Weekend Assignment: Li'l Old Philanthropist, Me

John M Scalzi's weekend assignment over on By the Way is about what you would do with a million dollars, what you would do differently if it was $2 million after taxes, and what you would do if you had to give it away.  Having thought about such things from time to time, I have a fair idea of the answers.

A Million or Two

When I was a kid, Parade Magazine published an article, "What Will You Do With Your Million Dollars?" noting that over the next thirty years or so, the average person would probably earn that much, albeit in dribs and drabs rather than a nice, big, investable or spendable chunk.  That was thirty years ago, and the spending power of that million has gone way down.  In short, a million dollars ain't what it used to be. It's still a lot of money to get all at once, but it's not enough to be automatically rich for the rest of your life (except maybe if you're already over 70!).  Whether it's a million or two million, it's therefore necessary, if I'm keeping at least part of it, to invest conservatively (that's low risk, not Republican) so that there will still be money ten or twenty or even thirty years from now.  That's after I pay off my debts, which are currently quite large and getting larger (the UoP isn't cheap!). I'm not retiring anytime soon, even with the two million.  I might take a year off to write, though.

The Untraveled Travel Agent

As previously noted, there are a zillion places I'd like to see that I've never been, and can't afford to go.  So the other thing I'd do in that year off would be to travel.  While I was doing this, I'd probably buy an extra home, most likely in England.

Givin' It All Away

Even if I'm allowed to keep it, a good chunk of the money goes to charity.  For me, that means St. Michael's And All Angels Episcopal Church.  If there's two million, and it's all going away, the second charity would be one I'd start myself.  The Sam Beckett Foundation, named after the Quantum Leap protagonist, would exist to "put right what once went wrong" in the real world.  In the spirit of the tv series, handouts would have to be for some small, personal crisis, not to fix the world's problems on a macro scale.  I'd have to find someone with good judgment and compassion to administer it, preferably someone wealthy enough not to need a big salary to do this.  One office, small staff, helping one person at a time.

Karen

Tags: Weekend Assignment, Million Dollars

Tolkien Pastiches

 It's died down a bit now, but for several days a fun literary game was being played over on Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog, Making Light.  The idea is to rewrite Tolkien in the style of another writer.  In practice, these pastiches tend to be based on specific works by everyone from Lennon & McCartney to Jane Austen, with Tolkien elements substituted for most of the original words.  The result is entertaining, and often quite funny.  Oh, and half the fun is identifying the source material of other people's pastiches.

I wrote about a dozen of these (I want to say "put together," since it's in effect a satirical rewrite of the work of others), and could happily have done a dozen more.  Nevertheless, I'm going to try to quit while I'm ahead.  Here they are.  Other people wrote more elegant, more literary, more clever, subtle and wondertful ones, but this is my blog so you only get the ones I did.  To see more, check out the link above, and follow the further links from there.

So.  What writers and works am I pastiching (is that a word?) here?

1.
It was a dark and stormy night.

In the Prancing Pony Aragorn son of Arathorn, wrapped in a weatherstained cloak, sat at his usual table and watched the hobbits tossing back beer and singing songs. Outside the inn clouds flew urgently away from the Shire. Every few moments lightning flashed through them, illuminating wraithlike shadows that rode toward their halfling prey.

The inn shook.

Wrapped in his cloak, Aragorn shook.

He wasn't afraid of the weather. --It's not just the weather, he thought. --It's the Ringwraiths on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of the hobbits doing eveything to draw attention to themselves.

2.
Once upon a time, a rather long time ago now, about last Saturday, Bilbo Baggins lived with his nephew in a hobbit-hole, under the name Bag End. 

("What does 'under the name' mean?" asked Merry.

"It means that the hillside was called Bag End, and he lived under it," said Gandalf.)

"Pippin wasn't quite sure," said Merry.

"Now I am," squeaked a voice.

"Then I shall go on," said Gandalf.

