Candy Season

Posted on October 13, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker loved candy. This is hardly unusual, nor portentous – but Kage took great pride in never, ever forgetting a sweet she had once loved. Even if it no longer appealed to her adult taste, though this was vanishingly rare for Kage, she recalled in exquisite detail whatever had enthralled her at age 4 or 11 or 19.

She could talk about it for hours. And she did. We both did. It was an especially entertaining version of “Do you remember?”, especially after Kage discovered the internet in general, and eBay in particular. You can get anything there. And you know what? Absolutely no incarnation of circus peanuts – marshmallow apparently made out of frog scum, and coloured in Day-Glo orange and yellow – Has. Ever. Been. Edible.

However. there are lots of other venerable sweeties that are still delicious. At least, there are lots that be lovingly recalled, and sometimes still re-discovered. In today’s market, chocolate is King. And Queen. And the Crown Prince, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Taoiseach, depending on your loyalties. Nor did Kage ever neglect her appreciation of theobromos. But, despite the delights of solid chocolate – See’s, Cadbury’s, Ghiardelli, Lindt or Toberlone; and not to neglect the homegrown joys of Hershey and Russell Stover – Kage actually did have some sweeties she liked almost as much as chocolate. Especially during this last season of the year.

Holiday candy, most particularly for Halloween and Christmas, is the best. And frequently, the weirdest.There were and are treats you only found in your Trick or Treat bags: Chick O Sticks and Abba Zabba were among my favourites – the former being a peanut nougat in a hard candy shell, and the latter being a crumbly peanut butter jam in a coating of white toffee. Kage welcomed them for their rarity, but didn’t like eating them. She did like Charms Pops and Safety Pops, and a kind whose name I do not remember – but they were large suckers, and one side was patterned like tuck and roll upholstery. Kage loved them, especially since the odd one came with a token for a free sucker – if you could locate somewhere they were still sold. And who doesn’t like Tootsie Pops? Very satisfying for breaking teeth and/or extracting fillings.

There were Smarties and Sweet Tarts and Sour Worms. Chuckles. Tootsie Roll Fudge (which did not taste like a Tootsie Roll OR fudge). Bit O’Honey, Black Cow, and Look bars. Now and Laters – which, except at Halloween, could only be found in grape (good) and banana (deadly); at Halloween, you could get cherry or raspberry or apple. Nowadays, they come in what are apparently GMO versions – two or three unlikely flavours at once, which are frankly horrifying. And Starbursts just do not compare …

Full-sized brand name chocolate bars were always rare, and so much the better to get in your bag. What you mostly got, and still get, were either Hershey’s Miniatures (with an abnormal weighting toward the loathly Mr. Good Bars); and the outright lies called “Fun Versions” of good stuff like 3 Musketeers and Mars Bars. Who the hell ever thought a chocolate nubbin the size of a 6-year old’s thumb was fun? Mind you, we ate all we could keep out of our parents’ hands, but most of the fun was in complaining how teeny weeny and not fun they really were … that, and seeing how many you could get in your mouth at one time without throwing up.

I liked raisins and apples; Kage felt they were cheating. During the last days of our Trick or Treating, when I was still getting candy because I was shorter than Kage’s youngest sister Jenny, Kage was often offered a cocktail or a glass of wine by hosts who reasonably figured she was the adult. I protested; Kage was smug. She ate my candy, though.

Kage’s absolute favourite Halloween treat was wax shapes filled with coloured sugar syrup. These days, about all you can find – except in huge, specialty candy stores like Chocolate Heaven* on Pier 39 in San Francisco – are Nickle Nips, 5 little wax bottles in a pack and assorted colours. But when we were young! … You could get skulls, and arm and leg bones, and witches, and broomsticks and pumpkins and cats. They were expensive – the big ones were as much as a quarter apiece, which was outrageous! But they were great, and with a little cleverness and care could be drained and still left amazingly intact. One year, Kimberly had an entire necklace made of skulls to go with her ghoul costume.

Those things were the best, for Kage. She got them in season in Morro Bay and Pea Soup Anderson’s and Pier 39. But every year they got harder to find, and she spent more time balefully sucking the juice out of Nickle Nips and lamenting the fallen glories of our youth …

My mother had made fantastic divinity, caramel apples, and popcorn balls – but in these benighted days, no parent in their right mind would let their kids eat homemade treats. Come to think of it, my own mother put the kibosh on those somewhere in my teens. I never knew anyone personally who was poisoned on Halloween, or got a razor blade or broken glass in their loot; but it certainly would have been a bummer if I had.

Of course, our parents always went through the bags before we could eat any – but we always figured that was just to score the good candy bars. God He knows, Kage and I and our grown sisters always checked the little ones’ bags first – and not just to make sure we got some Hershey bars and Smarties.

Today, Kimberly and Michael stopped at a local See’s store on their afternoon errands. We have Halloween candy to last through All Soul’s Day, now. They got Sour Stars for me, chocolate marshmallow jack o’lanterns for all, solid chocolate ghosties, teeny foil-wrapped chocolate pumpkins: and also the ultimate non plus ultra of See’s Halloween treats: orange fondant wafers drizzled with milk chocolate. Those are THE BEST. You cannot find them every year – last year, we never scored, and the three shops closest to us claimed they never got them in at all. Kage and I ate them one at a time, with many eldritch toasts and commemoratives, and cherished every crispy-soft nibble of them. And so will Kimberly and Michael and I.

