Nerds Unite - Standing with Ahmed, for Tech and for Passion

This week's social media storm (there always seems to be one) was about the saga of one Ahmed Mohammed, 14 year old student in Texas. As I'm sure you're aware, Ahmed was taken from his class, questioned by the principle, and arrested by the police because school administrators were too racist to think that a Muslim boy could have electronics for any reason on than a bomb scare and the cops were too stupid to see that the thing he had was just a clock. Yes, I do have a slight bias towards the young student and against the administrators and teachers and police. What brought joy to my heart was the outpouring of support Ahmed received from the tech world including Mark Zuckerberg,



Commander Hadfield) and the political world - all the way up the President of the United States.

That said, there are things that make me quite sad. First, there's the reminder that we still have a long way to go in terms of diversity in the tech sector; when I attend industry events, I see an awful lot of white men. This kind of anti-encouragement isn't going to help. For every Ahmed whose story resonates across the world, I'm sure there are scores of hidden Ahmed's we don't see: the ones whose passions are quietly discouraged or quietly ignored until they stop caring and stop loving the things they love. That's the element of this about which I want to talk today: about passion and about the element of the all-too-predictable backlash against Ahmed about which I'm the most disappointed.

Fred Shen (the Shen of Shen, Milsom and Wilke) has said that one thing he's learned in his decades of business is that a positive attitude is more important than knowledge, experience, or most anything else. I'll add passion as one of those elements of attitude; people will do their best, learn the most, and accomplish the most in endeavours about which they care. This is why I adore my friends in the #AVTweeps community; someone who goes to work, does his job, and then logs onto twitter to talk about his industry is someone really interested who really cares. It's someone who will go the extra kilometer because they feel the joy in a thing well done, because they want to learn, perhaps even to show off a bit for their peers. It's the spirit of a kid who wants to learn more about electronics so he assembles a clock from spare parts to bring to his teachers, to show them "look what I'm doing. I want to do more of this." This is the call that nerd-twitter was answering - that we have our passions as well and do not wish to stand by and see the joy in learning, in doing snuffed out. Who doesn't understand this? The police. They've been soundly mocked (justifiably so) for not knowing what a clock is. What bothered me most was the statement from police spokesperson James McLennan that Ahmed maintained that it was a clock but was unable to give a "broader explanation" as to what it would be used for. Setting aside the obvious answer that clocks are used to tell the time, the broader implication to me is this: the police don't understand what all of us do. They don't understand doing a thing simply to find joy in doing, and further joy in sharing. They have no passion. They walk, yet they are dead inside.

This brings me to the people who should know better: the nerdier-than-thou techdude gatekeepers who want to dismiss Ahmed as "not a real maker" because what he did is, to them, not all that impressive. They've see pictures of the infamous clock and pointed out, perhaps accurately, that the clockish parts which make it work appear to be repurposed rather than created from individual components. It's a cake from a mix, it's a shortcut. It is, to some "not real nerdery". My answer to that is twofold. First, we all start somewhere with the tools and guidance available to us. Remember what Fred Shen said last paragraph: the kids who disassembles and reassembles devices because they loves to tinker with them will, in the end, likely travel farther than the ones who solders at the component level because they are forced to. Ahmed as the passion, he has the attitude. The rest of is is just stuff. He'll learn the stuff - if the love isn't beaten out of him first.

The second thing is that I'm an AV System designer.  There are some on the AV contracting side who will implement the systems which I design. We've all read the technical musings and heard podcast  appearances, for example, from Crestron programmer Hope Roth. Does she get fewer "techie points" because she doesn't design the hardware and didn't create her programming tools from raw assembly language, or can we honor the art in what she does and the passion for the task she has?

I, of course, design systems at the component level; I have some idea of how the parts work, but I don't build them. Over the past years I've spent literally hours talking to people like, for example, Paul Harris of Aurora Multimedia about potential new products and new product categories. My advice if you stop by the Aurora booth at a trade show? Make sure you have plenty of time, because Harris can talk about his products, the challenges in creating them, and their potential with the enthusiasm of a true fanatic. So... does he and his ilk get all the nerd points, or do we want to shrug and point out that they're just implenting FPGAs which do the heavy lifting of video encoding and packetization. Or point out that the FPGA makers are using already-invented video codecs and network topologies?

A bit of personal history: my most fondly remembered High School tech project was a digital voice recorder. It lived in a home-made plexiglass box about a foot and a half wide by three feet long, contained a mess of hand-soldered circuit boards including a timing circuit (which I had some help designing) and a whole mess of hard-wired logic gates to control start/stop functions, to set variable sample rates, and to handle the refresh cycle on the dynamic RAM chips I used. It helped, of course, that as the son of an electrical engineer I had access to not only a mentor but a basement full of tools, supplies, and test equipment. Today, of course, none of the nuts-and-bolts lessons make all that much sense; logic which was hard-wired in 1988 would live on a microprocessor now. It's the experience - taking a thing and turning into another thing, seeing and feeling a creation come to life - which shines the brightest in my memory. That's the experience for which Ahmed and so many others are reaching.