3.
The Red Book of Westmarch is a truly remarkable book. The introduction starts like this: "Hobbits," it says, are smallish folk with mind-bogglingly large, hairy, leathery feet. I mean, you may think you have trouble finding decent boots, but that's just peanuts to hobbits. Their feet are so big and tough that shoes themselves seem small and flimsy. Listen...."

After a while the style settles down a bit and the book starts to tell you something you might actually need to know, such as the fact that most of the Rings of Power were corrupted or destroyed, so if you should happen to find one, it is vitally important that you don't put it on.
 
4.
He dons the ring with nerveless hands
Close to the Eye in evil lands,
Lost to himself at last, he stands.

Gollum Frodo's exit stalls.
From fatal bite, o'er lava walls
With ring and finger, Gollum falls.

5.
One Ring! One Ring! Glowing bright,
Forged in fires of the night,
What immortal, lidless Eye
Now seeks thy grasping symmetry?

6.
Hobbits, go where I send thee.
Where shall I send thee?
I will send thee south and east
Where darkness falls and you the least,
Baggins, little bitty halfling
Will slip beneath his notice,
Hope, oh, hope of Hobbiton!

7.
In Khazad-Dûm did Durin's Folk
A stately treasure cave decree,
Which orcs and trolls soon overran
In caverns closed to dwarf and man
Far from the streets of Bree.

8.
Call me Mithrandir.

9.
Gollum leads you up to his stairway into Mordor
You can hear the orcs go by
You can stay entombed forever
And you know you’ve gone half-crazy
But that’s why you have to be there
And Sam feeds you out of dishes
Carried all the way from the Shire
And just when you want to tell him
That you cannot travel further
He takes you in his arms
And he lets his strong back answer
You’re not heavy, you’re his brother.

And we want to travel with them
And we want to read their tale
And we think we understand them
For the world in which we find them
Makes ours pale.

And Sauron was a voyeur when he sent out his nine Ringwraiths
He spent the last year watching
From Barad-Dur his tower
And when he knew for certain
That both elves and men were falling
He said, “All their lords will die except
The ones that heed my calling,”
But his dark power was broken
By a lowly injured Halfling
Never quite forsaken
You lost the Ring of Power
At Mount Doom.

(Chorus)

Now Sam leads you down to the base of the volcano
You can see the world is changing
By the dawn that’s late in breaking
And the eagles fly in beauty
To bear you and Sam to glory
And though you’re slow to heal, you’re with
The Ranger at his crowning
There are heroes from the Shire
There are men who are rebuilding
There are elves now looking out to sea
Who’ll sail away forever
And you too will be a sailor.

(Chorus)

10.
It was a long-expected party.
Suddenly, the host disappeared! The guests shouted. A gate slammed.
Suddenly, a Black Rider appeared on the horizon!

11.
I was out with Sam, my gardener. It was his year for following me around; he kept calling me Mister Frodo. He thought he was doing his duty by me. Gandalf’s fault. Ha, ha.

He’d cooked a couple of coneys for me, with herbs, no taters, reluctantly helped by Gollum, who’d since gone off on his own.

I’d eaten pretty good, but I was cranky. “Come on, you moron,” I demanded, “find me a way out of this wasteland.” 

[Note: this entry has been cleaned up with much less "vulgar" language than in the original. Sorry, HE.]

12.
“Repent, Gandalf!” said Saruman.
“Get stuffed!” said Mithrandir.

There are a few more of these in the comments below.

Karen

Visit "Otherworlds"

For several annoying reasons, I find it necessary to start a second blog at http://mavarin.blogspot.com. The name of it is "Otherworlds." It will be pretty much just for the journal entries by the Mâvarin characters, most of them previously published here.  The terms "otherworld" and "otherworlds" refer to a spell rediscovered in Mages of Mâvarin that allows the building of a portal between one reality and another.  That's why Cathma and Crel, for example, aren't quite the same person: they literally come from different worlds.

Karen

“Does this feel as weird to you as it does to me?” --Cathma, Mages of Mâvarin, Chapter 24.

