed are the Greeks?" "Oh, it's the MEEK!") Crist definitely knew better how to work the crowd and still maintain the microphone. That was perhaps the most disappointing experience of the day. 

Obama spoke for half an hour almost precisely to the second. It took the celebratory crowd five minutes before they calmed enough to listen in. He sprinkled several clever sound bites in with a detailed, four-point plan for moving the country forward. Prosperity comes from the middle out, not the top down. This is an election about choice not cynicism. We have a responsibility to keep the promises we’ve made.

His four points centered on creating manufacturing jobs, not rewarding corporations for outsourcing; controlling the nation’s energy through a diversity of domestic production; focusing on education to provide people with the skills, degrees and financing they need to succeed; and responsibly reducing the Federal deficit by rolling back taxes on the wealthy to the levels under the Clinton Administration and the prosperity it saw, as well as using the savings from ending two wars to pay down the debt.

Throughout, Obama came across soft-spoken. His speech was full of light, prosperity and solutions, and a quiet hope, though he never invoked that word. He sounded a clear counter-note to darkness and doom I constantly hear from the other side, which seems to say that our best days are behind us, and that tax cuts and gutting regulations are our only hope at salvation. As with many points in their platform, their arguments seem to ignore the economists and the advice of experts in favor of ideology.

The response from the crowd was more intriguing than the speech itself. In rising levels of applause, people admired, third, Obam’s bullet point on education, then, second, that bin Laden was finally dead. But the single most uniting issue that saw the crowd spontaneously erupt to drown out the President? His support of gay marriage and gay rights. That was perhaps the most surprising response. Seminole is not exactly a bastion of liberalism in admittedly moderate Pinellas County. In fact, our state rep climbed into office two years ago from the depths of Tea Party central.

In closing, Obama encouraged everyone to talk, not just to people who shared their opinions, but to people who didn’t, Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Dialogue is the mainsail of a successful democracy. He then encouraged everyone to register and to vote. To reinforce that point, he gave out a website: Gottavote.com.

With that, we began the long, overheated walk back home, downing more water, thankful that our training for Dragon*Con had prepared us for the noonday sun. Just as there was a line to get in, there was a narrow, funneled line to get out, directed by our county’s finest into trampling the landscape.

Tired after three hours of walking and standing in the Florida heat, it took me the rest of the day to recover. After napping and downing a couple Gatorades to rehydrate, Karen and I swung back by the campus on our way to grab a quick dinner out. All the busses, staffers and supporters were gone, leaving a only handful of workers to clean up the mess. Watching them bag up the litter and discarded bottles, I saw a metaphor. The still cordoned off scene seemed to resonate with so many experiences from the past four years and the fundamental nature of democracy at work. In this case, perhaps, a work in progress.

A worthwhile experience despite the energy-draining heat. One I’m sure I will remember fondly for many years to come regardless of the outcome of this election.


© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Dragon*Con 2012: Notebook

This year, I am trying something a little different. Every year when I get home, I page through my notebook looking for ideas that resonated (as well as books I want to buy and websites I want to look up). This year, I thought I would share. They may seem choppy, but they are meant to stimulate conversation rather than just provide information all on their own. If you find something intriguing, give a shout and we can discuss it. It's likely I have more notes.

If nothing else, it will give you an idea why I keep going back to this convention and attending panels, or at least the types of information I enjoy. I smattered some links throughout.

So, here are the highlights of the notes in the order and context that I took them.

Storytelling:

Plays focus on dialogue and location.

TV and film focus on external action.

Novels focus on internal dialogue and thought.

Computer games focus on character and their position in the game.

Creating characters in art:

You always follow the eyes of a character as you scan a picture. Instinctively, you want to know what they are looking at. Western eyes scan from left to right, like we read.