Hipster-nerd gatekeeping, at its worst.

This is why I'm upset to see fellow tech geeks shrug him off as not really one of us, his clock as a "mere" case-mod not worthy of respect. The worst comment I was was from Chris Putnam, a  former Facebook engineer who should know better. From his social media post and general bitch-fest about the topic:

For those who don't know, Putnam famously hacked Facebook to make people's profiles take on the appearance of MySpace pages. Perhaps because he was a young, white male college student the college-educated young, white, males running the place ended up offering him a job where he was instrumental in some major improvements to the platform. He didn't, of course, invent his own facebook from the ground up. I'm angry at his sad, cruel, belittling commentary because it does the same thing Ahmed's teachers are doing: discourage a young man from further participation by sending the message that he doesn't belong. It's gatekeeping, it's exclusionary, and it's counterproductive. In some ways it's worse than the teachers because, coming from inside the tech community  it could carry extra weight with not only Ahmed but with any other kids just starting to tinker.

Watch below as Putnam goes from nasty attacks to mean-spirited mockery on his Facebook page. It's not pretty watching a successful adult bullying a 14 year old just starting out in his field.

I don't know what Ahmed will grow up to be; if he'll create new generations of hardware, find new ways to implement existing tech, or even if his passions turn a different route and he becomes an artist or a poet or something. I'd like to think that, professionally or not, he'll carry his love for things tech throughout his life, even if only as a hobby. Whether he does or not, he'll always remember the joy of taking apart and rebuilding, and he'll always have this moment in which the larger community told him that we see his passion and in it recognize a reflection of our own. That we love him, that we honor him, that he belongs with us.


So Ahmed and all of you other Ahemd's out there, keep doing what you're doing. Don't ever let anyone tell you that it isn't enough. If you have the chance and want to, learn more and go farther. In any event, find your niche.

And you gatekeepers out there, the Chris Putnam's of the world, remember your roots. Learn empathy, learn humility. Welcome the next generation with open arms and open minds, even if their path does not match your.s

On reading The Shephard's Crown, Farewell to the Disc

--WARNING-- 

--HERE THERE BE SPOILERS--

On reading The Shephard's Crown, Terry Pratchett's postumously-published and very last ever Discworld novel, I'd like to take a few moments to reflect on the forty-one books which have come before, as well as give a brief review of this final chapter in the saga. Pratchett is an author who was quite important to me, and one whose work in humorous fantasy gave, perhaps, two strikes against him in any effort to be taken seriously. This is a pity, as his work could be as deep, moving, and interesting as any straight literary fiction. He gave us memorable characters who grew over the decades and will remain in our memories long after the final page is turned.

The very last one. 

I read the novels pretty much in publication order, beginning in the early 1990s with 1983s The Color of Magic in which the Discworld was intrduced along with some soon-to-be recurring characters: Cohen the elderly barbarian warrior, Rincewind the cowardly (and not too competent) wizard, the wizards of the Unseen University (including the orangutan serving as their librarian) and, of course, Death. It was a little bit of a one-note lighthearted romp, but quite a fun one which set the stage for many, many more adventures to come. While Rincewind was a fun character, he wasn't really one of Prachett's best in that his personality was fairly one-dimensional: he was a cowardly wizard. That sentence (and his sad habit of writing "wizzard" on his hat so people knew what he was) tells you nearly all you need know about him. Other characters faired better, telling us more about themselves, growing, and even surprising us a bit in ways which, while unexpected, still fit what we'd seen before. In the "city watch" set of books we meet lazy Fred Colon and his partner "Nobby" Nobs along with one of the heroes of the series, Commander Sam Vimes of the nightwatch. The early Vimes books were absolutely delightful in giving us a flawed yet good-hearted character struggling to do the right thing despite a system which rarely rewards righteousness. We watched Vimes struggle with alcoholism, watched him have to face his prejudices and biases, saw him struggle with protocol when elevated to higher levels of society both in the job and as a result of his marriage into the aristocracy. We saw the conflict develop between the by-the-book honest to a fault Vimes and his boss, the patrician of the city Lord Vetinari. Vetinari describes himself as a tyrant, but a just one. What was best about the early city watch books was that one never really knew what Vetinari would do, never felt that one could trust him. It was a battle between the man on the street and the boss upstairs who needed to engage in certain amounts of manipulation and scheming to keep his position and, hopefully, have the city run smoothly. It was a great set of stories which brought us diversity (as the Watch added dwarves, trolls, and even a werewolf), intrigue, and, at times, victory at a real cost. When the watch faced a killer armed with the Discworld's first gun the final battle cost them one of their own and nearly took the life of another. There were real consequences and a feeling that anything could happen.

