Mark W Tiedemann

Blog

Mid Life

That’s optimistic.

So recently I turned 59. It doesn’t feel much different from 58, or that from 57, but since I often still feel 35, it occasionally jars. I have little to complain about, save for a nagging sense of lack of time.

I’d been toying with getting an electric guitar for years. A frivolity I could not quite talk myself into for a long time. I have a terrific acoustic guitar which I do not play as well as I should, but which gives me a great deal of pleasure pretending to play well.

There are some things you just can’t mimic on an acoustic, though. It’s like trying to play Deep Purple on a spinet pianola. It lacks gravitas.

So an opportunity came my way and I threw common sense to the wind and bought a delightful Epiphone Les Paul. Not the one I’d had my eyes on for many years, but it’s a Les Paul. (Yeah, yeah, I hear the purists kvetching over in the corner, but it ain’t a Gibson, like that makes all that much difference. Well, it does, by several hundred dollars.)

Which necessitated getting an amplifier.

I have a good friend in Jefferson City who is something of a musician (actually, he’s a very good musician and graces me with a willingness to jam on our infrequent visits) who knows people. Sound people. I told him what I’d gotten and he said “Come on out and we’ll fix you up.”

Fix me up indeed.

I’ve been out of the music biz too long, I didn’t even recognize the name—a Line—but it’s a gem. 50 watts, all the bells and whistles (well, at least more than I’ll master in the next several years) and by pure serendipity the color scheme matches my axe. It came with a pedal board, too, which, for the price I paid, astonished me.

I have every intention of getting down to it and learning some songs. I’ve been playing it almost every day since I brought it home. It is loud. We have installed it in my office, so I can close the door, and Donna can enjoy it through the walls and floor. It’s more than I need.

I did not buy the Ferrari. I’m having a much more modest midlife, er, crisis. More a midlife ruffle, really. Despite my complaining, I’m a reasonably happy guy. Hell, I’m still alive, which after last year’s little contretemps is a very positive thing.

I’ve been finding online lessons. Stumbled on a guitar player of some considerable merit who does instructional videos, although I can barely keep up. (He tends to assume you already know the rudiments.) So I thought I’d put one here just to show you how far out of reach my aspirations go.

Till I started surfing for this kind of thing I’d never heard of this guy. (Told you I’ve kind of been out of it for a while.) Turns out he did a turn with Asia. Yeah, Heat of the Moment Asia, but an incarnation with only one original member, Geoffrey Downes. I’m trying to imagine what they must’ve sounded like with this guy.

Anyway, I’m dipping into his how-to vids. He reminds me a lot of Ian Anderson.

Anyway, I must now get back to the start-up of my second half-century. Stay tuned.

October 30, 2013
Revisions

I’ve been a bit dissatisfied with my blog of late. I keep finding themes I like, then when the updates come through and I click on them, the pages disappear. I’d have to go into the guts of things on my server and delete the old and re-install it, the damn thing won’t just update like it should.

But I get to try out new looks as a result. I’ll try this one for a while and see how I like it. My archive links have disappeared, which really annoys me, but I’ll figure it out.

I get a day off tomorrow. I’ll write something more meaningful then. Till, then…

October 23, 2013
Spoiled Children

“If I don’t get my way I’m gonna hold my breath till I turn blue and die!”

Or some variation thereof.

Am I talking about children? Of a sort. I’m talking about congressional Republicans, actually, because that’s about what this current confrontation amounts to.

Very simply, there is a rock-solid block of opposition to President Obama that can only be described as perverse. Nothing he does is acceptable to a certain cadre of these folks, even if it was originally an idea from the GOP.

When the ACA was being constructed, they derailed single payer, brought in industry deal-breakers, did everything they could to make sure their constituents (read: Big Pharma, Big Med, etc) continued to receive inordinately large slices of the health care spending pie at the expense of a sane program, and, under Obama’s direction, assembled this lurching Frankenstein critter themselves, and have been bitching about it ever since. They did not want to pass any kind of national health care program, in fact they wanted to take apart the existing ones (MediCare and, most especially, MedicAid), and maybe they thought Obama would veto the beast they built.