Each and all of you, Dear Readers, must have your own favourites. Maybe you have a secret letch for Violet Crumbles or licorice bats or – quelle horreur! – Boston Beans. (What are those things, anyway? Boiled peanuts? Mummified nougat? Rat bones?) It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you remember it with love, and go out of your way to find it in this season of remembrance.

The honoured dead must include loved books, loved songs and – maybe most of all – loved and peculiar candies in this dark end of the year.

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Blow, Wind, And Crack Thy Cheeks

Posted on October 12, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker loved Shakespeare. She also loved Autumn, and the particular weather phenomena that accompany it in California: wind. Fog. Clear skies once (and if) the fog blows off. Sudden apocalyptic drops (or rises) in temperature.

So, the wind began blowing last night; hence the Shakespeare quote. It blew most of the windows in the house open, which terrified the cats and made Harry laugh and lose his mind. The black cat, Edward, is not quite 8 months old, and was both startled and then intrigued by the uproar in the air. It provoked him into zooming around the house and leaping at windows, apparently in the conviction he could catch the wind.

He was wrong, but not for lack of trying. He is still barely out of kittenhood, but he is enormous – nearly 3 feet long, excessively floofy, with extravagantly tasseled ears and huge, soft, floppy feet. So, when he descends into what is quite normal kittenish insanity, it’s rather like having a furry cannonball tearing around the house, giving little mad chirps and trills like a weaponized tribble … Kage wouldn’t have liked that; but if she could avoid being run over by 14 pounds of velvet dementia, she would have found it pretty amusing. Especially when he runs into something and falls over on the floor, panting.

It also got really cold last night. While it got up to about 80 today – for about 10 minutes, at noon, behind a windbreak and in the full sun – it never really got very warm at all. All our animals were therefore exhausted and cuddly, attempting to sneak into people’s shirts and hibernate. Luckily, they are all very soft and warm, so that was fine with me. Especially since I have become dreadfully sensitive to cold myself, and spent all day curled up under blankets and cats and a bird, a pile of survivalists in my recliner … symbiosis can be very comfortable. At least if you’re the head symbiont.

Anyway, I never got much done today. Slept a lot, shivered a lot, watched Halloween cooking shows. But I vowed I would get a teeny blog in tonight, and now my fingers are as thawed as they’re going to get for the next several months, I suspect ….

Time to break into the Halloween candy, I think. It’s Tootsie Roll weather for sure.

Stay warm, Dear Readers!

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Now Is Come October

Posted on October 11, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker loved summer. It was her favourite season. But second in her heart came – not a season – but the month of October. She wasn’t that crazy about Fall; except in special places, far North of where we usually lived, California doesn’t have much seasonal colour, and Kage fervently hated being cold.

But October is special. It is the gateway to the three-month festival of the end of the year, which was a merry-go-round of holidays dear to Kage. It’s when coloured lights and special candy begin; roasted meats and harvest vegetables, hot rum and brandy potables … And most of all, it is the season of Halloween.

This is the season of reminiscence and ghost stories; weird history and ancient rituals, and all the peculiar family history that could combine the two. At least it did in our families, and Kage loved telling scary stories by candle and fire light. We had Halloween parties where no electric light was permitted in the house, and everyone had to tell a spooky tale – except for the unbearably sensitive, who usually ended up in the kitchen huddled together over a candle, bogarting the candy bowl and singing loudly to drown out the grisly story of Old Green Eyes still haunting the cemetery at the Chattanooga National Military Park …

Stags would pace down our street in the Hollywood Hills, antlers silvered by moonlight; coyotes raced and howled. People in masks would peer into our flickering windows. At least, we hoped they were masks. Everyone screamed anyway.

Mind you, October is just the perfect holiday party start. Here in California, it rarely rains – and never stopped us when it did – and the weather can either be wood smoke-crisp or haunted bayou hot. If we’re gonna get thunder and lightning, this is when we get them, with wind storms that howl in the eaves and strip the trees of leaves – and sometimes, leave the trees in the streets in a creaking maze, which was a total gas whether we had to climb through them on our way to school, or to trick-or-treat. Sometimes we had to go blocks out of our ways to make sure we found blocked streets to climb through.

Due to Kage having tons of younger siblings, and then nieces and nephews about as soon as possible, we did Halloween chaperone duty until I was 30 years old. By that time, I was shorter than the tall kids, who had all outstripped me in the height department; with a modicum of black gauze and skull makeup, I got to collect candy without question. Kage paced along solemnly with a lit pumpkin in her arms like a severed head. It was great.

Later in life, the Northern Renaissance Faire often ran late, well into October. On the last weekend, we would carve pumpkins on the front table, which let us acquaint the customers with the ancient customs of Samhain and All Hallows. The historically determined would carve turnips, instead – those were the vegetable lanterns of choice before pumpkins were imported from the New World. They are also incredibly hard and difficult to carve, so all kudos to Stacy and Rebecca, who actually succeeded in producing wicked little faces on them! The last weekend nights of Faire, we’d put light sticks in them and set them out on the fence line, and scare the security guards who were always wary of lit candles.