That feeling, alas, did not last through the entire series. Vimes in particular lingered on the stage long after his story was, to my way of seeing, over. No longer did you have the struggles of a flawed hero who at times felt over his head,  but you instead had a supercop - honest to a fault, deadly competent, and knowing that he had the full backing of those in power. The ambiguity surrounding Vetinari fell away, leaving us a tyrant in name only who we could trust to never do anything bad to someone about whom we cared. In Raising Steam there was a scene with Vimes, a disguised Vetinari, and others guarding a train against religious zealots. In contrast with the battle over the gun, there was no death of a friend new or old, no price to be paid, and little feeling of menace. Nor did anyone ever seem tempted or in danger of doing the wrong thing. Pratchett was always at his best writing about flawed and somewhat ordinary people. As his characters became less so and he perhaps fell a bit too much in love with them the writing suffered a bit.

This brings us to the witches. The witches - Magrat, Agnes who calls herself Perditax, Nanny Ogg and, most importantly, Granny Weatherwax were wonderful characters. We dealt with a young woman who was a better fit for the world of wizards than witches (in 1987's Equal Rites) and many stories of the senior witches being practical, no-nonsense, decent and somewhat nosy old ladies who kept their part of the world running smoothly. Granny Weatherwax was a hero, but also a very parochial self-righteous busybody. When she went travelling with Ogg and the stars-in-her-eyes young Magrat - a woman who saw witchcraft more in occult jewelry and mysticism than in the small practical miracles by which the older witches lived - she seemed a bit out of place and not altogether comfortable. When Weatherwax and Ogg joined Agnes-who-calls-herself-Perditax (another case of a character trying to reinvent herself) her downhome no-nonsense country wisdom IS to her advantage, but she still seems like a bit of a fish out of water. As the books go on, however, Weatherwax becomes nearly perfect. She does more magic than she did in earlier stories. She makes fewer mistakes. She seems less parochial and, like Vimes, more perfect. Her story - in any meaningful sense - has been over for quite a few books now.

Now that it is finished, a last
pleasure remains: sharing with the
next generation

This brings us to The Shepard's Crown and the shocking events of chapter three. In quite a moving sequence (one of the best written in the book, in this reader's opinion) Granny Weatherwax dies. Her final moments are fitting for her practical, no-nonsense manner; she cleans her cottage, prepares a wicker basket to serve as her casket (it's easy and inexpensive to make; Weatherwax was always frugal), bathes, pins up her hair, gets dressed, and lies down to sleep for the last time. 

It's a change which, for the books, would have been a great improvement in that the vacuum left behind by Weatherwax leaves some nice empty space into which other characters can step. We already see this in the remainder of The Shepard's Crown as Tiffany tries to step into the considerable shoes left by the newly departed. We see her struggling to find her own way and, ultimately, make decisions which would have rippled through the world had it continued.

Was the book perfect? No. It's clear that Sir Terry left it as a work in progress, and equally clear that the decision was made to publish as-is rather than have another writer pad it a bit and flesh out the parts that seem rushed and somewhat incomplete. 

The Tiffany Aching books have not only been the best of the later Discworld novels, but they might have held the key to revitalizing the larger series. I mourn not only for Sir Terry, not only for the end of a beloved series, but for all the many more stories which will now remain untold.

In Defense of the Participation Trophy

NFL player James Harrison recently made a splash with a bit of stunt-parenting in his public decision to take away the "participation trophies" his two children were given in a youth league. It was his insistence that the children earn any award they are given and that absent an actual victory the acceptance of a trophy for participation runs contrary to, as he hashtagged it, #HarrisonFamilyValues. You all know that your humble pixel-and-ink stained wretch is also a father, coincidentally of two children roughly the same age as Harrison's (his are, as we write this, six and eight. Mine are four and eight). This makes parenting one of those issues which resonates with me, and one to which I give a great deal of thought. My thought on this is that Harrison is twice wrong.

Stunt Parenting 
In my opener I referred to this as a bit of "stunt parenting"; my word for disciplinary choices made publicly and loudly as what almost becomes a kind of performance art. You've seen them before over the years; the woman who wrote the needlessly confrontational "contract" for her daughter's use of an iPhone. The redneck idiot who literally shot his daughter's laptop. The halfwit who dressed in a pair of micro-shorts to shame his daughter for what he saw as her poor choice of attire (thought I will concede the possibility that the latter really just wanted to show off the results of all those squats he did at the gym).  There aren't many people who do things like this, but the ones who do get enough attention that public shaming of our kids as punishment has become a bit of a mini-trend.