Part of the process of creating a character:

1. Get visual references (research in writing)

2. Understand the character's environment (character sketches in writing)

3. Tight work in the details draw the eye. Shadows let the eye rest. The mind fills in what's missing (descriptions in writing)

Moon base fundamentals:

If viewed by an external culture, the Earth-Moon system would likely be classified as a binary planet because our moon is so large, proportionally larger than any other moon in our solar system.

For an example of extreme solar radiation, look up the Carrington Event of 1859 on Wikipedia (and apply to modern electronic technology).

Space propulsion 101:

For use of ion thrusters, look up the Dawn Mission on Wiki.

For nuclear thermal rockets, look up NERVA on Wiki.

For nuclear pulse engine, look up Project Orion on Wiki (would reach a Centauri in 140 years).

For Low Earth Orbit, look up space tethers on Wiki (electrodynamic).

For higher orbits, look up space tethers on Wiki (momentum exchange).

Philosophy in science fiction:

Most people think of Batman as the archetype of The Law and The Night, and Superman as Morality and Light. But if you examine Batman through the works of Kant and Superman through the works of Hobbes (Leviathan), they exchange those two roles.  

The Buddhist Warrior takes on the Karma of killing in order to create a Utopian society, knowing full well when it is brought about, s/he won't be able to live in it and will live as an outsider (I bounced this off a panelist in a later panel on Dynamic Character Identity to apply to Scott Westerfled's Uglies trilogy).

Storytelling in Film:

The story in any film gets told three times. First in the script, then as in the shoot and finally in the editing. 

Film is a director's media.

TV is a writer's media.

The story arc in a short film includes an abbreviated three act structure.

Act 1, inciting incident.

Act 2, problem solving.

Act 3, outcome, success or failure.

Running a business with your SO:

Each relationship has three parts: who you each are; who you are together; who you are apart.

Dynamic character identities:

We recognize people through two sets of features:

1. accidental features (physical, like hair color). If they change, we don't see the person as different.

2. essential features (psychological). If they change, we see a different person (like a soldier coming home from war).

In literature, we identify characters even though their accidental features change (the actors who play Hamlet). In comic books, we identify characters even though their essential features change (Batman always looks the same but acts completely differently through the decades of the series).

Book cover design:

Lines, eyes and hands move the viewers eyes around the drawing.

Every project has three phases:

1. Excitement (this will be the best).

2. Problems (this will be the worst).

3. Acceptance (this came out ok, time for the next).

Believable lighting make any painting look real (same works for small details in writing).

Space books:

Solar Sails, G. Vulpetti, G. L. Matloff & Les Johnson

Living Off the Land in Space, G. L. Matloff, Les Johnson & C. Bangs (own)

Back to the Moon, Travis Taylor & Les Johnson

Art/Comics theory books:

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud (ordered)

Creative Illustration, Andrew Loomis (OOP)

Color and Light, James Gurney (ordered)

Imaginative Realism, James Gurney (ordered)

Frazetta artwork

Fiction:

Going Interstellar (short stories and essays), Les Johnson & Jack McDevitt (eds). (ordered)

Rat King, China Mieville (will Kindle)

The City in the City, China Mieville

Embassytown, China Mieville

Uglies trilogy (Uglies, Pretties, Specials), Scott Westerfeld (read some of his before)

Games:

Eclipse (sci-fi, 2-6 players) (ordered)

Tabletop (board game recommendations by Wil Wheaton, YouTube channel)

CDs:

As the Dark Against My Halo, Cruxshadows (bought)

East, Ego Likeness (bought, signed)

Treacherous Thing, Ego Likeness (bought, signed)

Havestar, I:Scintilla (bought)

Marrow 1, I:Scintilla (bought)

Light Speed, Fader Vixen (bought)

Applied Structure in a Void, Die Sektor (bought)

The Final Electro Solution, Die Sektor (bought)

Jewelry/Chainmail:

Dave Cain Jewelry (necklace and earrings on commission) 

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Dragon*Con 2012: Paint It Black

Noctilucent clouds guide us to the airport. Sterling fire greets us as we return.