Had Dog, Did Travel

Jenny, bed and van, 1986. Photo by John Blocher.

This is Princess Guinevere of Westcott Street, better known as Jenny Dog, Jen-Jen, Trouble Dog or even Dognose. She was the first and smartest dog I ever had. When I heard about the dog with the large vocabulary on NPR today, I thought of Jenny immediately.

She arrived under my slumlord ex-boyfriend's jacket in 1978, the progeny of Bob's hideous curly-haired gray dog whose name I've since forgotten. Bob called my puppy Princess. I lived on Westcott Street and was a T.H. White fan, so now you know where the long version of her name came from.

When she was a puppy, Jenny used to come with me on the 15 minute walk to Liz's house. Syracuse University paid me $10 a week to read textbooks to Liz, a blind grad student at the School of Social Work. Once when I tried letting Jenny go outside on the honor system, she immediately took off for Liz's place. I had to get dressed and follow her there.

Jenny was the mascot of my used record store, Rockarama (1979-82). One day, a meter reader threatened to kill her because she barked at him. I called and reported him to the gas company. Jenny's favorite Christmas present, aside from food, was balloons, which she used to chase until they popped in her mouth or under her paw. Then she would look at us expectantly, and wait for us to blow up another one.

In 1986, my husband John and I put a mattress in the back of our 1984 Dodge van, put most of our other possessions into storage, and drove around the country looking for someplace it wasn't winter. It was cold and windy even in Florida that February, and the Florida Keys gave me severe allergy problems. We eventually made our way as far north as Montreal, where it was really winter. Jenny spent the trip on the bed in theback of the van, coming out to frolic in the snow at Niagara Falls or check out the ocean. (We really got around that year.) At one point we were following what was left of Route 66 through Oklahoma when the road dead ended at a cemetery. Cows were hanging out there. "Look, Jenny! Cows!" we said, and Jenny barked. She liked to bark at cows.

Jenny knew the commands Jenny up! Get down! Jenny come! Get the stick! and I forget what else. The particular way we had of calling her ("Jenny dog!") got translated into notes (think of the first three notes of Ring Around the Rosy, or Nyah-Nyah-Nyah-Nyah Nyah Nyah!), which after a while we whistled to call her instead of using words. If you ever hear a woman whistling those particular notes in a grocery store, that's me calling John away from the magazine rack. Several other voice commands also became whistles, which Jenny responded to just as readily as the spoken words.

I loved Noodle, who came along as Jenny was wasting away from Cushing's Disease, and I love Tuffy, our present dog. But Jenny was special.

Karen

Five Things that Dogs Are Telling You, and Four Things That Dogs Want

Don't Forget the Dog! (journal entry about Tuffy Toro)

Tags: Dogs, Travel

Dubious Legacy

First Aaron Burr, and now this.

In the rush to lionize the 40th president of the United States, there's a push on to put the face of Ronald Reagan on the $10 bill, replacing Alexander Hamilton. This would be, I think, a short-sighted mistake: politically motivated, sentimental and somewhat ignorant.

Myself, I was never all that fond of Reagan. Oh, he was pleasant enough as the host of Death Valley Days, which is as far back as my memory of him goes, and he was by all accounts a nice man, extremely personable, optimistic and reassuring.That is what made him so popular, even beloved. He made Americans feel good. But does that make him a great president, worthy of bumping one of the Founding Fathers off the $10? Not necessarily.

Reagan's presidency was marked by Iran-Contra, soaring deficits, an increase between the gap between rich and poor, and the unchecked spread of AIDS. In a comment that I've remembered all these years but can't track down or quote verbatim, someone once said that he was the kind of President who would give you the last dollar in his pocket, and then sign a bill taking away your Medicare. One of the funniest SNL sketches of the late Reagan era showed the president as a decisive, high-energy genius, pulling an all nighter to converse with Gorbachev in Russian and issue rapid-fire orders on every issue to his bewildered staff. I don't know whether there was any Alzheimer's in evidence by1987 or so, but such high-octane competence certainly wasn't the style of a president who once said that trees caused pollution.

