If you loved that book, you can honor his memory by planting a caterpillar garden. It doesn't have to be very big, just some larval food plants meant to be eaten.
Folks have mentioned an interest in questions and conversations that make them think. So I've decided to offer more of those. This is the current list of coping skills.
9. Go shopping.
This can be a positive or negative skill, depending on your budget and willpower. It's good if you can use it to meet needs, like buying clothes that fit or healthy food. Not so much if you buy junk and then feel guilty about it, or you can't stick to a budget in a world where online bookstores never close.
A sidestep is virtual shopping. I like thinking about what my characters would wear, eat, drive, etc. It's a good way to practice choosing things based on needs or tastes without spending any money. That's especially helpful when going from a tighter budget to a looser one.
Today is sunny and mild, with fluffy white clouds. We got some rain last night.
I fed the birds. I've seen house finches, robins, a brown thrasher, and a squirrel. They cling to the limp sock and cast sad looks at the window. "Two-legs, the food containers are empty!" "Look around, everything is leafed out now, you can forage." "But the food containers are EMPTY!" LOL
I planted 2 Virginia bluebells in the forest garden. I still need to make covers for them though.
EDIT 5/26/21 -- I planted a purple prairie trillium in the forest garden, then put covers over it and the bluebells.
EDIT 5/26/21 -- I planted 3 yellow bellflowers in the prairie garden and put covers on them.
EDIT 5/26/21 -- I started clearing weeds and brush from the purple-and-white garden. That's where I'll be planting 3 sedums tomorrow.
Everyone needs contact comfort sometimes. Not everyone has ample opportunities for this in facetime. So here is a chance for a cuddle party in cyberspace. Virtual cuddling can help people feel better.
We have a cuddle room that comes with fort cushions, fort frames, sheets for draping, and a weighted blanket. A nest full of colorful egg pillows sits in one corner. There is a basket of grooming brushes, hairbrushes, and styling combs. A bin holds textured pillows. There is a big basket of craft supplies along with art markers, coloring pages, and blank paper. The kitchen has a popcorn machine. Labels are available to mark dietary needs, recipe ingredients, and level of spiciness. Here is the bathroom, open to everyone. There is a lawn tent and an outdoor hot tub. Bathers should post a sign for nude or clothed activity. Come snuggle up!
This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, June 1, 2021 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "I never thought I'd have to say that." I'll be soliciting ideas for explorers, partners, housemates, siblings, parents, teachers, clergy, leaders, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, activists, rebels, other people who get into odd situations, parenting, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, the forest primeval, liminal zones, schools, churches, sharehouses, kitchens, campfires, laboratories, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, stores, farmer's markets, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where the unexpected happens, sudden surprises, travel mishaps, the buck stops here, trial and error, weird food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, Get a Life Program, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.
Among my more relevant series for the main theme:
An Army of One is developing its own neurovariant culture.
The Bear Tunnels introduces modern principles to people in the past.
A Conflagration of Dragons has the Six Races (plus the dragons) who all have different cultures and climates. This often poses challenges for the refugees.
The Daughters of the Apocalypse has people trying to find enough resources to survive, when former cities are unsafe.
Eloquent Souls presents a setting where soulmarks are common, leading to many odd expressions as people try to make their Words distinctive.
Feathered Nests is about humans interacting with birdlike aliens, and their cross-cultural dynamics.
Frankenstein's Family features two scientists running a valley in historic Romania, along with a pack of werewolves, a couple of vampires, and a mummy.
Hart's Farm is a free love community with lots of interesting relationships.
Monster House is suburban fantasy with a diverse household.
The Moon Door explores a women's chronic pain group and lycanthropy.
The Ocracies has a wide variety of countries crammed together, each with a totally different government.
Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society.
Or you can ask for something new.
I have a linkback poem, "The Loving Embrace of Night" (11 verses, standalone).
If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.
Writing is usually considered a solitary pursuit. One exception to this is a fascinating exercise called a "fishbowl." This has various forms, but all of them basically involve some kind of writing in public, usually with interaction between author and audience. A famous example is Harlan Ellison's series of"stories under glass"in which he sits in a bookstore window and writes a new story based on an idea that someone gives him.Writing classessometimes include a version where students watch each other write, often with students calling out suggestions which are chalked up on the blackboard for those writing to use as inspiration.
I'm going to host a Poetry Fishbowl on my blog on Tuesday, June 1. I'll be soliciting ideas for thematic characters, plots, settings, objects, and poetic forms in particular. Chances are I'll spend a good chunk of the day, from afternoon to evening or more, alternating between this site and doing stuff offline so my back doesn't weld itself to the chair.
Perks:I will post at least one of the resulting fishbowl poems on the blog for everyone to enjoy, andan extra oneif there's at least one new prompter or donor. The rest will be available for audience members to buy, and whatever's left over will go into my archive for magazine submission.
