50 Authors from 50 States: Volunteers, Mountains, and a Dragon? Who but Helen...
50 Authors from 50 States: Volunteers, Mountains, and a Dragon? Who but Helen...: Greetings from western Tennessee. I’m Helen Henderson and describe myself as a tour guide to the stars and worlds of imagination. Magic...
Book review: Earthbound: Science Fiction in the Old West, by Mari Collier
Sometimes
a book’s subtitle just lays it out for you. I did it with all three of my
non-fiction books, as Mari Collier did with Earthbound,
a perfect mix of SF and Western. Sure, the movies have Cowboys and Aliens, but Mari does it better.
The
story actually starts in Ireland, where alien Llewellyn is basically a slave to
another race. Circumstances bring his freedom; unfortunately, he’s left with a
spaceship that he doesn’t know how to pilot out of Earth orbit. He becomes
giant Irishman Zebediah MacDonald, trying to make a life for himself on a
primitive planet, especially the place where he hides the spacecraft: Texas.
Eventually
Mac meets Anna, a woman who’s lost her children and been captured by the
Comanche. Mac may be an alien, but Anna has shocking secrets of her own—and a
connection to Mac that even she doesn’t know about. Together the two begin to
build a life, as the clouds of Civil War gather around them.
Earthbound is a great story with memorable
characters, but to me the most fun was the historical aspect of it. Mari has
done her research—it’s no surprise that she’s on the board of her local
Historical Society. She doesn’t shirk on the details of life back then, from
social constrictions to the dangers of childbirth, but it’s never dull. The
supporting characters are great, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of
the series.
There's No Cure for Chicago Driving
There’s No
Cure for Chicago Driving
This first appeared in the 4County Mall, in
print and online:
SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
I
thought I’d seen bad traffic. I thought I’d seen crazy drivers.
Then
I went to Chicago.
I’m
a small town boy. When I was younger, my idea of heavy traffic was Fort Wayne,
which is about half an hour from my home. With a population of 250,000, Fort
Wayne is the second largest city in Indiana, which isn’t saying much—but the
fact that most of Indiana is not city
is one of the things I like about it.
Years
ago I drove to Atlanta, Georgia, and got a new definition of heavy traffic. We
arrived during morning rush hour, an ironic term considering I could have
walked over the jammed-up cars without ever touching the ground—and gotten
there faster.
About
ten years later, I had the occasion to drive U-Haul’s largest truck model
through New York City, while towing a car on a trailer. It was two months after
9/11/01. Naturally, I got waved to the curb the police, who at that point were
looking over every rental truck that came along.
The
irony, though, is that the proximity to 9/11 actually made the experience
easier. The cops were friendly, and other drivers gave us space—whether out of
that temporary sense of brotherhood, or the fear that I might be carrying a
load of ammonium nitrate, I couldn’t say.
Then
there’s Indianapolis.
In
all fairness, Indianapolis is the 14th largest city in the U.S., and
the second largest in the Midwest, so there’s bound to be traffic. But it’s also
the Crossroads of America: Indiana has more interstate highway than any other
state, and more converge on the capital than any other city. Whole families
have been known to drive onto the 465 beltway, and never be seen again.
I
used to think that was the worst this side of Los Angeles, a city I have no
intention of every driving in.
But
Indy’s only the second largest city
in the Midwest. Then there’s Chicago.
My
wife wanted to go see The Cure, which is an English rock band, or post-punk, or
new wave, or possibly gothic rock. (I’m post-pun, myself.) It’s not normally my
kind of music, but I like them okay … or at least I did, until they made me
come to Chicago.
By
the time we got to the concert venue in the shadow of downtown, I was clenched
in a fetal position in my seat, eyes squeezed shut, whimpering and clutching at
the dash. This was an especially bad thing because I was the driver.
But
I don’t want you to think Chicago drivers are bad. That’s what I thought at
first, until therapy for my PTSD. After several flashbacks, I realized the
problem isn’t that they’re bad—it’s that they’re very, very good. Like, NASCAR
good. It’s the only way to survive.
 |
| Yes, there are cars there; the camera couldn't capture anything going at that speed. |
You
see, Chicago traffic is the same bumper to bumper gridlock I found in Atlanta,
except they don’t sit there unmoving—they continue driving as if they’re the
only ones on the highway. Go watch a NASCAR race right after the start, before
the first ten or twelve cars have crashed, when they’re all still jammed up and
fighting for position. I’ll wait.
