An Inauguration

My not particularly original observation: I was so happy to see the sun shining on the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris today. For the first time in a while there's hope here in the U.S. Given my lack of technological skills, I won't post any links here but hope the few of you finding this post have viewed this inspiring day one way or another. A lot of hard work still lies ahead for us Americans.

Farewell, 2020

By now it's a cliché to mention how awful this year has been. so I'll simply express my hopes that the new year will be an improvement. I'm setting a low bar here as almost anything short of a meteor hitting the Earth would be an improvement. Happy New Year and watch these robots, courtesy of Boston Dynamics, welcome 2021. As far as I'm concerned, the robots and AIs can't take over too soon.

An Adventure of Sorts

What counts as an adventure these days: The other day I walked to the supermarket to get a flu shot at their pharmacy. Understand that the supermarket is only three blocks from my home and that I haven't been inside the place since March, as deliveries from local businesses have kept us supplied. An employee was at the door with wipes, hand sanitizer and masks, there was hardly anybody inside the store, and all shoppers and employees were masked and meticulous about keeping their distance, as was I. Got my shot of vaccine and was able to print out my permission form at home before heading over so didn't have to fill it out there. The checkout stations all had plastic shields between cashiers and customers and there was no physical contact at all among us. This is reassuring but didn't prevent my experiencing ripples of anxiety. Clearly it's going to take time to get used to this. In the meantime, hope all of you are wearing your masks when you're out and about.

A Story in Estonian

My novelette "Dream of Venus," first published in 2000, is now out in Estonian (the first translation of any of my work in that language) in a special Venus issue of Täheaeg Magazine. Some good news for a change!

Soap Strata

My mother, a child of the Great Depression, was thrifty in a way I often found absurd. She wasn’t stingy and could be extremely generous, but she hated waste. She could make a meal out of scraps of food that we more careless people would have tossed before ordering take-out. Whenever a bar of bath soap had been worn down to a sliver, it ended up in a soap dish. Sometimes these pieces were pressed together and shaped into a ball, but more often they accumulated in a pile that soon looked like a miniature model of geologic strata.

When my mother died in 2018, I found myself collecting my own slivers of soap in what now seems like an unconscious ritual of mourning. “You never know when you might need this,” my mom used to say about some battered old pot or other worn out artifact. Now that I’m almost constantly washing my hands with a thin stratum of soap, I know how right she was.