He didn’t. It actually has a lot in it that has turned out to be popular. That which may be less so or may not work well, will be corrected over time, just like every other program of this sort. MediCare/MedicAid was a stumbling mess when it was first enacted, but over time it has been modified until both programs work fairly well. (It took a Republican to recomplicate matters with MediCare Part D, but…)

But the fact is, this is the law. Not only that, it passed Constitutional muster. It is the law. Not only that, the GOP ran partly on repealing the ACA, and Obama was thoroughly re-elected. It is the law. The people, in aggregate, have spoken. It is the law.

Now, it’s not like we haven’t repealed laws before when they proved bad or ineffective. It’s not like we haven’t changed laws to make them more in line with our expectations. It’s not like if the ACA isn’t dealt with right now, there will never be a chance again to do something with it.

But there’s a method, a process, a protocol.

I have never liked the back-door method of defunding or underfunding programs voted on in order to keep them inoperative and cause them to function so poorly that people will support their repeal. It’s a cheat. It happens quite a lot. This may be the most high profile example of the attempt yet. It’s a tantrum thrown by children who haven’t gotten their way.

Sometimes you can debate who started what fight, but the fact is the House has voted over 40 times to repeal “Obamacare” and has lost each time. How any of them imagined filibustering the entire government over this was in any way defensible beggars the imagination. To then turn around and say that the President won’t negotiate is ludicrous.

Look, it doesn’t matter if you don’t like the ACA or the idea of it, the fact is we voted on this and it is now the law. Put your grown up pants on and live with it until, by due process, you can change the law. Due process. The system has spoken and you lost.

Boehner, for his part, is an ineffective speaker. He cannot control his own caucus. He’s terrified of losing the speakership, so he’s now in a position in which he has to distort the entire process to accommodate less than 40 representatives who are the well-known tail wagging the baffled dog. In fact, he’s now putting forth such transparent distortions of the truth one wonders what became of the otherwise fairly reasonable congressman.

Obama cannot yield. This cannot be established as an acceptable tactic. This is the very definition of minority rule.

All because…

Well, there are a number of theories, but overall it seems because a faction has determined that, though they are a part of it, Government is incapable of doing anything beneficial and the only way to go is to kill it. We’ve heard that before, from Grover Norquist, but even he is looking at these folks with trembling knees.

They bitch about Entitlement. What is this if not the full flower of Entitlement? They feel entitled to school the rest of us on what this country ought to be like. As if that were not bad enough, they either have no viable vision for what the country should be like or their history is so flawed as to be laughable. Or cryable. They know nothing. They come from districts so jerrymandered that their constituents might as well be clones. They look at all opposition and see a reflection of their mindset without realizing that they are the ones who will or won’t do everything they accuse their enemies of. They see the world in terms of conspiracy, in terms of destiny, in terms of some version of history that one might find in the cheapest sort of political thriller, unresearched and fecklessly inept. They stand up for values of which they have no understanding.

They are acting like spoiled children who never learned how to play with others. Even their Wall Street supporters are beginning to look at them with alarm.

They didn’t get their way. Now nobody will get what they want.

I take some small comfort in realizing that this, too, will pass, and they will enter the history along with other factions of discord and ineptness. I’m just waiting for their “Have you no shame” moment.

And if they don’t know what that is, well, that’s a big part of the problem right there.

October 8, 2013
Upcoming…and Going

It’s been a week of deadlines of various kinds. I got through the initial editing for the short story collection, at least of the stories I had notes on from my editor/publisher. I had three student stories to workshop and I finished those. I had new photographs to order for the upcoming Archon art show and those are in. This morning I have to go get supplies for that from Art Mart.

And, unusually, this past weekend was filled with parties. Friday night with Jim and Maia, who are terrific people, wine connoiseurs and excellent cooks, who live in a terrific old house. Neither of us have been up quite so late in a long time. Then Saturday night over at Lucy’s new house for a pleasant evening with old friends, not quite as late. Yesterday, I worked.

