Where to find me this weekend:
Friday I’ll be in Bradford, Vermont, for the Midnight Madness. I’ll be doing street magic from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Saturday and Sunday I’ll be doing walk-around at the Vermont Steampunk Expo in South Burlington, VT.
Come find me, say “Amaze me!” and I shall.
Due to the recent storms in the northeast and massive power outages, the scheduled Podcast UFO for tonight has been delayed. I’ll let y’all know the rescheduled date as soon as I know it.
Jim Macdonald has a podcast interview coming up on 1 November. Read more about it here:
This coming Wednesday, November the 1st 2017, from 8:00-10:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time, I’m 
going to be a guest on PODCASTUFO. The subject is going to be Betty and Barney Hill. Those who want to prepare might read this paper: Amabile, JD, MD, Phyllis E. and Jobe, MD, Thomas H. (1987) “Hypnosis in the Criminal Case: Facts and Fallacies,” Jefferson Journal of Psychiatry: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 3.
Or, as they say in the small fishing village where I was raised, “Klaatu barada nikto.”
Over on his blog, Jim Macdonald talks about cards and metaphors.
All too often these days we read or hear in the news, “[Name of politician] doubled down on his earlier remarks…”
So what does it mean to “double down”?
The term comes from the world of gambling, specifically from the game of Blackjack (AKA “Twenty-one”). The object of the game is to draw cards so that their combined value is a) equal to or less than 21, and b) higher than the dealer’s hand (such that the dealer’s hand is also less than 21). All cards have values equal to their nominal values; face cards are all valued at 10, and aces can be either one or eleven, at the player’s discretion. The players are dealt two cards, generally both face up; the dealer initially gets two cards, one face down and the other face up. After all the players draw the cards they desire, the dealer reveals his or…
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Some of y’all may recall the post From My Mail a while back, requesting votes to get a grant from State Farm for Camp Mariposa in Nashua, NH.
Camp Mariposa is a mentoring and addiction prevention program for youth (ages 9-12) who are impacted by the substance abuse of a family member.
Well, today’s news is that Camp Mariposa is indeed one of the recipients of a grant. So, to those who voted, thanks. Good job.
Over at his site, Jim Macdonald is having fun with words:
The news lately is full of the word “dotard,” and all of the news sources feel compelled to add a definition. As if everyone didn’t already know what dotard meant. In the small fishing village whence I come, “Dotard” is constantly on every man’s lips.
Seriously, I’ve known it since I was eight or ten, on first looking into Chapman’s Homer The Lord of the Rings. Who can ever forget the scene where Saurman says to Theoden, “Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?”
You have to admire the wizard’s command of invective. (I also admire his use of the word ‘but,” but that’s for another post.)
Still, Saruman should have been a bit more careful with what he withdrew from his word-hoard since “dotard” shares with “wizard” the…
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In a sane and rational world, it shouldn’t be necessary to state for the record that I thoroughly disapprove of alt-right supporters neo-Nazis white-supremacists dirtbag racist whackaloons holding torchlit rallies, chanting racist slogans, beating up counterprotesters, and ramming cars into crowds of people with murderous intent.
It would be the sort of thing that any person of normal intelligence and good will should be presumed to be against until proven otherwise.
But that’s not the world we live in, so . . . let it be known that I thoroughly disapprove of all of the above things.
Any day now, though, the maple tree by the foot of our driveway will show its first patch of color. August up here is almost as much the start of autumn as it is the last of summer, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I lived for long enough in Texas, where July and August are fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk months; and I spent three and a half years in the literal tropics when my husband/co-author was in the Navy and stationed in Panamá, where you got a choice between hot and rainy and hot and not-rainy (but still humid), six months on and six months off; and believe me, seasons are good, and New England seasons suit me fine.
(Granted, January and February are a frozen hell, but my theory is that no matter how much you like the climate where you are, there are going to be a couple of months out of the year when you pay for it.)
My favorite seasons, which also happen to be the best ones for writing in as far as I’m concerned†, are spring and fall, both of which proceed up here in a leisurely fashion, with subtle gradations along the way. Fall, for example, goes through early fall and first frost to peak color to waiting for the snow-that-sticks, and runs roughly from mid-August to late November.
Meanwhile, it’s summer, and any day now I expect that the local gardeners will be palming off their excess zucchini (there appears to be no middle ground between no zucchini and too much zucchini) on anyone who will take it, and I will be making lots of zucchini bread.
†Obligatory writing reference!
Today is the anniversary of a couple of iconic events from the Wild West: One of the first, if not the first, actual middle-of-the-street quick-draw gunfighter duels, and the first train robbery by the Younger-James gang (not the first train robbery of the Old West, though — the Reno brothers beat Cole and Frank to the draw, as it were).
The duel was between Wild Bill Hickok and Davis Tutt on 21 July 1865 in Springfield, Missouri. The quarrel between the men was over (possibly) unpaid gambling debts and (perhaps) over the affections of one or more young ladies. The most proximate cause, however, seems to have been Tutt parading around town wearing Wild Bill’s gold watch (which Tutt had either stolen, or was holding as collateral for one of the aforesaid gambling debts).
They really did square off in the middle of the street, and at a range of…
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Reblogged from Jim Macdonald’s blog:
The results of the first annual Granite State Magicians’ New England Magic Contest, held last Sunday in Peabody, MA:
Congratulations to all our contestants!
No one died, no one stabbed themselves in the hand, and no one is in jail. Therefore, success!
In Other News:
A couple of photos of handsome young me busking at Farmers’ Markets:
My schedule
At the Lancaster Farmers’ Market
Photo from the North Woods Weekly
At the Littleton NH Farmers’ Market
Dr. Doyle's Blog 