If donations total $100 then you get a free $15 poem; $150 gets you a free $20 poem; and $200 gets you a free epic, posted after the Poetry Fishbowl. These will usually beseries poems if I have them; otherwise I may offer non-series poems or series poems in a different size. If donations reach $250, you get one step toward a bonus fishbowl; four of these activates the perk, and they don't have to be four months in a row. Everyone will get to vote on which series, and give prompts during the extra fishbowl, although it may be a half-day rather than a whole day. If donations reach $300, there will be a half-price sale in one series.
I want to promote linkbacks pointing people to the "Fishbowl Open" post on Tuesday. I have a spare series poem available, and each linkback will reveal a verse of "The Loving Embrace of Night" (standalone). One person can do multiple links if they're on different services, like Twitter or LiveJournal, rather than all on Dreamwidth.
If you enjoy my poetry -- or if you just love poetry in general, or want to promote interest in surprises -- please mark the fishbowl date on your calendar. Drop by and give me some ideas, comment on the posted poetry, encourage people to come look, whatever tickles your fancy. I hope to see you then!
Today is partly cloudy, breezy, and warm. There's a chance of rain today and tomorrow, and some of the clouds are darkening.
I fed the birds. I've seen doves, house finches, and cardinals today. Also there are robins and blackbirds pecking the lawn that got mowed a couple days ago.
I planted marigold and moonflower seeds in the barrel garden. I topped up some other pots and planted nasturtiums, shasta daisies, and two different types of petunia. Of these, the shasta daisies are perennials and can be planted at the end of the growing season, where they may sustain themselves in the ground.
The shipment from Spring Hill Nursery came in, a solid 2 months late. These are spring ephemerals, fortunately still dormant for the most part. I don't know how well they'll survive trying to establish in the summer heat, but we'll see.
EDIT 5/25/21 -- I planted more flower seeds in pots.
EDIT 5/25/21 -- I planted more flower seeds in pots, this time including wild leek seeds in the deep narrow pots I saved from previous purchases of prairie wildflowers.
This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls, inspired by discussions with Anonymous on Dreamwidth. It fills the "Rainshadow Road" square in my 2-1-21 "Romance Book Titles" card for the Valentines Bingo fest. It belongs to the Daughters of the Apocalypse series.
This microfunded poem is being posted one verse at a time, as donations come in to cover them. The rate is $0.25/line, so $5 will reveal 20 new lines, and so forth. There is a permanent donation button on my profile page, or you can contact me for other arrangements. You can also ask me about the number of lines per verse, if you want to fund a certain number of verses. So far sponsors include: DW user Freshbakedlady,
1288 lines, Buy It Now = $322 Amount donated = $60 Verses posted = 63 of 376 Amount remaining to fund fully = $262 Amount needed to fund next verse = $1.50 Amount needed to fund the verse after that = $1.25
Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes the Aftermath of apocalypse, reference to wildfires and town collapse, road disrepair, accidental self-poisoning, messy medical details, low-tech medicine, semi-literacy, needing help and hating it, reference to the Grunge and its casualties, severe gender imbalance and age imbalance, plus their social impacts, past refugees, group marriage, food shortage, slow healing, difficult survival decisions, supply shortage, fraught discussion of transferring someone from the armey to the caravan, emotional agony, feeling abandoned, group misery, difficult goodbyes, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.
Catcher kept her eyes on the flat road ahead, just in case it suddenly stopped being flat.
The Clearwater caravan was rolling along Little Shadow Road, whose battered signs still read 395, toward Rainshadow Road, the old I-90.
Little Shadow road was even more battered than its signs, and parts of it were getting hard to pass.
The small town of Mesa had survived but now called itself End Table. It had taken in survivors from other places and was making a concerted effort to keep Little Shadow Road open.
Another small town, Lind, had shrunk in population and was struggling to survive, bolstered only by its large solar farm.
They were the two largest surviving settlements on this road, Connell having fallen apart before the End due to raging wildfires.
Catcher hoped that they could keep this road open, because it was the main link between Rainshadow Road and Southshadow Road, the old I-82.
Without Little Shadow Road, it would be a long-ass drive from Poorland to Spokes, an important trade route.
The problem was, they couldn't keep all the roads left over from Before -- they could barely even maintain the most critical ones.
Every year, the plants nibbled away at the edges while water freezing and thawing dug the chuckholes even deeper down the middle.
Wheeler, driving the first housetruck of the Clearwater caravan, had to find a safe route for the others to follow.
In the second housetruck, Catcher watched her to avoid hazards that could strand them all in this harsh environment.
Down by Poorland it was dry and sandy with sparse grasses dotted by a few winterfat shrubs and the occasional sagebrush.
