You’ve probably heard by now about the Bush Administration covering up evidence of melting icecaps.

20,000 musk oxen starved to death in the arctic because of a phenomenon called a “rain on snow event”. Rain falls on snow, turns to ice. Oxen come by and try to dig with their hooves for the grass under the snow. But they can’t break the ice. So they die.

Meanwhile, New England is having one of the coldest, wettest summers ever. There’s mold growing in my closet and I can’t get the moisture out of the carpet. And I live on the third floor.

And around me all I hear about how it’s too much work to change people’s habits, and we’re all screwed anyway ’cause nothing we do will take effect for another fifty years, and we don’t live in the arctic or the tropics or a third world country, so why bother.

So! It’s time for another big long ranting list of stuff I really hope I can get you to start doing to reduce your environmental footprint, in hopes of preventing myself from drowning in impotent rage and guilt. Fun!

Compost. It’s not that hard. You already learned how to recycle. It’s just one more container. Corn husks, banana peels, apple cores, carrot stubs, coffee grounds, tea leaves, untreated paper, eggshells, etc., etc. Keep it in a sealed tub; when the tub fills up, empty it in a heap in the backyard, in the same place you put your leaves and grass clippings. Aerate it once in awhile with a shovel. In a couple months, you’ll have some fine, fertile dirt. No, animals won’t get into it–not if you don’t try to compost bones or meat. No, you don’t have to lay off during the winter. Cold slows down decomposition, but doesn’t stop it. Decomposition produces heat!

You can even compost if you don’t have a backyard. Learn about vermiculture. It is super cool.

Consume less. For example:

• Get ice cream in a cone instead of a cup. Ice cream cones taste good and are fun. And then you don’t have to throw away the cup and spoon.
• Stop buying bottled water. Filter your own water, and drink it from a container you’re not going to throw away when it’s empty. Recycling isn’t perfect, and chances are you’re just paying them to bottle tap water anyway. And ship it to you from Fiji. Expending fossil fuels in the process.
• Stop buying coffee. See above. I don’t care if it comes in recyclable unbleached paper cups now. Make your own. Then you don’t need a recyclable unbleached paper cup.

Recycle. Learn the rules of recycling in your town, and follow them, for real, all the time. If you work in a different town than you live in, learn those rules too. Hassle your co-workers about it. If they see you picking their plastic and aluminum out of the trash enough times, they’ll quit throwing it away out of guilt. I’ve seen it happen. No, you should not feel guilty for making other people feel guilty. Guilt is the only thing that’s going to get anybody to change. Why else do you think Bush covered up those satellite photos?

Reuse. Brew beer like me! Then you don’t even need to recycle. Drink out of the same glass bottles over and over until they break.

Buy food grown locally. Tomatoes shipped to your megamart from a thousand miles away taste like cardboard. Local tomatoes by comparison are a revelation on the tongue, and nobody had to spray them with chemicals or burn a lot of gas getting them to you. The same is true of pretty much everything else you can get at the supermarket. If you can buy something locally, do so.

Grow food. It’s not hard. You have a window. Get a window box. Plant herbs.

Read labels. Don’t just accept that because your dishwashing detergent now comes with green dye and a tree on the label that you’re allowed to feel better about yourself. Repackaging the same horrible stuff and trying to pretend like it’s environmentally conscious is just as bad as trying to cover up the satellite photos of the receding arctic ice.

Educate people. If any of what I am saying is getting through to you, try to get it through to somebody else. Even if it pisses them off. Think of it this way: not trying might keep them happy, but it pisses me off.

Suck it up. Do without.

Trade in your gas guzzler. I’m doing it. Obviously it’s not for everyone, but if they’re going to throw money at us, might as well try and catch some of it. If you have a big old car, trade it in for a little new car. Doesn’t have to be a hybrid or anything. Just a bottom-of-the-line, sensible hatchback.

I could go on. I still feel guilty and filled with impotent rage. But I’ve probably alienated you by now anyway. And I’m not sorry.

My near-future-apocalyptic magic realist short story “Starlings” is now live in Abyss & Apex #31. (Which issue also happens to feature a very cool poem by LCRW author Daniel A. Rabuzzi—lucky me!)

“Starlings” is a story about climate change, tech withdrawal, and memory—themes all very near to my heart. With the possible exception of “Construction-Paper Moon”, in no other story of mine have I laid my own emotional evolution so open on the page.

Please go read it, and enjoy!

is tonight, at the Barnes & Noble on 1741 Willow Street in Manchester, NH. Four of the five writers who make up the Homeless Moon will be there, plus a whole bunch of other clever and hilarious people, each of whom will tell a story in five minutes or less. It’s great, silly fun.

And I’ll be reading a new William-O story. Woo!

William-O the Pirate King, if you are unfamiliar, is my swashbuckling, one-eyed cat hero, who battles foes both real and supernatural in defense of his farm and family.

If you can’t make it, fear not, I’ll probably post an mp3 of the new story here in a couple of weeks.

Canthalrellus cibarius
Hemlock and oak forest, Graves Farm Wildlife Sanctuary, Haydenville, MA

Chanterelles, after truffles and morels, are among the most sought-after of wild edible mushrooms. I have seen them for sale at Whole Pocketbook for $50 a pound. I have seen them used on Iron Chef. And I’ve seen them growing in Western Mass—on moist but not swampy ground, in deep shade, almost exclusively within 20 yards of a stream or pool. They appear starting in late June and are gone by the end of September, and by virtue of their creamy, pale orange color, I’ve been noticing them in the woods ever since I moved here. I had not, until this summer, dared to pick any myself, because they have a vomit-inducing near look-alike, the Jack o’Lantern Mushroom, Omphalotus olearius.