And there was always the joy of giving out candy, once we were all too old to take to the streets. The parade of little kids in costumes is endlessly wonderful; even the awkward teenagers still hopefully extending their pillow cases are fun. I have never said to anyone: Aren’t you too old for this? That’s a sure way to incur supernatural wrath.

So, here we are in October once again. This year, I am still pretty much a revenent – no excursions for me, be the weather ever so mild. Kimberly doesn’t even want me to answer the door, if we do get any trick-or-treaters; because my health is mostly expressed in negative values. But I am getting better, albeit frustratingly slowly. I can walk for at least 30 feet before I start gasping; I can talk and rarely have to cough. I can sing a little. But I am horribly sensitive to both cold and heat. And I do have this ghastly divot in my throat – it’s healed as much as it is going to heal, but it leaves me with a lurid purple hole I can fit two fingers into. I wear scarves when I go to the doctors’ offices. I avoid mirrors.

However, it is time for me to get off my butt – symbolically speaking – and resume communicating with the world and with you, Dear Readers. My long lapse is no one’s doing but my own – Kimberly has urged me constantly to get my act together and shout once more into the void. Now, tonight – with the temperature falling, and the wind howling in the trees, and leaves being driven in head-high waves past the windows – now is a good time to prove I’m still here. I may be a revenent, but I’m not dead. It doesn’t seem likely that I will be any time soon, either. I have officially survived.

Today, my dear old friend Rebecca called to ask Kimberly if I was, indeed, still among the living. Kimberly swore I would resume my bloggery. It’s the least I can do for Kimberly, who has nursed me though so much; and for Rebecca, who has fronted the inquiries from so many of my concerned friends. She seems to be person of choice to poke me with a stick.

It’s the season to talk to the dead, and tell old tales. Since I am, amazingly, not among the dead, I have things to say and remember and invoke. There is candy to eat, pumpkins to carve, lights to be lit against the echoing dark. I’m really here.

And I still have things to say.

This is my favourite bat. And it’s real!
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On Cats

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker professed to loathe cats. More than she professed to loathe most other animals, that is. But tonight, I want to talk about the cats I live with – because, though Kage would probably have disliked them, I love them dearly.

I know that, despite firm avowals of undying hatred, Kage had good social relationships with at least a few cats. Mitz was an extremely beautiful black cat from Kage’s early childhood. He had a perfect profile and only 1 front leg, giving him a high-shouldered hunchbacked look. Kage always lamented she had met him in her pre-Shakespeare days, as otherwise she would have named him Richard III. He was dignified and kingly; also short-haired, which may have been why she liked him.

She also was fond of my cat Thesta, a little grey and white lady who was an excellent mouser. Kage appreciated a cat that was good at a traditional cattish vocation. Thesta, too, was short-haired. On the other hand, Kage truly did dislike my favourite cat, T’Pring, who was enormous, insanely long-haired, and had huge tufted paws and ears – I now suspect she was a Maine Coon mix. Kage only put up with her immensity and fuzziness as a concession to me.

But now, living with Kimberly, I have returned to living with cats. Although my heart belongs to Harry the parrot, I do love cats – as long as they can learn that Harry is not prey; so far, they all seem willing to be parrot-minions instead of mighty hunters. And it is here that my family and I have discovered the wonderful world of Maine Coon cats. We now have two – our lovely lady Ashby, who is orange; and Edward – who is still a baby (technically) and black.

Ashby is a rescue – the Pasadena ASPCA had her down as a 4-month old kitten, rescued with her mother and brother from a dreadful infancy on the street. (She is still frightened of street sweeping machines, even though she is a 100% an indoor cat.) When we brought her home, we were amazed at how actually tiny and dependent she was: but also at the size and fuzziness of her paws, her coat like a cloud of silk, her huge tufted ears, her extraordinarily long and fluffy tail … what we have determined since is that Ashby is a Maine Coon, but was erroneously described as older than she was because she was so large. For a Maine Coon, she is a dainty lady indeed; but she is twice the size of any of our previous, more ordinary cats. She is a golden sunset cloud, with her magnificent tail following her like a princess’ veil. And she is totally my nephew Michael’s cat, adoring him with a proprietary love that sometimes impedes his ability to breathe – 12 pounds is a lot of cat.

When Kimberly’s little black cat used up her last life, we were bereft. We decided that what we needed was another black kitty – for Halloween purposes, of course – and another Maine Coon, because of the beauty and sweetness of Ashby. And after a search and a wait of some months on his pregnant mother, we found him!

Edward was, for a Maine Coon, tiny when he came home to us. He is black, black, black – so totally black that when he closes his eyes, his little face vanishes. He is as soft as velvet, and quite the most affectionate cat I’ve ever known – he likes to give kisses, and purrs like a tank. He thinks Kimberly is absolutely Momma and he likes to lie on her breast and stare lovingly into her eyes. He rarely mews, but he meeps and makes tribble noises and chirps in a tiny voice. He chases sticks and ping pong balls and is learning to fetch. He has paws with thumbs and can open cupboards and turn doorknobs; he likes to hug you with them, and he likes to have his tummy rubbed. Most cats are supposed to hate that, but not Maine Coons – both Edward and Ashby just adore it.