End Table was on the border between that and the grassland, while Lind had a lot more sagebrush and all the way up in Spokes they had mostly Ponderosa pine.
Catcher had spent enough time driving around Cadia territory to be familiar with most of it, and recently they had spent a lot of time here in the state of Walla or farther south in Lincoln.
In winter it was bitter cold with a few wisps of snow blowing over the land, which could settle in the hollows, so they had to watch the road for treacherous patches of ice.
As the caravan crested a hill, Catcher saw a few pops of color by the road up ahead, one red and some blue.
Closing in, she could make out the rounded humps of tents, mostly brown or dull green, blending into the landscape.
Catcher tensed a little bit -- they must be armey tents, because the rare tobeys who raided the highways drove wartrucks, while the armeys tended to be more reasonable, but with strangers you never knew.
Then people popped out of the tents, hurrying toward the road and waving empty hands to attract attention.
Sure enough, Wheeler put on the hazard lights and pulled over.
In the Aftermath, sacred hospitality had revived as a survival need; with so few people left and hardships whittling away the population, they couldn't afford any avoidable losses.
When things went wrong -- which happened a lot -- then people had to help each other, or they died.
Catcher turned on her hazard lights and pulled over behind Wheeler. In the mirror, she could see the other two housetrucks stopping to park as well.
A young man wearing a battered brown jacket jogged up to the first truck and talked with Wheeler through the window. Then he hurried to the second truck.
Catcher rolled down her window for him.
"I'm Fivestar, leader of the Fairchildren armey," he said. "We've got a man down. My brother is sick and needs help. Wheeler told me that you're a medic."
"I'm Catcher, a midwife," she said, and watched his face fall. "I know some other healing too, though, herbs and such. I'll do what I can."
"Thank you," said Fivestar. "I'll show you to the women's tent."
That turned out to be the one with the red fly stretched over a black-and-white body.
Inside was a girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen, with toasty skin and wild brown curls.
She leaned over a boy who looked even younger. Sweat beaded on his tawny skin as he groaned and clutched his stomach.
Well, that sure didn't look good.
"Cherry, this is Catcher, she's here to help," said Fivestar.
"Oh, good!" Cherry exclaimed, wringing her hands. "I'm only trained for bustups yet -- they weren't supposed to get sick!"
"Anyone can get sick," Catcher said. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"He ate something that's not good for him," Cherry said. "There's so little food now, he must have snuck off and tried ... something."
The poor kid didn't look talkative, so Catcher would have to guess.
It was probably either a plant or carrion, so the problem was toxic rather than corrosive.
"All right, give me a hand looking him over," said Catcher.
The boy was barely responsive, his protests feeble enough to make Fivestar look more worried than ever behind a fringe of shaggy brown hair.
"Come on, Maggot, we found a medic," Fivestar pleaded. "Don't crap out on us now."
Maggot was sweaty and shaking, clearly in pain, but his breathing sounded clear and his pulse was fast but strong.
"I think he's got a chance, if we can get the poison out of him and help his body hang on," said Catcher.
So they set about the unpleasant process of making Maggot throw up whatever he had eaten.
Catcher was hoping for more clues, but nothing came up except for bile and unidentifiable bits of some plant, probably.
Once they got Maggot settled back on his mat, Fivestar excused himself.
Catcher couldn't blame him; healing was messy business.
At least Cherry wasn't squeamish, and more confident now that she had someone to follow.
They got Maggot cleaned up, and then Catcher poured enough charcoal into him to turn his shit black.
Hopefully that would bind the poison so it wouldn't kill him. Once that came through, she could give him herbs to help his liver and kidneys throw off the residue without breaking down in the process.
"What now?" Cherry said, turning wide eyes on Catcher.
"Now we wait," Catcher said. "Keep him clean and warm, as comfortable as possible. Give him as much water as he'll drink -- that will help wash out the poison."
They managed to keep Maggot watered, although he threw up almost as much as he drank.
Then his body decided that diarrhea was a good way to get rid of poison -- which it could be -- and made him even more miserable.
At least the housetrucks had full water tanks, so they wouldn't run out.
Catcher dosed him with ginger tea for the nausea and milk thistle to help his liver and kidneys.
"Can you teach me?" Cherry asked as she watched Catcher brew another pot of ginger tea. "I don't know much about how to treat poisons."
"Sure," said Catcher. "The more you know, the better. Let's see, there's a few more herbs that can detox the body."
"Anything we might actually get around here?" Cherry said.
"Well, marshmallow root can be dried and traded, but it grows wild over much of the west," said Catcher. "Look for it in damp sandy soil -- it forms clumps along creeks or ponds."
"There's no water right around here, but plenty in our range," said Cherry.
busy
nostalgic
creative