This is, to my mind, wrong. It make ones kids a prop in a social statement, involves them in a conversation which they didn't ask to join. If the very idea that a six-year-old e given a trophy that he didn't earn with a win is so anathema to Harrison then he has the option of writing a letter to the youth league in which his children play or even in talking to their coach. This is everyone's right as a parent, and given his status as a professional football player there's even a chance that they'd listen to Harrison. He also has the right to quietly take the trophies away from his six and eight-year old sons and tell them that he doesn't believe that they deserve them, and one should only get what one deserves. He'd be wrong to do so, but there's no manual for parenting; on some days it seems like a decades-long journey into all of the ways a human can be wrong about things. We all have to take things away from our children in the name of discipline, safety, or - in this case - values. There's no need for our children to have to be publicly seen losing something.

Everything Must Be Earned - with VICTORY!
I'm sure that some of you think I'm crazy (OK, more crazy than usual) and that the idea that trophies are for winning isn't such a bad one. Why do I disagree on the substance as well as the public nature of it? First, remember, the children are six and eight years old. These are young children just learning about sport and competition. One of the first things they need learn is to participate, to put in effort, to try. They need to learn to listen to the coach, to practice, to win and lose with grace. Rewarding a child for participation encourages the child to keep participating, to come back next season, to keep learning. One gets more of the behavior which one encourages. At such young ages, it is right and appropriate to encourage participation.

Yes, this will mean giving awards to some children who aren't winners. Who are those children? They might be the ones not fortunate enough to be chosen for a more talented team. They might be the ones who are a bit smaller, who are developing at a bit of a slower pace than their peers. They might be the ones whose parents work longer hours and don't have the time to throw a ball around the backyard with them. My point here is that "trophy only for the winner" leaves quite a few kids with the impression - and an accurate NFL player James Harrison recently made a splash with a bit of stunt-parenting in his public decision to take away the "participation trophies" his two children were given in a youth league. It was his insistence that the children earn any award they are given and that absent an actual victory the acceptance of a trophy for participation runs contrary to, as he hashtagged it, #HarrisonFamilyValues. You all know that your humble pixel-and-ink stained wretch is also a father, coincidentally of two children roughly the same age as Harrison's (his are, as we write this, six and eight. Mine are four and eight). This makes parenting one of those issues which resonates with me, and one to which I give a great deal of thought. My thought on this is that Harrison is twice wrong.

Stunt Parenting 
In my opener I referred to this as a bit of "stunt parenting"; my word for disciplinary choices made publicly and loudly as what almost becomes a kind of performance art. You've seen them before over the years; the woman who wrote the needlessly confrontational "contract" for her daughter's use of an iPhone. The redneck idiot who literally shot his daughter's laptop. The halfwit who dressed in a pair of micro-shorts to shame his daughter for what he saw as her poor choice of attire (thought I will concede the possibility that the latter really just wanted to show off the results of all those squats he did at the gym).  There aren't many people who do things like this, but the ones who do get enough attention that public shaming of our kids as punishment has become a bit of a mini-trend.

This is, to my mind, wrong. It make ones kids a prop in a social statement, involves them in a conversation which they didn't ask to join. If the very idea that a six-year-old e given a trophy that he didn't earn with a win is so anathema to Harrison then he has the option of writing a letter to the youth league in which his children play or even in talking to their coach. This is everyone's right as a parent, and given his status as a professional football player there's even a chance that they'd listen to Harrison. He also has the right to quietly take the trophies away from his six and eight-year old sons and tell them that he doesn't believe that they deserve them, and one should only get what one deserves. He'd be wrong to do so, but there's no manual for parenting; on some days it seems like a decades-long journey into all of the ways a human can be wrong about things. We all have to take things away from our children in the name of discipline, safety, or - in this case - values. There's no need for our children to have to be publicly seen losing something.

Everything Must Be Earned - with VICTORY!
I'm sure that some of you think I'm crazy (OK, more crazy than usual) and that the idea that trophies are for winning isn't such a bad one. Why do I disagree on the substance as well as the public nature of it? First, remember, the children are six and eight years old. These are young children just learning about sport and competition. One of the first things they need learn is to participate, to put in effort, to try. They need to learn to listen to the coach, to practice, to win and lose with grace. Rewarding a child for participation encourages the child to keep participating, to come back next season, to keep learning. Yes, this will mean giving awards to some children who aren't winners. Who are those children? They might be the ones not fortunate enough to be chosen for a more talented team. They might be the ones who are a bit smaller, who are developing at a bit of a slower pace than their peers. They might be the ones whose parents work longer hours and don't have the time to throw a ball around the backyard with them. My point here is that "trophy only for the winner" leaves quite a few kids with the impression - and an accurate impression at that - that the trophy and recognition are beyond their reach for factors over which they have no control. Absent the promise of reward there's less incentive to keep coming back and keep trying. Yes, some will - but some will feel dejected and grow resentful. Remember these are children under the age of ten about whom we're talking, including a six year old. That anybody would take a trophy away from a six year old with the words "you didn't earn that" is, to me, bizarre and cruel.