Edward is as insatiably curious as the Elephant’s Child, and absolutely must assist with whatever his humans are doing; one of his favourite napping places is on Kimberly’s desk, lying between her computer screen and keyboard. He now eclipses most of the screen when he does that, but he really likes to assist Momma with her games of solitaire … he has no idea he is not transparent.

I have no pictures of him yet – he has spent the day in or under things, of course, just when I wanted to get a current photo. But from his arrival as a (relatively) teenie kitten, he has grown extravagantly. We did measure him this afternoon – from his ebony nose to his really fuzzy behind, Edward is now 22 inches – count in his 14-inch opera cloak tail, and he is 36 inches long. And he is only 6 months old, and due to keep growing until he is least 3 years old.

So. There are my fuzzy roommates. I will get pictures tomorrow, and share with with you, Dear Readers. Those of you who have cats, and especially Maine Coons, will be appreciative. Even those of you who, like Kage, think you loathe them might like them. Because, you see, one thing I have learned since Kage died is – lean as hard as you can into what you love. Hold it tight. Rub its tummy.

It’s a small, soft thing, and in no way permanent.

And here is my favourite cat poem, written by an Irish monk …

*I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

translated by Robin Flowers

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The Great Outdoors, Indoors

Posted on August 17, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker didn’t really like most people. She had to get to know them individually, which she didn’t do often because she was busy and shy. Those who did get her attention long enough to get to know her – and didn’t scare her – know that she was a good friend, faithful and true, and a right lot of fun once she had a couple of rum and Cokes in her.

Kage also didn’t like Nature much. She gave her civilized preferences to Lord Ermenwyr (“I HATE Nature!”) and much preferred to observe the natural, wet, fuzzy, sticky, smelly, hot, cold world through a thick pane of glass. Gardens were her preferred outdoors environment, the more clipped and securely bedded the better. With easy access to modern plumbing, and a lawn chair with a drink holder.

Even in her books, few Operatives really liked animals – including humans. One of the only exceptions was Raven, an illegally augmented raven (of course) who becomes the partner of a young Operative in Mendoza In Hollywood. And, naturally, the endless and mostly implied passions of Nefer for hoof stock. As chief assistant researcher, I too learned things about bison I have since laboured in vain to forget …

Since I have moved back to Los Angeles, I’ve been re-immersed in the tide of Nature. Living, as I do, close to both Griffith Park and the Los Angeles River, I am rich in the company of furred and winged neighbors. We have a squirrel feeder; a bird feeder on the window as well as a bowl on the porch for the ground feeders; scads of nectar-rich flowers for the butterflies and hummingbirds. After dark, raccoons, skunks and possums waddle up to eat the spilled seeds and nuts. During the day, young ravens and hawks come by to see if any other smaller visitants are catchable ; it’s especially charming when the fledglings are accompanied by their mamas, teaching them patiently how to nail a squirrel or a pigeon.

At night, bobcats and mountain lions come and sit on our cars. We never see them; but cat prints as large and larger than my hands make it plain they have been out there. They seem to like sliding down the windshield. All cats are the same, in odd ways.

Recently, our next-door human neighbor sadly deceased; her house has been steadily worked on for months, being renovated by a team of house-flippers. In the course of their landscaping efforts, they trimmed or cut down several trees – which unfortunately, were condos for roof rats. And now, there are roof rats all over the place. Roof rats are an introduced species, Rattus rattus, smaller and more gracile than the Rattus norwegicus which you find all over downtown Los Angeles. I happen to like rats, when encountered on a social basis; but the current wave of rodentine refugees are not especially fun.

They don’t get into the house often – we have two cats now, and I think the smell of them upsets any rat adventurers. However, accidents do happen … over the weekend, one of the tree rats managed to fall down the chimney and put on a desperate show in the fireplace. This was kind of funny during the day; but in this heat Kim and I sleep in the living room, for the air conditioning. And a rat in the fireplace is just not conducive to rest.

Our fireplace is kept closed with both a metal net curtain, and glass doors; we have an artificial log in place, so in the summer there is no actual fire – although the very splendid fake fire is complete with wonderful waxing and waning lights, that are beautifully soothing. The rat, however, must have thought he’d gone to ratty Hell, because he ran up, down and all around behind the doors, frantically seeking an egress. Or maybe it was the avid attention of our younger cat, who seemed to think the rat-under-glass was a special television show just for him.

Our elder cat is a large but delicate and ladylike red Maine Coon cat, yclept Ashby, who simply watched the rat from the top of my desk. Our younger cat, though, went nearly as crazy as the poor rat. Edward is a jet black Maine Coon – just 6 months old -who is already bigger than Ashby, and we spent a horrendous night with Edward the Black periodically throwing himself at the fireplace doors (BOINNNNG!), and sending the rat into loud insane scrabbling all over the place. Between futile attacks, Edward cried piteously (Maine Coons have tiny, sweet little voices) for someone to give him the rat.

