Week 3 of the Write-a-thon ended yesterday night. (For me, since I’m doing my writing on a week that runs Monday-Sunday, that is.) Here’s my weekly update! If you don’t know what this Write-a-thon is, and want to know more, see here. (While I have a few generous sponsors already, I’d still love a few more, and if you’d like, it’s easy. More info on what’s in it for you at the link above.)
A short post, because I’m busy… While searching (fruitlessly) for a picture of the brewer John Perkins at Shut Up At Barclay Perkins, I found a great post about another sort of animal laborer in the old London brewhouse: cats. Probably anyone who’s lived on a farm isn’t surprised, but this was news to me, even if it immediately made sense. I’ve mentioned before how work-animals–specifically horses–were an important part of the brewhouse. But I hadn’t realized that cats, too were used by brewers. It makes sense, of course: rats like to eat grain, and cats like to hunt …
So: Week 2 of the Write-a-thon is over. (For me, since I’m doing my writing on a week that runs Monday-Sunday, that is.) Here’s my weekly update! If you don’t know what this Write-a-thon is, and want to know more, see here. (I’m still looking for sponsors, and if you’d like, it’s easy. More info at the link.)
Long story short? Free (as in “free beer”) beer. And food. And a horse-drawn cart. But you want the long version, right? In a very recent post, I speculated on parallels between Georgian England and other societies that are in a comparable stage of internalizing modernity, industrialization, urbanization, and so on. I specifically suggested that what had sounded so odd to me about the handling of the Bin Duong rioters here in Vietnam–trying to appease them, and even give them a refreshing drink–might have a parallel in Georgian England. Well, whaddaya know. While reading a paper on the hop trade …
So, I’m doing the Clarion West Write-a-Thon this summer. I started a week ago, and was meaning to post about it, but I got busy, so I’m posting now instead. I need sponsors, because trust me, I’m writing my ass off. What’s a Write-a-thon? Like a marathon, except instead of running, you write and write and write. The money raised goes to the Clarion West Workshop. Sign me up! Cool! You can sponsor me here! Just follow that link and click on Sponsor Gord Sellar. How will I know if you finish your writing pledge? I’ll be posting weekly updates on …
I mentioned the other day that I’ve been writing a couple of short stories, just to give myself a breather on the novel I’m working on. One of those stories, the one I discussed in connection with the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival, is kind of response to two interesting “comet” SF stories I read back in 2010, and have been thinking about ever since: In the Days of the Comet by H.G. Wells, “The Comet” by W.E.B. Du Bois (which was collected in the first of Sheree Renée Thomas’ Dark Matter anthologies, but it’s also available in the public domain, as part Du Bois’ …
You won’t catch me hating on the Newport Jazz Festival, of course! When I was a teenager, the festival on Rhode Island had a kind of magical aura of importance: on PBS I’d seen footage of Gil Evans playing there with Art Farmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlgKLwhoVgI … and listened time and again to John Coltrane and Archie Shepp’s New Thing at Newport: … and Dizzy Gillespie’s big band recording At Newport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJF7075fvg4 … dozens and dozens of times. (Seriously, in high school, I was baffled by how everyone was into music we all knew nobody would be listening to by 2002. My jam …
I mentioned a while back that I’m listening to an audiobook of The Difference Engine. Well, I’m pretty close to the end now, and enjoying the hell out of it. One phrase that comes to mind is how Edward Said described the novel as a form (in the process of explaining why understanding novels were useful to understanding imperialism), in Culture and Imperialism: Note the highlight: “an incorporative, quasi-encyclopedic cultural form.” That is not only something I aspire to in my own fiction writing, but it most definitely is true of The Difference Engine, except it’s sort of a weirdcyclopedia, …
First: she’s 43. Surely “Rat Lady” or “Rat Woman” is more appropriate now? Still… brrrrrrr: The whole news article is here. That 15,000 rats from one breeding pair in a single year sound impressive till you grasp that it’s asimple logarithmic progress. One breeding pair become a bunch of breeding pairs which then breed a ton of breeding pairs which end up being 15,000 in a year. This is going to sound weird, but, okay, whatever… Rats of a special kind play a role in my current writing project, and my time at the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop instilled in …
There’s some wonderful information in Peter Mathias’ The Brewing Industry in England 1700-1830, especially if you’re looking for funny details about the world of London brewers in the 1730s that could be hacked into alchemical-industrial conspiracy. For example, isinglass: It’s basically made out of fish bladder, and it’s used as a “finings”–that is, you dump some of it into your finished beer (in powder form, I think, though I’ve never used it myself), and it pulls the yeast to the bottom. In other words, it clears up your beer, and it was the main way of doing so prior to mode recent …