Uncle Tom’s SERE

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Jim Macdonald has his own take on an American classic….

jamesdmacdonald's avatarJAMES D. MACDONALD

Was Uncle Tom’s Cabinwritten by a feminine hand?

No, it was written by Harriet Beecher’s toe.

For years, pretty much all I knew about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the novel, was that it existed.  Important in the social history of the United States, sure.  Important in American literature, sure.  But the plot?  Nope. All I knew of the plot was what I’d gleaned from watching The King and I.  So, recently, I decided to correct that lack.

(BTW: Spoilers)

Over the course of a couple of trips to Boston and to Burlington I listened to an audio recording of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The first surprising thing (to me, anyway) was that the scene of Eliza crossing the Ohio on the ice floes wasn’t the climax of the book.  It was an incident in Chapter Seven (out of forty-five chapters).

I hadn’t looked at UncleTomcriticism beforehand…

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An Early Opportunity

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In honor of Nanowrimo, and of the onset of the winter heating season,† I’ll be running a seasonal sale on editorial and critique services from now through the end of Thanksgiving weekend.  My usual rate of $1500 for a line-edit and critique on a standard-weight novel goes down to $1000 for the duration, and rates for epic-sized doorstops will be similarly discounted.

As always, you can purchase a gift certificate – as a gift for a friend, or for yourself – to be redeemed at a later date.

†The snow that fell last Friday? Is still here.

And So It Begins

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The first snow of 2017, in our front yard this morning:

First Snow 2017 01

It’ll probably all be gone by this afternoon, but meanwhile . . . brrrr.

This post brought to you by the winter electric bill, aka the bane of my existence, and by Dr. Doyle’s Editorial Services, always open for business in the name of slaying the kilowatt monster.

A Not Entirely Disinterested Public Service Announcement

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Fantasy writer Jo Walton is running a Kickstarter for Scintillation, a small convention to be held – provided the Kickstarter succeeds — in 2018 in Montreal.

Jo (who deservedly often has Homeric epithets like “acclaimed” and “award-winning” affixed to her name) ran the Farthingparty convention in Montreal from 2006 to 2014, before time-management issues and the stress of worrying every year whether or not the convention would draw enough members to break even brought the run to an end.  She’s coming back now with the new Kickstarter model, which she explains in detail on the project page.

I really really want this Kickstarter to succeed.  (Yes, I’ve already thrown in my mite, and will throw more as more becomes available.)  Farthingparty was the closest convention to where we live,† and I think we made every single one of them, even the one which we had to do as a Saturday day trip because we were moving one of our offspring into their dorm in Boston on Sunday.  I’ve missed it ever year since it ended, and having a new convention we could attend in Montreal would be a wonderful thing.

†Yes.  We live that far north in New Hampshire.

Magic in Vermont

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jamesdmacdonald's avatarJAMES D. MACDONALD

Where to find me this weekend:

James D. Macdonald, Steampunk Magician

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.

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Mars Attacks!

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jamesdmacdonald's avatarJAMES D. MACDONALD

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.

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Keep Watching the Skies

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Jim Macdonald has a podcast interview coming up on 1 November. Read more about it here:

jamesdmacdonald's avatarJAMES D. MACDONALD

This coming Wednesday, November the 1st 2017, from 8:00-10:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time, I’m Earth vs. the Flying Saucersgoing 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.”

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Doubling Down

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Over on his blog, Jim Macdonald talks about cards and metaphors.

jamesdmacdonald's avatarJAMES D. MACDONALD

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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A Brace of Peeves

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Because sometimes they come in matched sets.

Peeve One:  Criteria is a plural, dammit.  The singular is criterion.  (The word is Greek in origin – the –on ending is a clue.)

Peeve Two: Data is also a plural.  The singular is datum.  (This one is Latin.  Again, the ending is a clue – the –um is a neuter singular ending.)

Both of these words are, as is the way of language, in the process of slowly morphing into singular nouns, but they aren’t there yet, and until they get there, some people, like me, are going to bristle up at the usage.

(In principle, I’m a descriptivist.  In practice . . . well, in practice, I get peevish sometimes.)

The Free Speech Bargain

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Every so often, a voice from the back row asks the plaintive question, “In today’s publishing climate, what am I, as an [insert identify marker or lack of one here], allowed to write about?”

Okay.  Here’s the deal, at least as far as the US of A goes*:

You’re allowed** to write about anything you damned well please.

And everybody else – your mom, your best friend, all the other people in your writers’ group, your editor, the New York Times Review of Books, and total random strangers on the internet – is allowed to say out loud and in public what they thought about it.

The thing about the deal, you see, is that it goes both ways.  And a writer who can’t handle the deal is probably better off pulling an Emily Dickinson and keeping their stuff locked up in their dresser drawer for posterity.

*The world is a large and varied place, and I make no claim to pontificate for all of it.

**With the usual narrow exceptions involving nonexistent fires in crowded theatres, and the like.