Yeah,
it’s like that.
I
saw drivers who knew their off ramp was coming, so they dove all the way over
into the left lane to get ahead of other cars, then swerved across all three
lanes of traffic, including that semi in the center lane that was blocking
their view of anything in the right lane, and … right onto the off ramp, easy
as a Blue Angels jet flight.
If
someone ahead is going 60 and they’re going 90—they just keep on going. The guy
in front will speed up, or get out of the way … or he won’t. Whatever. Orange
cones aren’t a warning, they’re a challenge. There are signs that say:
“Accident reporting lane ahead: If you get into a crash, for God’s sake, don’t
stop at the scene.”
Where
I come from, everyone wants a car. We passed Chicago’s train depots, where
people without cars were relaxing in the knowledge that an hour waiting for a
train beats two hours drinking yourself down from the edge after the evening
drive home.
When
the concert let out, we stayed in the auditorium until the only people left
were sweeping up or throwing up. Then we went to the parking lot and sat in our
car, shaking quietly, until the security guy pointed out we were the only
people left and could he please go home now? He took the train. It was 1:30 a.m. when we finally took to the
streets.
 |
| "Maybe we'll get lucky, and the zombie apocalypse will strike before we have to drive." |
The
traffic was exactly the same. It might as well have been 5 p.m. on a Friday.
We
had to make a left turn to reach our off ramp, but there was a delay ahead and,
if we went through the light, we’d end up stuck in the middle of the
intersection. So we waited like we were supposed to, and a car load of laughing
Chicagoans passed us on the right, cut off the oncoming traffic, and stopped in
the middle of the intersection. Then a taxi passed them on the right, and they both stayed there, blocking the cars
that had the green light, until eventually they could move on.
We
almost abandoned the car right then and there. A few day’s walk home? Good
exercise. But we eventually made it out of that insane city racetrack, vowing
never to come back again even if Robert Smith personally invites us to play
drums for The Cure.
And
why did we decide to man up, brave the insanity, and drive on instead of walking?
Well,
what are the chances of a pedestrian making it out alive?
Brick into toilet
Spent yesterday sorting through the (formerly chimney) brick pile for bits and pieces to fill the old cesspit with. Filled it up, killing numerous spiders along the way ... and I believe I'll spend today in a hot bath, taking ibuprofen.
Don’t Wait: Check the Date
In my three
(or so) decades in the emergency services, I never heard anyone complain that
their smoke detectors worked properly. Well, okay, once—but that guy was an
arsonist.
Fire
Prevention Week this year is October 9-15, mostly because nothing else goes on
in mid-October. No, actually it was because the Great Chicago Fire happened on
October 9, 1871. That fire destroyed more than 17,400 structures and killed at
least 250 people, and might have been prevented if Mrs. O’Leary had installed a
smoke detector in her barn. Have you ever seen a cow remove a smoke detector
battery? Me neither.
Nobody really
knows what started the Great Chicago Fire, so the dairy industry has a real
beef with blaming the cow, which legend says knocked over a lamp. Does the lamp industry ever get the blame? Noooo....
We do know
that at about the same time the Peshtigo Fire burned across Wisconsin, killing 1,152
people and burning 16 entire towns.
In fact, several fires burned across Michigan and Wisconsin at the time,
causing some to speculate that a meteor shower might have caused the
conflagration. There may have been shooting stars elsewhere, but Chicago got
all the press.
This year’s
Fire Prevention Week theme is “Don’t wait, check the date!” So ask your date:
Does she have a working smoke detector? If not, you’d better go back to your
place.
Just as you
should change your smoke detector batteries every fall and spring, you should
replace your smoke alarm every ten years. I’d add that doing the same to your
carbon monoxide detector is a great idea, so it can make a sound to warn about
the gas that never makes a sound.
This is great
advice, and as I hadn’t given much thought to the age of my own smoke detectors, I
took it. The one in the basement stairway said: “Manufactured 1888 by the Tesla
Fire Alarm Co.”
Not a good
sign.
The one in
the kitchen hallway said simply: “Smoke alarm. Patent pending.”
Oh boy.
So don’t wait—check
the date. Do it right now, because otherwise you’d be waiting. I know it doesn’t have
quite the pizzazz of the 1942 Fire Prevention Week theme: “Today Every Fire
Helps Hitler”.
But hey … you
can’t blame the Nazis for everything.
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