This leans towards the political for me because it plays into the libertarian fallacy that we live in a perfect meritocracy in which the winners are those with the drive and skills and effort who deserve to win. It ignores chance (the luck of the draw putting a slightly awkward kid on the same team as a few budding superstars), and privilege (the ability of some to afford equipment to practice at home, private lessons, or even extra time with the parents). It sends a poor message to those not getting a trophy that their effort is not appreciated, but it sends an equally poor message to the winners that they're better than the losers, and that they deserve more based on their being on a winning team.

There was a scene in George Martin's A Game of Thrones in which Jon Snow, a the bastard son of the powerful and honorable Eddard Stark, gets into an altercation with his fellow soldiers on the Night Watch. He easily bests one in a duel, and is asked by his commander if he thinks the men he beat had had lessons in swordplay, time to train and practice, and even a proper sword at an early age. Snow was shamed, and gained a measure of humility in his dealings with those from the lower classes. The idea that winning is everything worth rewarding is a complete reversal of this lesson.

But....that's not how the real world works!
The biggest argument I see against participation trophies is the idea that kids need to learn "how the real world works". Setting aside for the moment the question of whether or not taking a trophy away from a six-year-old is a reasonable way to teach such a lesson - or if such lessons need to be taught at all - I'd argue that for the majority of us this is NOT how the world works. The real world can be competitive, yes. But it can also be collaborative. Yes, in the workplace an employer will expect results but in my experience they will give those who show effort and a positive attitude more chances to learn to succeed. It's also my experience that those who do keep trying often do, in the end, contribute something of value.

I'll close with a true story. In September a few years back I was hired for my current position at the firm of Shen, Milsom and Wilke. IT was a good start for me in which I made some friends on our team, joined in the effort to complete various projects, and overall started learning the ropes of the consulting side of the AV business. In January, four months after I'd started, the department head called me into his office for my review. At the end he said that this is when year-end bonuses would be given out and that the department had done well enough that year to merit bonuses for the staff. When I told him that I understood that I'd only been there a few months but looked forward to helping earn a bonus the next year I was told that at present I was a member of the team, and as a member of the team would share in the bonus with everyone else. It was, arguably, a participation trophy in real life; I was the junior-most member of the staff and am sure that whatever success the department had it could have had without me. What it did was send a message that I belonged, was accepted, was valued. It gave me something to work towards earning the next year and the year after that, and is one of the many reasons that I don't take return the call if I'm approached by a recruiter or headhunter.

The real world is like that. Sometimes someone ends up on the winning team without having earned it. Sometimes one ends up on the losing team and deserved to win. What's important - what we need to encourage with praise and awards and even trophies - is showing up every day, putting in our best effort, and showing grace and class in both victory and defeat.

So if your kid shows up to the game, is focused at practice, and seems to care then by all means feed and encourage that effort with whatever means you can. Don't tell him by your actions that  just because he's a loser if he's not on the winning team.impression at that - that the trophy and recognition are beyond their reach for factors over which they have no control. Absent the promise of reward there's less incentive to keep coming back and keep trying. Yes, some will - but some will feel dejected and grow resentful. Remember these are children under the age of ten about whom we're talking, including a six year old. That anybody would take a trophy away from a six year old with the words "you didn't earn that" is, to me, bizarre and cruel. It also risks driving away those who can't see a path to victory for themselves, robbing them of the chance to grow into the sport and perhaps even later earn some wins.

This leans towards the political for me because it plays into the libertarian fallacy that we live in a perfect meritocracy in which the winners are those with the drive and skills and effort who deserve to win. It ignores chance (the luck of the draw putting a slightly awkward kid on the same team as a few budding superstars), and privilege (the ability of some to afford equipment to practice at home, private lessons, or even extra time with the parents). It sends a poor message to those not getting a trophy that their effort is not appreciated, but it sends an equally poor message to the winners that they're better than the losers, and that they deserve more based on their being on a winning team.

But....that's not how the real world works!
The biggest argument I see against participation trophies is the idea that kids need to learn "how the real world works". Setting aside for the moment the question of whether or not taking a trophy away from a six-year-old is a reasonable way to teach such a lesson - or if such lessons need to be taught at all - I'd argue that for the majority of us this is NOT how the world works. The real world can be competitive, yes. But it can also be collaborative. Yes, in the workplace an employer will expect results but in my experience they will give those who show effort and a positive attitude more chances to learn to succeed. It's also my experience that those who do keep trying often do, in the end, contribute something of value.