This morning I’m working here, and of course what I intended to do and what I’m ending up doing are two different things, but…

I am working on a new short story. I had a terrific idea a few weeks ago and wrote the first couple of pages before having to attend to the Other Stuff in need of doing. Isn’t that how it goes? And now the dryer isn’t working right. One more thing.

But this weekend is Archon and I have things pretty well prepared for that. The only thing lacking is a Big Announcement about a new novel coming out. I’ve become so accustomed to that state of affairs now that I don’t know how I’d react anymore if I did have news.

I’ll talk about the oddments and curios of Archon next week. Meantime, an image upon which to contemplate my return. Something…enigmatic….

September 30, 2013
Updates and Such

I’m about to be a bit busy, so I thought I’d let folks know what’s going on.

I’m working on the edits for my VERY FIRST short story collection. Yes, indeed, I will have a new book coming out next spring from Walrus Publishing, a local publisher, and I’m going through edits now. I’m really excited about this because I’d been starting to think I’d never get one of these. There will be about 10 stories, a mix of previously published and never-before-published. For the moment, it’s called Gravity Box and Other Places. If all goes well, I’ll even get the cover artist I want, and I’ve already got commitments for blurbs from some terrific people.

The other thing, after that, will be the third alternate history novel in the series that is currently seeking a good home through the marvelous efforts of my agent, Jen Udden. So my winter is spoken for, as it were.

I also have every intention of publishing short fiction again. I started a new story a week ago that I think might have legs and I have a number in the hopper that need work, but dammit, I used to publish short fiction, I will do so again.

Finally, I’m beginning to formulate some ideas for exhibiting my photographs. I just finished putting together a set of new images for the upcoming Archon art show and in going through the work I’ve been doing since I went digital, I think it’s time I did something with all these besides just gaze upon them with self-satisfied pleasure.

So I have a busy fall and winter coming up. This on top of what has turned out to be a most pleasant day job at Left Bank Books.

I will post here, of course, it’s just that you may find some rather long gaps between one and the next, so I wanted to explain.

So…

September 22, 2013
Coming Home

Coming Home

September 16, 2013
Alta

Final phase of our trip involves two special people whose acquaintance with us is one of those improbables that make life so unpredictably fascinating.

I do not recall when I first met Peter Fuss. I am sure it was through the agency of my friend Tom, who was taking Peter’s philosophy class at UMSL, back in the late 70s or early 80s. Time has mushed together around certain things and I can’t pinpoint occurrence with the accuracy I’d like. I’ve never been able to keep a journal (with the exception of this blog) so I have no notation anywhere of when we first met, but it was not memorable.

Gradually, however, a circle of associates accrued of which I became first a peripheral part and then later a more central element around informal discussions of philosophy, semantics, literature, and other related subjects. Peter was always an anchor member of these groups. These I can say with some accuracy that we began to attend regularly from 1986 on and they took many forms. Membership shifted as much as interest, but always there was Peter and his colleague, John, with whom Peter had been working for years on a translation of the works of Hegel.

There were artists, lawyers, social workers, writers, and students. We broke off from attending for some years, then rejoined in the late 90s at the behest of another acquaintance. At that time, the group had settled into a long and deep reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which at first I thought would be drudgery, but turned out to be amazing. We stayed on to do Dante—the Commedia—which we finished a couple years ago.

Peter had by then long since divorced one woman and had remarried, to Nan, with whom he now lives atop a four thousand foot hummock northeast of Sacramento on 20 acres of forested land. Nan teaches tax law. Both of them are urbane, sophisticated people, the last sorts I would have expect to embrace a rural life, but they’re thriving on it.

Peter In His Lair

They’re building a nice house, they have two terrific dogs—Billie and Rikki—and are surrounded by right wingers. This is a part of California much dedicated to a conservative view which we from the Midwest tend to think of as our own local, homegrown politics, but in some respects we’re amateurs. Peter and Nan, plus one or two others, seem to be the sole torchbearers for liberalism in the area.

