fredrikegerman

I just found out that Peter David, one of the legendary writers of the comic book field (and novels, and TV, and other stuff, but I knew him first and foremost from comics) passed away last week.

For posterity, here's my comment on the locked post where I found out about it. (The Kickstarter "blog" for The Babylon 5 Preservation Project, which ran a long obit.) Also includes a few extra footnotes in italics.

Damn -- I had missed that Peter had passed. Not a surprise under the circumstances [he's been quite sick for quite a while], but he'll be much missed. He was one of my favorite writers for most of my adult life.

I was at that "Three High-Verbals" talk at MIT [in Kresge, October 6, 2001], which was the second time I got to meet him. (The first having been after Universicon at Brandeis University, many years before. We wound up commandeering my living room for the after-party, resulting in Peter sitting in my easy chair for hours, telling stories to about two dozen college students sitting around him on the floor.)

Anyway, that was one heck of a memorable talk. Peter read his beautiful, sober But I Digress column about 9/11. Neil read "My Crazy Hair" (demonstrating that yes, Neil could read the phone book and people would happily listen). And Harlan picked a fight with the audience about how the Internet was destroying society, and proceeded to argue with them for half an hour. It seemed very true to each.

Once it was all over, we got to the signings, and I came up to Peter with a Trek fanzine that my wife had picked up at a NY convention in the mid-70s. [This was Jane's first-ever SF convention -- she wheedled her father into taking her into NYC for a Trek con when she was a teenager. I don't remember exactly how old she was at the time, but I vaguely remember it being '74.] Peter's eyes practically bugged out, and he yelled for Caroline [his wife] to come look. Turned out that his piece in there was the first thing he'd ever had published anywhere, and he hadn't seen a copy of it in decades.

That signed zine is buried somewhere in my stacks; I've been looking for it since his heart attack. I still rather regret not having just given it to him at the time...

flexagon

The week's update is happening a day late because... I took a while at the hardware store yesterday, walked home super slowly, and then the bug and I spent all evening playing Chants of Senaar together, with the impulsive young cat alternating slowly between laps. And that is just the kind (and level) of debauchery I can get behind, in this current season of my life.

So, the week.

I read my first real manga that needed to be read from back to front: Uzumaki. Very fun (the big bad is... a spiral?) and good body horror. It took me an embarrassingly long time to see "maki" (as in sushi) hidden inside of "uzumaki" (spiral).

Too many of my friends lost jobs; one quit to escape a shitshow, two more went out together when a local company decided their software didn't need no stinking frontend, and a fourth just got the axe from one half of a husband-and-wife team after the other half had hired her. I feel some kind of survivor's guilt, even though I don't have a tech job anymore either and I'm glad I'm not trying to get one. The whole sector seems to be on fire.

Random good news #1: the bug's kidney stone is out and gone!

Random good news #2: the squirrel has a new puppy! I took the bug to visit her. She seems to have the makings of a sweet doggo, but of course a new puppy is still mayhem; the squirrel family is short on sleep.

Flora: of the five types of plant I put in last week, one of them curled up and died without comment. The others are alive. And the two that I chose most carefully, based on shade requirements, actually seem to be firm and perky after a week in the ground. Nothing exciting like new leaves growing, but they seem at least curious to see what's happening here.

Crossword nerdery:I've been getting more and more into the NYT crosswords. Last Thursday the puzzle constructor put out a call for collaborators, so I emailed (with some nervousness), and he wrote back to me and now we're brainstorming theme ideas together.

I went on two lovely long walks with people, the better one being with apfelsingail to have the best breakfast sandwich of my 2025 along with a tour of the USS Constitution. If any of y'all are anywhere close to Lechmere / Galleria area, go here and try the breakfast pita and thank me later. I've been walking a lot; enough to make my feet feel the burn most days.