I'll close with a true story. In September a few years back I was hired for my current position at the firm of Shen, Milsom and Wilke. IT was a good start for me in which I made some friends on our team, joined in the effort to complete various projects, and overall started learning the ropes of the consulting side of the AV business. In January, four months after I'd started, the department head called me into his office for my review. At the end he said that this is when year-end bonuses would be given out and that the department had done well enough that year to merit bonuses for the staff. When I told him that I understood that I'd only been there a few months but looked forward to helping earn a bonus the next year I was told that at present I was a member of the team, and as a member of the team would share in the bonus with everyone else. It was, arguably, a participation trophy in real life; I was the junior-most member of the staff and am sure that whatever success the department had it could have had without me. What it did was send a message that I belonged, was accepted, was valued. It gave me something to work towards earning the next year and the year after that, and is one of the many reasons that I don't take return the call if I'm approached by a recruiter or headhunter.

The real world is like that. Sometimes someone ends up on the winning team without having earned it. Sometimes one ends up on the losing team and deserved to win. What's important - what we need to encourage with praise and awards and even trophies - is showing up every day, putting in our best effort, and showing grace and class in both victory and defeat.

So if your kid shows up to the game, is focused at practice, and seems to care then by all means feed and encourage that effort with whatever means you can. Don't tell him by your actions that  just because he's a loser if he's not on the winning team.

Flash Fiction - Lighting the Moon

A quick trifle for you today; just a snapshot of a ritual in a world different from ours. Read, ponder, think of how it would be different to live in a place in which the things we inexplicably see as shameful are instead celebrated.

Thanks for the prompt to Bliss Morgan who shared it from places unknown to me. 

"Candlelight and Moonlight"

by L Czhorat Suskin

The queen felt it again, the clenching in her insides as the second fortnight drew near. Clenching her teeth against the tightness in her belly, she walked to the forecourt, the stones cool against her bare feet. 

It was the time again. She savored the familiar ache in shoulderblades and back as she raised the white flag high above the castle. The flag that called the townfolk to join her, to help light the moon.

Word spreads quickly; one sharp-eyed young boy sees the flag and the town is filled with the sounds of running, of feet slapping cobblestones, of shutters thrown open. 

Everyone's long since built their lanterns, blood-orange-red stained paper stretched over a light wood frame. A bit of wire holds the candle which will burn it into the sky. When the sun sets we're already waiting outside - nearly all of us. Old women who no longer can hear the moon's call, young girls who've not yet heard it. Boys and men who feel nothing inside but believe with a deep certainty that this is right, that the time has come again to light the moon. 

In the squares, in the streets, in courtyards knots of people gather around their lanterns, a thousand thousand candleflames casting liquid-amber pools of light.

Why do we do this? Because it is always done. Because the moon needs to share our light. Because it is time.

As the sun sets we lift our candles skyward, for just one moment banishing the night. 

Every eye in the town gazes skyward as the lanterns ascend save those of the queen, who looks down upon the crowd, her eyes moist with tears and her belly still tight and in pain. The pain ebbed as the lanterns soared up, up, up, higher. Until the first kissed the silvery moon, candleflame scorching it deep red.

It was a good ritual, a thing well-done. The next day the Queen  lowered the white flag. The new flag she raised had been white, but was roughly stained the color of rust. The color they'd painted the moon. It was the flag of celebration, of a day to rejoice. It was a day of rest, until again the moon called for our light, our celebration, our love.

Loving Baseball as a Writer

Two greats of American literature
at a Red Sox game.

As we enter the last few weeks of the baseball season, I'd like to share my appreciation of the game with you as well as some thoughts of why baseball is, in many ways, the most literary of sports. With one hundred sixty-two games over a few short months, baseball is part of the rhythm of the summer, faceless voices on the radio painting a word-picture as background music to accompany yardwork, days at the beach, or just a Sunday drive. It can be more than that; like a great novel a baseball season rewards a bit of focus and attentiveness to detail. There's a richness and complexity which, as a teller of stories, I find quite appealing.

One bit of writing advice which stuck with me is that anything you include in a novel needs to serve at least two purposes, be that to advance the plot, help set a tone, develop characters, illuminate a relationship, give background information, or something else. If all one worries about is plot, then one ends up with a flat, single-dimensional book. What does this have to do with baseball? While a baseball game might be a story, the bigger story is the entire season with choices made day-by-day having ripple effects for weeks if not the entire summer. Picture a scene: my beloved Mets are trailing by one run in the sixth inning. It's late May, the bottom of the sixth inning  with the pitcher coming up to bat. Not a very dramatic moment, is it? Not bases loaded, 2 outs, bottom of the ninth in October. What I love about baseball is that the choice here matters, not just for today, but for tomorrow and the next tomorrow and, in a way, the whole season. What happens next?