I did not sleep. Kimberly, Edward and the damned rat finally all fell asleep around 4; and sometime during the next day, the rat managed his escape. Or maybe he died of stress from having an enormous black lunatic banging on the fireplace doors. Whatever, he has not been since. Edward, though, still checks the doors every day just to make sure there is no-one lurking in there – but Edward, despite being enormous, is still just an innocent little baby who expects miracles to come down the chimney.

During the long, noisy night, I amused myself by imagining what Kage would have had to say if she had been cooped up with a crying, 14-pound baby cat and a demented tree rat. I’d probably have had to administer several ounces of rum and chocolate, and hoped she’d fall asleep as well … but, you know? At least I was home with my loved ones.

Nearly anything is bearable under those circumstances.

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A Small Report From The Edges of Reality

Posted on August 16, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker wasn’t fond at all of consensus reality. Considering, as she did, that reality was what you make it, she had a low opinion of the reality on offer – the group view, the mass of humanity view, the purblind, self-obsessed tunnel vision that does constitute the consensus of the majority of human kind.

So she largely used her own. A lot of people who do this have slipped over the edges of recognizing any reality, and forged far over the border of being able to live in anyone else’s. But Kage was imminently sane, and practical besides. She was on excellent terms with the input from her own senses; she just didn’t care to rely on what other people told her that was.

Kage was never any good at doing what she was told to do. Her usual technique was to listen quietly, make no response, and then ignore the orders she did not like. No loud defiance, no obstreperous argument; she just held still until no one was looking, and then proceeded to do what she wanted to do. And it worked pretty well; if anyone ever noticed again, they tended to forget what it was they’d told her to do in the first place. And Kage sailed on, defining herself just the way she wanted.

One of the reasons she refused the consensus reality was that she felt it missed too much. Details matter, and reality cannot be accurately determined unless you look for and integrate those details. Can you know everything about everything? Probably not, although Kage wasn’t ever willing to bet on that. She was deeply aware that things are always stranger than what we are told. She wanted all the information she could get.

I always felt the same way; we spent years collecting weird facts from all over. not only for Kage’s stories but for our own amusement. For years now, friends have sent me articles about the kinds of glorious weirdness we liked; they still continue to do so, which is a source of endless delight to me. I can’t find everything that floods through the aether, after all. Just today, my old friend Mark Shanks (a genuine scholar) send me a fascinating article on a mummified moa claw. (https://tinyurl.com/prnpnzdh). This came from a bird that was 10 feet tall, mind you. One look at this, and you can understand why the Maori hunted them to extinction. It is always an impoverishment when a species goes extinct, but in this case it was pretty clearly either the moas or the Maori.

Here are a few more mentions of interesting weirdness from the last few months.

A Senor Elfrain Cab, who is pretty much a Mayan still living in the original Mayan lands, has dedicated his life to saving the rare, stingless Mayan honeybee. They produced (and still produce) a potent honey that was once a staple of the Mayan diet. It’s still sought-for, and still just as good. The bees were almost exterminated by the Spaniards – as were the Maya – but both groups still survive, and mean to remain. Find them here: https://tinyurl.com/2ppsk7yz , and maybe buy some Mayan honey.

For the first time in years, new baby ravens have been born at the Tower of London. This is nice news for the Raven Master of the Tower, who is fond of his enormous charges; also nice news for the monarchy, whose continued existence is said to depend on the ravens being maintained at the Tower of London. https://tinyurl.com/268pwwz3 And in my opinion, you can never have too many ravens, anyway.

The genome of the platypus has finally been pretty thoroughly mapped! See here, with an adorable photograph: https://tinyurl.com/czwh58un . I thought it would have been done before now, too, but there is so very much to be studied in Australia! Most of which would also love to kill you, which must make life extremely interesting for Australian researchers … but, anyway, it appears the platypus really is a missing link, between reptiles and birds. This is especially fascinating because actually finding a real missing link in very rare – in my scholarly days, in fact, we were taught never to expect to lay our greedy hands on anything so obvious and distinct. But, you know, Australia …

I had more to share, but the WordPress program has evidently slipped over some edge of reality itself – I can barely get it to respond to the most ordinary of commands, and it has in fact devoured – devoured, I say! – a few hundred pearls of wisdom in the last hour. The more I try to save, the more it loses.

I am going to quit, post and publish now, before I disappear up my own paragraph block.

Until tomorrow, Dear Readers.

This would be holding YOUR drumstick …
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New Chapter: Wherein I Lose An Orifice

Posted on August 15, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker always said, you should try to hook your audience with the first sentence. I hope the one above is odd enough to catch someone’s attention – not that I deserve it, having lapsed into so long a silence lately.

But once you start this sort of thing, it’s actually pretty hard to stop. Kage wrote stories because no one could interrupt her, writing – they could refuse to listen, but they sure as hell couldn’t take over the narrative.

She used to pass some of our brainstorming time coming up with alternate beginning lines to her stories – as weird as possible, sometimes, to ponder whether or not they would have worked better than what she ended up using. Mendoza In Hollywood almost started with a soliloquy on gardening; but Kage’s editor felt a recap of the history of the Company would work better; so she added that. but then segued into the history of Los Angeles, her psychotic home town.