The differences between the two, I have finally learned sufficient to be confident of not picking the wrong one, are as follows. Chanterelles have forking gills, Jack o’Lanterns don’t. Jack o’Lanterns are likely to be found growing on tree trunks, stumps, and partly-buried roots. Chanterelles are more likely to appear on open ground. And Jack o’Lantern gills, or so I am told, glow in the dark.

So I picked some, finally. And ate them. When raw, they are lemony at first, with a peppery/bitter finish. Once cooked, they are milder, earthy. One of the things for which they are so prized is their firm texture, which allows them to stand up better to more robust compliments.

I put them on a pizza:

Note: Please don’t take the above as any kind of justification for going out and picking mushrooms without a guidebook or guide. I will not be responsible if you poison yourself.

Heh.

I was so busy arranging my weekend of Readercon and chapbook and family reunion running about that I forgot to come on here and mention in advance the fact that I got to participate in two readings while at Readercon, not to mention stand about at the Small Beer table chatting up the fancy folk.

One of the readings was for Interfictions 2, which I am not in, but for which they were nice enough to let me read anyway for some inexplicable reason.

The other was for Beneath Ceaseless Skies, wherein when I preambled the bordello scene from “Of Thinking Being and Beast” with the fact that it was set in a world where centaurs had conquered the American West, the people in the seats actually applauded. Who would have thought? Not I… even though I must confess the seats were somewhat packed with ringers.

Also: the hotel pub had Sam Adams Brick Red on tap. Mmm.

For the stories in our second chapbook, each of us at The Homeless Moon chose as inspiration a fictional setting. Here’s the first scene of mine, “The Cannon and the Prophetess”:

One Kestrel pronounced the last phrase of the sonnet he had been reciting for the Duchess of Ennasin, and the crowd of loungers who made up her court erupted in applause. Acknowledging their flattery, he lowered himself to one knee.

“No, no,” said the Duchess, twiddling her manicured fingers to indicate he should arise. “You mustn’t prostrate yourself. Your primitive origins are of no consequence—you outrank me, Your Majesty!”

The assembled nobles tittered at their hostess’s kind condescension.

With an abruptness inappropriate to tact—but which he had come to know would be expected, secretly desired, of an educated savage such as himself—One Kestrel surged to his feet like a predator ready to strike. The bones and beads sewn in his robes of state rattled satisfactorily, the brilliant feathers of his royal headdress rippled, and he allowed his eyes to flash just so.

The nobles gasped, recoiling; this time, the nervous laughter of the Duchess betrayed an underlying terror. “My dear Captain Saturno, you are to be commended on such a magnificent find! If only you would allow me to purchase him from you.”

Captain Saturno took a knee himself. Resplendent in his shining steel cuirass and waxed moustache, he made a flourish, and taking her offered hand, placed his lips to her ring. “Your praise is acknowledged most humbly—but I am afraid King Kestrel cannot linger, for he is called away on an engagement at another court—and I’m sure Your Eminence could not wish to sully His Majesty’s reputation by making him late.”

“At the very least,” the flush Duchess begged, “allow me to offer His Majesty a parting gift—a boon. Name anything! It shall be wrapped and placed in his flagship’s stateroom, where my court’s generous donations to his cause already await.”

One Kestrel drew back overeducated lips from filed teeth, and throwing a ravenous glance at his master and keeper, uttered that too-familiar entreaty with which he’d caused himself to be expunged from so many a court. “There is one small secret I dearly desire. I can only
further impose on Your Eminence’s hospitality in this: if you would, provide me with your military’s recipe for gunpowder.”

Amidst the ensuing uproar, Saturno clutched One Kestrel by the elbow and propelled him from the court. His face was bloodless, blank—but whether with rage or something else, One Kestrel didn’t know.

Once they were safe aboard the caravel Constança, Captain Saturno barked orders to throw off the moorings and get underway. He escorted His Primitive Majesty One Kestrel, King of America, to his sumptuous, gift-strewn lodgings in the brig, shoved him inside, and slammed the door.

And here are the relevant lines from Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, from which I took my inspiration:

Pantagruel then asked what sort of people dwelt in that damned island. They are, answered Xenomanes, all hypocrites, holy mountebanks, tumblers of beads, mumblers of ave-marias, spiritual comedians, sham saints, hermits, all of them poor rogues who, like the hermit of Lormont between Blaye and Bordeaux, live wholly on alms given them by passengers. Catch me there if you can, cried Panurge; may the devil’s head-cook conjure my bumgut into a pair of bellows if ever you find me among them! Hermits, sham saints, living forms of mortification, holy mountebanks, avaunt! in the name of your father Satan, get out of my sight! When the devil’s a hog, you shall eat bacon.

I’m not going to make any attempt to synthesize one with the other; chances are it would turn out a disaster, and anyway I’d much rather just encourage you to read the story and form your own opinions.

So instead, I’ll close with Gustave Doré’s utterly demented evil jester illustration to Rabelais’ prologue, which starts like this:

Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my writings)….

Particularly when they are twice as big! Last year’s Homeless Moon chapbook weighed in at 44 pages. This year’s: 80. The poor woman working the register at the printers nearly killed herself trying to get them up onto the counter.

Two weeks remain until Readercon and the “official” release. In the meantime, we will be sending out a few advance copies for review and/or to wedge under your chair legs so they don’t wobble. I am setting ten copies aside for ye F&SFesque blog promo. If you want one, and are willing to write a bit of a blog entry about what you thought of it, ask. If you are not the eleventh person to do so, you’ll get one.

Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait the two weeks and paypal me the two bucks for shipping. Less than that, even, if you’d prefer the electronic version. Not sure exactly when that’ll come off. But soon–in the next couple days. When it does, you’ll see it here.