Even so, they’re happy there, and it is difficult to argue. Where they live, you can see all the stars, and a drive to town takes you through great beauty. They welcomed us into this retreat and hosted us for four days. We took a drive with them down to Placerville where stands the Other Winery we loved (Boger) and spent a cool afternoon drinking good wine and eating a late lunch and discoursing. (I suspect I have never just “talked” with Peter, we have always discoursed.)

We met up with some of their neighbors for a short tour through part of the area, into more lovely scenery.

Within this roughly fifty square miles we found a variety of landscapes and climates. Donna took walks with Billie and Rikki, Peter and I caught up on whatever we found worth catching up on, and the four of us discussed everything from local foods, the economy, international law, and esoteric spiritualism I burned through the balance of the chip in my camera and I now have enough images to keep me busy in Photoshop for months.

In some ways, this trip recapitulated our first major vacation together back in 1984. We attended our first Worldcon, L.A.Con II (Gordon R. Dickson was the guest of honor and the Star Wars trilogy had finally been released in its entirety) and afterward, in order to cleanse soul of all that we went to Estes Park in Colorado and wandered around the mountains for a few days.

On our last day, as we were getting ready to go out to dinner, the dogs ran off. Nothing that unusual, but their timing was terrible and we spent an hour or more trying to get them back. They finally came to the house, Nan fed them, and we went to dinner.

Upon our return, Rikki (to the left here), the smaller of the pair, didn’t seem to be doing so well. Nan nestled the dog in her lap, but something wasn’t right.

Nan called the vet, who instructed her to keep a watch and if Rikki worsened, bring her in. Hmm. That would entail a drive down the barely-graded road, upon which there were no lights, at night. It was a bumpy ride in daylight. Well.

So we put in the movie we’d all decided to watch—To Have and Have Not—and about an hour in, Nan decided Rikki was worse. The dog really was magnificently lethargic, barely responsive to what was going on around her. Nan bundled her up and took off.

We finished the movie.

At one in the morning Nan poked her head into the bedroom to tell us Rikki would be fine, evidently she’d gotten into a thicket of wild marijuana and eaten…too much.

Day came, time to leave. Peter took us to breakfast in town one last time, and then we headed for Sacramento.

This trip is too full. We’ll be able to sort through the memories for years without running out of the wonder and pleasure. All of which was prompted by the call to reunion at the beginning by our friends Nicola and Kelley, of whom I have written before and will no doubt write again. (Today is September 4th and we received a notice from them a few weeks back that they intend to get married today, because, where they live, they now can. They wanted us there, but it’s just not possible. We were there at their joining ceremony 20 years ago in Atlanta. So let me take a moment, as I write this, to wish them congratulations and as much joy and wonder in the next 20 as they had in the previous—more, in fact.) The reunion was tremendous and the journey after was one of our best.

Life is good.

September 4, 2013
Mount Shasta

It takes a long time to drive past a mountain. A long time…

August 22, 2013
Wine

Departing Crescent City, we headed north. As previously mentioned, we continued passing through some remarkably beautiful country. The road was a bit twisty, but nothing like the semi-harrowing drive across the mountains on 36, and we managed to make several stops to indulge my need to photograph. (Really, sometimes I think the best way to do one of these trips is to walk. Sometimes every twenty feet there’s something new, something seductively photogenic. Not all of it comes out as well as you initially thought it would, but…)

Passing into Oregon, the road leveled out, the land flattened a bit. Presently we came to a collection of buildings—gas station, shops, etc—called Cave Junction. As we neared the major intersection, a sign appeared.

Bridgeview Winery 4 miles →

Donna veered off the road, onto the parking lot of the gas station/convenience store, bounded over to the new road, and headed east.

A bit of history. Back in 2001 we did out first major west coast visit, flying into Oakland, renting a car, and driving up to Seattle, meandering along the way. It was a marvelous, magical trip. This current trip was partly intended to fill in some of the gaps of what we missed that time.