The Life of the World To Come got the gardening treatise in the beginning as well. She had moved it from the beginning of In the Garden of Iden to begin with, but suddenly got up one day and redid the beginning with one of my favourite passages in all her books: “Rain comes on the west wind, ice out of the blue north. The east wind brings hazes, smokes, the exhalation of the desert on the distant mainland; and hot winds come out of the south, across the wide ocean.”

Sky Coyote once started with “I used to be a human being”: but Kage finally decided that was too grim and zombie-ish, and did another recap of the Company’s history – before drifting into Joseph’s Warner Brothers narration of his life.

The Sons of Heaven had so many first lines (being a mosaic novel) that Kage gave up on it. She found it easier to just invent an overlying plot to all of them, and let that carry the weight. She figured by that time, most folks knew what she was up to, anyway.

She debated over titles, too. Would anyone have bought Growing Up Green? How about The Villain’s Journey? (I think someone has since used that for a novel about the bad guy/antihero.) What about Moving On the Black Squares? All those ended up with different titles, and sold like hotcakes. I liked The Square-rigged Time Machine, myself; but Kage ultimately dismissed it as too silly. Ah, well.

But I have been working hard, Dear Readers, perfecting the things I took for granted before 2020: The Year Everyone’s Worlds Fell Apart. Things like being permitted to wear underwear, and eat solid food, and talk, and walk. Nothing has worked as well or as quickly as I felt I deserved – I still can’t walk up more than 3 steps or more than 20 feet on the level without gasping for breath – but I couldn’t do that much in June.

That’s when I finally had my tracheotomy tube removed. I woke up with a huge divot in my neck, a lurid tunnel two fingers wide straight into my throat, with a dark little gap in the center that fluttered when I talked. I could feel my breath moving in and out; what happened when I sneezed was too horrible to describe. But I could breathe, and sneeze, and walk, and talk! And while that hole was visually (to me) as huge as the Valles Marineris, it was easily hidden behind a measly little square of gauze and a strip of tape.

I got off the oxygen. Every day, when we changed my dressing, the hole in my throat got smaller – Kimberly helped with the mirror and flashlight, so I could see. And finally, the day before yestreday, the last bit of the hole into my trachea finally healed shut. There is still a horrendous hole in my neck, but now it is just a rose-coloured cave that is actually healing along its edges. No air moves in or out! I don’t wheeze! And sneezing has returned to a harmless little nasal explosion.

And I can whistle recreationally again! I was never a very good whistler, mind you – but I could whistle, and Harry loved it. Now I can again. I can sing, too – not loudly or well, and I really have no breath control, but I can do it. Harry really likes that, as we have sung together his whole little weird life. He doesn’t care how thin and gaspy my voice is, as long as it’s mine. Which is really a weird attitude for someone who can switch voices 3 or 4 times in a single song … my favourite is “Rule Britannia” in his growly baritone monster voice. He can even whistle it in that ogre voice.

Anyway. I am almost a whole woman again. Of, if not whole – I have shed a frightening number of organs over the years – at least a functioning woman. Which is why I have laboured over the past 3 hours over this blog entry. The knack for doing this is returning very slowly, but I am getting accustomed to appreciating any victory at all. After all, I have surmounted disaster, outwitted my physicians, and dodged Death half a dozen times in the last year. I’m happy to be doing anything at all.

No wild promises or oaths, though, Dear Readers. I cannot guarantee burning prose, here – not even daily prose. I’ve learned more practical expectations of myself this past year, too.

But having found one of my voices, I mean to find them all.

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Once More Unto the Breach

Posted on June 23, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker did give me a few choice bits of advice at the end of her life. It was that lovely afternoon that she spent surrounded by friends and family, with an unseasonably warm January wind coming off the ocean directly into her open bedroom window.

Between her nieces curled up like kittens on her bed, and her sister Anne reminiscing with her; our dear friend Wayne plumping her pillows and helping her sit up (he turned up unexpectedly in a clear case of hero-radar, knowing he was needed), and Harry singing in the corner of her bedroom – Kage and I didn’t have a lot of time together, alone. Mind you, we had spent the entirety of the rest of her illness on our own – but that weekend was supposed to be the first of her “At Home” events, where she could gradually say her farewells.

We thought we had weeks to get around to the pithy advice and such. Surprise! She fell asleep as the sun westered, and died long before morning.

But she did have time to advise me not to live alone; to take care of my health; to lay off the pork rinds and eclair jags (don’t judge, Dear Readers); and to do whatever I had to in order to avoid falling headfirst into the Slough of Despond.

“You get depressed and then you give up,” she told me, poking me in the ribs. “Don’t do that anymore. It’s better to kick someone’s ass than to give up! And listen to Kimberly – she’s on your side, and fierce, and a lot more practical than you are!”

She was right, of course. And I endeavored to follow all that good advice – well, not the eclairs, but the pork rinds for sure. But the last year was too much for me.

It was too much for everyone, Dear Readers. We all spent portions of 2020 howling at the stone walls, rattling the adamantine bars of our cages. I just happened to spend most of it warehoused in a Skilled Nursing Facility, battling with my caregivers to get out of that sanitized prison. I had to become a thoroughly rotten patient in order to be permitted to try to walk, to get off the ventilator, to eat solid food – I think that Kimberly and I literally annoyed my doctors into letting me go home at last. Never, ever send your relatives off to be confined, if they are even slightly alert and alive- never abandon them, never leave them to fight alone. Without Kimberly and Michael, I would never have escaped.