The squirrel says I haven't really found the balance between Doing All the Things and Doing None of the Things, and that seems both fair and accurate. I've made some decidedly odd choices, like spending a few hours this week hollowing out a tree stump to make a planter; I think I'm only sticking with it because it's so nice to sit outside listening to a good audiobook and doing something manual. And sometimes I do too much and then crash out early. But... so what, exactly?

siderea

2025 May 16: The Washington Examiner: "An American papacy: The Catholic Church didn’t choose Pope Leo XIV to battle Trump"

2025 May 30: AlterNet: "'Divine trolling': Pope schedules Chicago mass on the same day as Trump's military parade"

siderea

Back in 2013, I winnowed down the entire listings of Boston Early Music Festival events, official and fringe, to a curated concentrate of just concerts and other events featuring music from before 1600 AD. There were about 35 of them.

The 2025 BEMF is just nine days out and the Fringe Concerts listings updated today has a total of fewer than 30 listings.

flexagon

A friend was discussing some bullshit he's dealing with at work (in those terms), and I realized my life is quite low-bullshit at the moment. I guess I expected this, but it's gratifying. The most likely source of bullshit in my life is now probably... me. Me who is definitely going to use every moment of tomorrow in the best possible way, mmhmmm. Me whose hips are definitely going to go forward over my hands, next time I do a straddle jump. Me.

So anyway, the week:

Flora: Went with motyl in the pouring rain to buy native plants on Thursday. The rain persisted and the plants sat by the side of my house getting soaked for a while, but now they are all in the ground, and labeled too! I bought a wide, shallow pot at Pemberton to set on the pipe/drain I found under the dirt, so that we can cover it while not totally losing it again, and one more random (non-native) plant to go in that -- at the plant store I found myself surprised that living things can be so cheap, and then I realized that living things are almost the only self-assembling products out there. So maybe the low prices do make sense.

Fauna: speaking of life in my yard, I had a bit of a Boys Don't Cry moment while feeding my favorite squirrel Wispy. Wispy was eating a nut, sat up while directly facing me, and... Wispy, I don't think you're a girl after all. At least, no squirrel doctor would have said so at your birth. So I've been engaged since then in a slightly creepy quest for firm photographic evidence, but in the meantime I think Wispy is never going to give birth to a litter of adorable black squirrels (sniffle). I will have to wish him well in the mating games if I am to see such babies.

Finished reading, and writing reviews for, The Poppy War and Abundance and My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Two of those were audiobooks! Gardening and house projects both help a lot with getting the hours in. As for Abundance: now I am mildly inspired about infrastructure, know more about what "supply-side" economic discussion is about. I also learned that Ronald Reagan shut down a bunch of solar energy programs that had been started in the 1970s (the 70s, ffs!), and we'd probably be way further along now if that hadn't happened. Sigh.

House projects included painting over some chips in the bedroom walls, priming/painting over some knots in the stairwell along with cleaning the stairs and baseboards, taking off even more nasty plastic/tape/adhesive from windows, and installing a new bathroom fan with a lot of care for extra noise & rattles. Now it's quieter and doesn't let weird flakes of gunk fall through from the attic.

One drawing lesson on drawing organic forms. I was supposed to find something mostly based on cylinders, spheres etc but imperfect, and settled on mushrooms, which turn out to be quite fun to draw.

A private lesson with Tiny Coach on Thursday and a group one on Friday just kept blowing my mind.

I didn't know that one can (and maybe should) do the standard upper-back stretch on the wall with... relaxed traps, just leading from the chest. It's hard to be aware enough to get this right, but it feels great when it works.
And I didn't know that one can hypothetically get a good backbendy stretch sitting in a straddle, with pelvis tilted anterior and arms overhead (holding a weight). My body barely goes there, it's so confused, and its confusion is interesting to me because I have all the pieces.

She did a very painful massage thing to my right leg that made a knot deflate almost instantly. After she did it I was able to briefly touch my right elbow to toe for the first time in years, though with a calf twinge.

Overall, I've been having a lovely time of it. My human squirrel has been gone for a long weekend away, but I've been happy and engaged around my home. The bug has a birthday tomorrow and I'm looking forward to celebrating with him, plus there'll be acro practice and a chance to do more house things. But if I want to get there it's time to stop writing, wash the dishes (with the next audiobook) and settle down (with the next paper book).

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Reading

RIP Peter David

Gentle debauchery

A Tale in Two Headlines [pope, pols, US]

Not as it was [early music, MA]

Low bullshit; flora and fauna and house

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May 2023

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