Does the pitcher take his at bat, perhaps strike out? He'll have to pitch the next inning and, if the team is limiting his innings to prevent injury he might have to exit a late-season game earlier. In the shorter story of the single game, the opposing batters have all seen him a few times now and might have a better chance of getting a hit, especially as he is tiring.

Do we pinch-hit and go to a relief pitcher? Who? Carlos Torres again? He's been the most  consistent reliever, but he's pitched three times already this week. If we run him out there again today, will he be available tomorrow? is he a rubber-armed wonder, or will he eventually go from being our best reliever to an afterthought as over-work begins to renders him ineffective? (this arguably happened this year; Torres went from the first choice to something farther back as he was, quite likely, overworked over the first months of the season). If we pinch hit, who is it? Is there a bench player who needs another at bat or two to avoid getting a bit rusty, or have the part-time players given most of what they can?

It takes attentiveness to see how choosing a given player for a given role makes a difference long-term, but the connections are there for those who watch closely and attentively. Compare, say, a football game in which each week's game is in many ways an isolated event. The best players will play this week, the best players will play next week. There's far less managing a season and more managing a single game. A baseball season is serial; if you want to compare to a TV show it's a serial show in which a larger story builds over the course of a season - and beyond.

Through the magic of the internet, those of us who are serious and semi-serious fans can follow the team's minor league prospects. Two years ago, for example, the Mets traded Cy Young award winner R.A. Dickey for, amongst others, catcher Travis d'Arnaud and pitching prospect Noah Syndergaard. Syndergaard in particular became quite the story as he moved up the organization, perhaps struggled a bit, and took a whole year before arriving in the big leagues. When we first saw him it was the final act in a play that had opened two years prior, his name and fame preceding him. It was for this reason - and this story - that I attended Syndergaard's first home game at Citi Field.

Taking advantage of a quiet moment to learn the lost
art of scorekeeping

And, sometimes, we get a personal story. This year the Mets famously almost traded their starting second basement Wilmer Flores. When the deal was announced during a game, Flores was given a warm ovation by the crowd. Whether by the crowd response, the reality of being traded from the only team he ever knew, or some combination of the two, Flores was literally brought to tears on the field. The trade, as we now know, fell through. Flores got another standing ovation from the home crowd his next game and, in a moment too cliched for me to even consider putting it in actual fiction, drove in the game winning run in extra innings. It was a great moment much greater for those who've followed the whole story from Flores' initial signing at the age of 16 to his time in the minor leagues to his sometimes struggles to play various infield positions for the sake of the team. I find great joy in following stories like this for a bad team with unsuccessful seasons while carrying the hope that things will turn around and get better. When the team starts winning (as my beloved Mets are now) it feels that, as a fan, I've earned the joy in seeing their success by sticking with them for the years of struggle.

Finally, on a note of personal taste, baseball is a slow-paced game of pregnant pauses, anticipation, white-space framing the action. It's slow enough that one can think about and digest all of these small moments. It's a fandom which I often try to communicate, but with some difficulty; watching a single game can be a pleasant enough experience, but without the larger picture it is missing - at least to me - a measure of the richness which makes it special. 

Reading with the kids - Book Review of Akata Witch, by Nnnedi Okorofor

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

A young person ignorant of the secret world of magic and witchcraft which exists around us finds that they have great potential and is taken to a hidden place of magical schooling. Lessons are learned, friendships and alliances are formed with peers. There are moments of mistakes and hubris, but our protagonist eventually grows up somewhat and is forced to face a potent and malevolent foe with a surprising personal connection.

No, I'm not talking about Harry Potter. I'm talking about Nnedi Okorofor's YA novel Akata Witch, which takes the broad tropes of "learning magic" out of the familiar British, American, or faux-medieval settings to Nigeria. It's also a very smart and elegantly written book which, in various ways, answers some of the issues raised by other novels in this genre.

I came to this one because, of course, of Chloe's interest in fantasy fiction (those who follow here will know that she's my daughter, that we read the Narnia books together last year and the late Sir Terry's "Tiffany Aching" subseries of Discworld more recently). And no, I don't want her to read fantasy exclusively but I do see her developing a love and appreciation for it, and want to feed that with diverse voices.