Considering that the doctors at Glendale Memorial told Kimberly that I was completely gone in my post-cardiac surgery coma and she should consider pulling the plug … I don’t think I would be alive without the steely determination of my family.

But I didn’t die, and I learned to walk and talk and eat again, and I have been home for months now. Infuriatingly, I am still wearing a damned tracheotomy tube down my throat, that irritates my trachea and produces tons of loathsome, sticky mucus; and I cannot get a good bre4ath, because I am trying to do all my breathing through a plastic drinking straw. Literally, the inner canula of my trach is the size of a straw. So I get gaspy now and then, and I get recurring pneumonia from crap getting inhaled into my lungs, and I sound like a bad AI when I try to talk.

And no one would even consider removing my trach.

I hate it. I despair. Increasingly, I find myself about to give up, feeling that I will never be right again, that I will be a burden on my family for as long as my miserable life endures.

But, Kage was right. I cannot give up fighting. And Kimberly has stood by me through all this, even the moments like yestreday when I collapsed in very unattractive weeping. Crying is dreadfully ugly when you can’t sob; you just leak tears and make suffocating duck noises, while using up a mint’s worth of Kleenex.

But lo! Just as I was subsiding into self-pitying snuffling, my pulmonary doctor called. Kimberly took the call because I could not speak. She explained how very unhappy I was, only she did it without sounding like an hysterical dish washing machine full of custard … and my doctors (plural) understood! Finally! They told her they actually did want me off the trach, they were just worried it would be bad for me. But Kimberly managed to make them understand that I was already ready miserable enough to be losing the will to live, and …

A miracle happened!

On Monday, I go into the hospital to have the trach tube removed! It’s being done on an in-patient basis in order to keep me alive if we are all wrong and my lungs collapse as soon as the trach it out. (Which no one actually thinks will happen, but …) I have sworn to behave no matter what is needed – as long at it eventually leads to a trach-free life. My doctors agreed to their part, too. They even apologized for not communicating properly to me that they were gonna take out the tube the whole time …

Yeah, right. But someone listened! Someone understood! Mostly, that someone was Kimberly, but she was able to explain it to my hesitant doctors in such a way that I am no longer on the Ignore This Old Woman list.

So bear me in your thoughts, Dear Readers. Keep Kimberly and Michael there too, my indomitable bodyguards. I shall spend this week practising closing off my trach to breathe without it – I can actually do that, Dear Readers, which means I CAN BREATHE!!!

Kage was right. Kimberly was right. I am the luckiest woman on life with the virtue and ferocity of my sisters. Oh, frabjous day! Calloo Callay!

Everybody chortle in joy!

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It’s Not the Heat – No, Wait, It IS The Heat

Posted on June 17, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker, as I have noted several times, loved heat. She did very well in it, wisely hydrating religiously and never over-exposing herself to unmitigated sun.

A standing fan, silk lounging pajamas, and a secure supply of iced drinks, and she was set. She stayed chipper and productive while I was lying on the couch faint with hypothermia and moaning endlessly. And annoyingly, I am sure.

I’m not at all certain Kage ever even sweated.

The last several years, climate change has been unkind to California. Mind you, we haven’t had killer storms, city-choking snow, state-wide floods or such horrors as now annually proliferate in the Midwest and the East Coast. But our fire season now runs all-year long, and the summer months are the very worst. In this last week, as the heat has grown daily, we have had dozens of small fires alongside freeways and in parks. But the worst is the heat.

California is warm; everyone knows that. We are nothing really but a gussied-up sub-desert. Days in the 80’s and 90’s are not unusual even in winter, and can run uninterrupted during the summer months. We have established ways to deal with that (water parks, pool parties, ice cream trucks), and can even put up with a week’s worth of triple digit heat without quite descending into dystopian chaos.

Flex Alerts help, too, wherein we just don’t use unnecessary electricity during peak hours. Mind you, I personally think too few people pay attention to those, and they should be more stringently enforced. Possibly with vigilante forces … Light your living room with candles for the evening. Prepare cold meals early in the day; who can eat in the heat anyway? Do your laundry in the morning, and run the dishwasher after midnight; and no, your electric toothbrush, hair dryer and home theatre are NOT vital to your life. Take a cool shower, and make it a Navy shower while you are at it. Read a book by lantern light; it’s romantic.

Yeah, I sound self-righteous. That’s because 1) I and my family do all these things and more to accommodate Flex Alerts; and 2) I can’t reach anyone to enforce my autocratic rule anyway, so I tend to sound off more loudly. And it’s also due to the fact that the entire West Coast and environs is under a heat advisory, which is not expected to let up until the other side of this weekend. I am nervous, enervated and cranky.