Anyway, after one particularly long day of driving (in Oregon) we stumbled into a hotel (somewhere) as twilight was coming on, tired and hungry. Across the parking lot was a Marie Callendar Restaurant. (Yes, just like the one we stopped at in Eureka.) Donna likes to tease me about being surprised that such a thing exists. Unlike me, she actually read the box one of their frozen dinners came in, so she was aware that the franchise began as a chain of restaurants on the west coast. I was surprised that first time, but no longer, but people in the midwest usually are surprised, and I like to play to that. What did surprise me about that first experience was (a) the quality of the food and (b) their house wine was superb. I mean, really good.

It was Bridgeview. We’ve subsequently added Bridgeview to our list of preferred wines when we have a chance to restock our cellar (modest as it is).

So here we were rumbling down a narrow road on the way to that (we hoped) very winery, a gift of serendipity.

Of course, it wasn’t four miles straight down the road. We turned south onto an even narrower road, and came finally to sprawling vineyards and a gate:

We drove into a lovely compound with a lake, wildlife, and a menagerie of impressive brass sculptures—eagles, mainly (though they lacked one thing to make their diving attack poses work to best effect: targets)—and it turned out we were the only visitors so far that day. We did a tasting, hosted by an enthusiastic woman who checked to make sure we could still find Bridgeview in Missouri, and waxed eloquent about their new vintages. (They now bottle a Gevurtstraminer that I think my mother would like—she prefers them sweet.)

I was a little disappointed to see that they have now gotten so big that they’re putting product in boxes. Not that there’s anything precisely wrong with that, but…

But the sampling was excellent. They have a fine Pinot (dark and white) and their signature cab was as good as we remember.

We bought a couple bottles to enjoy with our friends in Alta in a couple of days, then drove back up to the highway and continued on.

The landscape can change dramatically sometimes, but now it was a gradual shift from shady roads to higher mountain and then, finally, reaching I-5, which was pretty much near the crest of the chain.

The day was hot and although our air-conditioner functioned admirably, a few hours constant driving under cloudless skies wore on us. Also, long sections of the highway were paved in such a way that the road noise penetrated our bones. I could barely hear anything Donna said. It gnawed on our nerves and by the time we got just north of Redding we were frazzled. We paused at one more rest stop before the final leg into Redding, and there Donna made a special moment with the seabirds that came this far inland for tourist forage. She had a bag of Doritos and conducted a gathering flock in an elegant little dance.

We drove the rest of the way into Redding. Between the road and the heat, we weren’t going much farther. At the first exit with a hotel sign, we pulled off and found a Fairfield Inn squirreled away in an industrial court. Donna wanted a room and food, the sooner the better.

I walked up to the counter and inquired about a vacancy. “Absolutely. We have a king.” She looked at me. “You aren’t a member of AARP, are you? No, of course not.”

“I’m not, but I qualify.”

She blinked. “If you were, I could give you the senior discount. But…you aren’t even fifty, are you?”

“Fifty-eight.”

“No!”

I produced my ID. “Well, you sure take care of yourself! Tell you what, I’ll give it to you anyway.”

I unloaded the car quickly and asked about food. Dill’s Deli was right across the road. I ushered Donna into a very open space that was more cafeteria than regular dining, but it smelled good and the portions were ample.

Sitting there, however, I became aware of the signage. Even the napkin holder at our table boasted a very pro-NRA affiliation. FOX News was on the monitors and it just felt like a somewhat right of center place, but when you’re tired and hungry, what’s the difference? It was barbeque and it was good.

That night was the first time since we’d landed that we watched any television. I channel-surfed and found a local show, guitarist Ed Ballantine hosting a blues pianist in discussion and some jams. In some ways it felt like we’d experienced a good weekend all in that day.

“Good night, Donna.”

“Good night, Mark.”

August 21, 2013
A Little Added Something

An upgrade to the image post a few posts back. This is closer to what I had in mind.

August 19, 2013