This year the weekend flew by as smooth as China silk. We had good flights, good neighbors, and no real waits even at the airport. No trouble with TSA, which had at least twice the normal personnel in Tampa. Registration took twenty minutes during which the line never stopped moving. We were so uncertain what to do with all the extra time we had on Thursday that Karen had time to paint my fingernails black. Idle hands. My avant-garde tribute to her surgeon on her official five-year anniversary of completing treatment.

There were even more people at the Con than last year. The Thursday night crowd was like a Friday, Friday like a Saturday. Saturday and Sunday seemed just as full. Diversity was up with more African-American attendees and panelists which I’m always encouraged to see.

We ended up with a less frenetic schedule, taking more time off to hang with our Seattle friends, managing to meet up with them for lunch or dinner and the odd panel just about every day. I was glad to have the TracFone we’d bought for my father to text and keep in touch. The Dragon*Con app for the iPhone was invaluable for coordinating schedules and updates.

All the panels were generally decent. No walkouts. Music, however, was a bust. Not much new or interesting (one walkout in the concerts that could have been two). The final body count stands at 16-17 panels, 2-4 concerts, 8 CD’s, two shirts and a skirt with a pair of earrings and a necklace on the way. The tracks  divide out into 1 Pern, 2 Film, 2 Gaming, 2 Space, 5 Art, 2 Comic, 2 Writing, 2 Apocalypse Rising, 2 Sci-fi Literature.  Karen added two concerts and a concourse performance over what I did, as well as an extra panel (and we separated a couple times). During some of the down time, I wrote out three pages on a new science fiction story and outlined the rest of it in my head. This week’s project is to finish it.

Top five panels: Using the philosophy of Kant and Hobbes to interpret the morality of Batman and Superman, and the lens of Buddhism to examine Serenity (the most intellectual panel we attended, contrary to one egotistical writer whose panel came in a distant third). Examining the dynamic character identities by comparing and contrasting the accidental and essential features of Batman and Hamlet. Tactical first aid, with as much tactics as first aid, given by a SWAT-trained EMS (complete with a room clearing demo). Writing intrigue and deception complete with a 5-point identification system (and handouts) presented by a former Air Force intelligence officer. The basics of storytelling in film and what to expect as a writer.

The most resonant piece of observation I picked up: my writing process is very similar to another well-known author who writes very finished drafts with no outline without a lot of rearranging. Hearing that was heartening. I still find I relate better to adapting the creative process illustrators and artists share than anything I hear from the writers. Thumbnails, sketches, pillaging the archives for reference, being mindful of how the work moves the eye, those all make sense to me. The most fascinating bit of trivia: The movie Pretty Woman was originally a dark script called 3000 (the amount of money Julia Roberts’ character charged per night) before Disney decided to turn it into a Cinderella story. The most interesting detail: The military performs triage in the opposite order of the civilian world.

Cool rumors: The Comics and Pop Art Conference, which runs at Dragon*Con, is striking for an academic track next year. Theirs were two of our top five. I would definitely attend more. And the exhibitors hall and dealers room are moving offsite to the America’s Mart building (with 25% more room but no additional dealers) which will free up a ton of room in the Marriott.

Over the course of the weekend, four hundred bookmarks and business cards disappeared, including a handful in an impromptu marketing survey conducted by a friend (which oddly contradicted the way the bookmarks disappeared from tables). We’ll see if any of those make their way home by way of hits. 

This year was our tenth time attending in the past twelve years. While I say each year that we make take the next year off, I know Karen will attempt to book us a room in the Marriott in October. She already booked a backup since we’ve been home. So we’ll decide next summer whether our cons go to eleven.

In the meantime, I have an Amazon order to place for a game and several recommended books.

(And now it’s time for the only reason people muddle through this message, the out-of-context quotes. You’ll find them in the comments).

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III