Akata Witch is the  story of Sunny, a twelve-year old girl or African descent whose family has moved back to Africa from the United States. As an immigrant and an albino she is, in her way, doubly an outsider. Early on there's a portent of an apocalyptic future, a meeting with fellow gifted students who've already been initiated into the secret worlds of magic and, ultimately, a trip to the hidden parts of our world in which magical arts are taught and studied. In addition to the African setting which, quite honestly, is something of which I don't get enough in my reading, here are several  unique elements including a parallel magical economy based entirely on learning. It's also quite refreshing to see Sunny's magical education as a secret she needs to carry, with no convenient departure from the "mundane" world; she simply needs to learn to juggle actual school lessons, a home life, and secret meetings with powerful users of magic who might come to mentor her.

There is, of course, a threat in a mysterious ritual killer stalking children the same age as Sunny and her new companions. The relationship of the four members of what we learn is an "Owa coven" - a group put together by chance to meet some challenge - is one delightful part of the book. In too many of these stories such groups devolve into a "chosen one" and "spear carriers". In this case, it doesn't appear to be so. While Sunny is definitely our protagonist, the others make as many mistakes, solve as many challenges, and are portrayed as equals.

There's also real menace throughout, the threat of loss, and a few moments of rather graphic and brutal violence. None of it is gratuitous, and it does fill its role in raising the stakes considerably. The book is paced a tiny bit oddly in that the final confrontation and climax seems rushed, but the more I think about it the less it bothers me; most stories about vanquishing a monster are not really about said monster, but about coming of age and learning something about oneself. Of the growing and learning we get plenty, even if there probably could have been a little bit more time devoted to certain family stories and secrets.

Is it a worthwhile YA coming-of-age magic book? I'll go beyond that and simply say that it's a worthwhile book. The benefits of exploring variations within a genre and even a sub-genre are something extra.

Seamstress without A Needle - Review of Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory

It's book recommendation time! This week we'll be talking about Steampunk which, for those who don't know, is a science fiction subgenre based on fantastic (and usually impossible) reimaginings of Victorian-era steam-driven technologies. At its worst, Steampunk falls into an obsession with Victorian and imaginary-victorian trappings - corsets and tophats, airships and brass monocles, the odd babbage engine. At its best, it uses these trappings to examine a point in history when old social orders were being overturned and, in the divide between rich and poor, look at today's world through a funhouse mirror. In fact, I'd say that the best science fiction is always a funhouse mirror through which we can view our own world.

Regular readers of this blog should know that I adore the writing of Elizabeth Bear; her work is always compelling with a great eye for character and for detail. I greatly envy her talent. Her Karen Memory is a "Wild West Steampunk" novel, taking place in the imaginary Alaska town of Cedar Rapids during a gold-rush in the late nineteenth century. Before we see any fancy steampunk trappings we meet our protagonist and narrator, "seamstress" Karen Memery:

Yes, she does what you think that she does, and it's handled as well as you'd expect; the work colors Memery's perception of men, but hasnt' twisted her into a misogynist. The work plays a significant role in the novel, both in terms of plot and theme, but it's never played for titillation. In fact, while the characters have plenty of sex (as they are working in a brothel) there are no explicit sex scenes. While there is empowerment in Memery and her peers earning a living and while they do have the good fortune of working at the Hotel Mon Cherie (the French is deliberately wrong),  the "good" brothel owned and run by a Madame Damnable - a  woman with an interesting past of her own -  it's not quite sugar-coated or sentimentalized. In fact, one important character refuses the chance at joining Madame Damnable's "sewing circle", even having few other choices. While she keeps a measure of her dignity, it remains clear that Memery's choice to earn a living on her back was no choice at all in reality; institutional sexism leaves few other choices for a young woman on her own.

The action begins with a girl rescued from a rival house of ill repute (this one of truly ill-repute, in which the girls were treated as literal slaves), brought to the Hotel Mon Cherie, triggering a major flare-up in the rivalry between Madame Damnable and her counterpart the odious Peter Bantle. Soon there's a Jack the Ripper style string of murderer persued by  a far-traveling US Marshall, literal rooftop chases, daring escapes and, yes, an airship. Wouldn't be a steampunk novel without one. There's not much sex but there IS a same-sex romance (oh, how I long for the day when such things are common enough that I can just say "romance". Alas, that day is  not today). This is not high-tea and top-hat style steampunk; the characters about whom we come to care are always on the peripheries: an (Asian) Indian woman saved from sex slavery by a Chinese-American freedom fighter of sorts (real-life sex-worker rights activists  would be glad to know that she has a perfectly healthy relationship with the voluntary seamstresses of Madame Damnables and does not equate all prostitution with slaver), an African-American marshall with his Native-American posseman. The latter character - Marhsall Bass Reeves - is based, according to the author's note, on an actual historical figure on whom the Lone Ranger myth was quite possibly based -- a myth which quite literally strips him of his actual skin.

For anyone who loves the wild west, who loves Steampunk, or simply loves a good tale Karen Memor is well-worth the reading. Very highly recommended.