This makes us all grumpy, and listless, and really rather mean. Mind you, Kimberly keeps the center of the house at a quite comfortable temperature, through a clever deployment of our one AC unit and various fans. The electricity usage is as minimal as we can make it, and still be cool enough to eat and sleep. But these are the days when the cats melt, and the parrot fusses, and we humans chug cold drinks and eat finger foods that don’t demand cooking. The kitchen gets at least 6 hours of sun this time of year, and it’s a furnace even without turning the oven on.

At present, it is really rather nice in the living room – dark and pleasantly cool. We are spending our evening by the light of the television and our various computers. When we can see the screens, anyway, The cats like to lounge in front of them, and Kimberly is even now scrolling over the limp black form of our new kitten, Edward. Being a Maine Coon, Edward is not only excessively fuzzy but a truly ridiculous length stretched out like this.

Aside from observing our pets loll about, and debating a choice of cold gin cocktails, I haven’t really done a damned thing today. I will, Dear Readers, tomorrow for certain. At least, I plan to do … something. Anything, as long as it’s creative. I don’t feel at all creative in this blood sapping heat, but I do feel the nagging urge to be creative somehow. It may be time to take up a new knitting project – starting a new one will give a few days before the project takes over my lap and I die of heat exhaustion …

So, not a lot to boast about, talk of or anticipate tonight: only a hope that we may all stay cool enough to rest and not get burned out by an escaped verge fire from one of our ubiquitous ant-trail freeways … stay chill, Dear Readers.

And remember, a gin and tonic will be your friend, if you will let it.

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Portal Season

Posted on June 14, 2021 by Kate

Kage Baker was most attuned to summer, of the seasons of the turning year. Her personal thermostat ran to triple digit heat, and her internal organs all re-oriented then, turning to follow the sun like sunflowers. Her hair was photo-reactive, and a morning in the sun would brighten it from dark russet to a blaze of gold, copper and inhuman colours like burgundy and metallic gold: and no, she never dyed or touched it up in her life. I have no idea how it worked, only that it did – only that by mid-way through the Spring Faire, I would be braiding a torrent of sleepy fire in the far-too-early mornings.

Her skin, however … that was porcelain pale, and the only change it ever displayed was to burn extravagantly. By her 20’s, she never willingly exposed an inch of her skin if she could help it, wearing broad Panamas and felt hats in civvies, and wimples in her Faire clothes. Nonetheless, under her shifts and her Hawaiian shirts, she was covered with freckles that never faded at all. She insisted that one day they would all run together and give her an amazing tan – but no, she just would have looked like a piece of toast.

But more than the heat, Kage resonated to the rhythms of Summer. She might not get up at dawn, but she usually woke enough to notice the hot tide of light in the morning and register approval. The long, long afternoons were her favourite times of all the year, made for gin cocktails, badminton games (at which she was a deadly switch hitter), Slurpees, pizza and root beer floats; at Faire, for huge group song-fests in the Inn, led by all that year’s singing groups and fueled by ale and chai.

But she loved the holidays the best, especially the old ones forgotten by nearly everyone except Faire performers and rural Englishmen: Mayday, Midsummer’s (Eve and Day), Lammas. She said they all rang with eldritch resonance, like glass bells, and swore she could feel the seasonal portals opening and closing between our common Earth and Fairieland. She always sounded pretty wistful about it, too; I used to worry she’d find some way to get her Changeling status activated, and just vanish into much-too-thin air some warm sunset …

Here, it is very nearly summer, the Solstice bearing down on us with all the horns of Elfland sounding in its train. Portals come and go like sundogs in the sky, filmy rainbows blinking in and out as they promise strange new horizons. And in my living room, with rosemary and roses and geraniums and clover all blooming rich and heavy in the garden – we are suddenly afflicted with bees. Not outdoors in the garden – where one might not only reasonably expect them, but have room to dodge – but in the living room. Where we have all the windows shut and the A/C on. Six or seven of the fuzzy little beasties in a single hour!

A damned nerve-racking hour, too. Kimberly and Michael were already tense and tired from necessary errands in the wretched heat, I (of course) am no use at all in anything that requires, like, actual movement, and our new kitten was absolutely convinced the invader was some charming new toy just for him! Poor Michael had to climb and leap all around the living room in order to capture each of the bees (we try not to kill bees in our house) while I retreated out of the arena just because I am a large, slow impediment. None of us are allergic to bees, but we were not sure what effect a sting would have on a 4 month old kitten with no brain …

And they just kept coming! We couldn’t figure out where their entry was: we closed the fireplace doors, checked all the windows and doors, even eyeballed the gap under the front door, just in case some working girl had decided to try her hand(s) at being a sapper … Michael redid ALL the edging around the in-window air conditioner, and apparently that was indeed the weakness in our fortress walls. Or there was a bee-sized portal somewhere in the living room, since there was ONE late bee that appeared when everyone else had been tossed out. We could not tell where she had come from, and Kimberly was forced to send her over the Rainbow Bridge before the cats got stung or Michael had a stroke from sheer frustration.

I have never entirely trusted summer portals … and while Kage never disappeared through one, a half dozen bees appearing in our living room was just about as bad. And we are still not entirely sure where they got in!

May the gods and goddesses of the bright season keep flying terror out of all your houses, Dear Readers.

And now, I am off to soothe my nerves with pizza. That is almost the ultimate summer food … at least, Kage thought so.

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