It is bad taste to say nasty things about a recently-deceased President, and I really don't want to tear the man down here. Some of the accolades being heaped upon him this week are justified. Democrats and liberals therefore bite their tongues this week as Republicans, conservatives and the general public sing Reagan's praises.

But the $10 bill? That's a pretty big accolade, one not to be offered in a moment of acute sentimentality. To displace a historical figure as important as Alexander Hamilton, who helped to shape this country long before Reagan was born, one must be able to make the case that the new honoree had a greater and more beneficial effect on the 228-year history of the United States than Hamilton had. I think it's too soon to make that judgment about Ronald Reagan.

Besides, Hamilton needs all the publicity he can get in a country that tends to ignore anything that happened before each of us was born. Until this latest controversy, the last time the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury got much press was in reprints of James Thurber's 1942 science fiction story "A Friend to Alexander." Oh, and in a 1990s milk commercial.

That said, I have a great deal of respect for Reagan, and even more for Nancy Reagan. Her love, courage, dedication and candor, especially inthe last years of her husband's life, are an inspiration to anyone who has ever been a caregiver, or struggled privately or publicly with family and health problems. Kudos and condolences to her. I wish her all the best in her efforts in support of Alzheimer's research.

Karen

I Am My Books (well, maybe)

John M Scalzi's weekend assignment is to post about what book would give the reader some idea of the blogger's personality. Four books come to mind for me, two of which most people can't read yet, and two more that millions of people have read.

What you haven't read (apologies to Sarah, Sara and Linda):
Of course I'm referring to my two unpublished novels, Heirs of Mavarin and Mages of Mavarin. It's not just because of a desire to promote them that I mention them here, although it's fair to say I'm obsessed with getting them edited and accepted for publication by a major publisher. The salient point is that they dramatize many of my core values - gentleness, compassion, idealism, honesty, a questing sort of faith, empathy, and earnestness - as well as my frailties - selfishness, obsession, impulsiveness, messiness, insecurity, alienation, and naivitee. Very few of my characters are malicious, and even those guys are somewhat likeable, and have reasons for what they do. In short, the Mavarin books have a sensibility that is the antithesis of Lord of the Flies.

What would these books tell you about me? Not much, in terms of biographical details. None of these characters are me, particularly, or people I know. I suppose there are reflected bits of me, split by a prism into a fragmented rainbow. Still, the biggest fragments reflect my attitudes with fair accuracy. I don't like war, revenge, or most of the nastier human emotions and actions. They exist, though, and must be dealt with, preferably by loving, peaceful means wherever possible--not that that always works.

What you've read, or should read:
Not surprisingly for someone who maintains a Madeleine L'Engle website, the single most seminal book for me among books by other people is
A Wrinkle in Time. The award-winning story, about a smart, alienated non-beauty adolescent misfit, promotes compassion, critical thought, faith, reading, truth, mathematics (okay, I'm a little weak on that part) and individuality. Its depiction of logic without love, imposed conformity without compassion is especially memorable. One message in the book, examined more bluntly in one of the sequels, is that even the alienated misfit needs to learn to adapt, not for the sake of conformity but to be more effective at survival. That's a lesson I was unable to learn as a teenager. I hope I'm better at it now.

What I would "unread":
In ninth grade we not only read William Golding's Lord of the Flies but were made to watch the film. I hated it and was haunted by it. The premise of this novel is that people are no damn good, and that only the veneer of society - the social contract codified by laws and enforced by police - keeps people from murder and depravity. As the former victim of elementary school bullies (ten kids surrounding me to put ice down my back for the crimes of social ineptness and the last name Funk), I know perfectly well that people sometimes do malicious things to each other. One has only to look at the Middle East and Africa (just for starters) to see malice at work. I prefer to believe, however, that that is not the dominant thread of human behavior. People hurt each other mostly because they've developed a dehumanizing "us and them" mentality, in which "they" aren't really human and therefore don't have any rights. The most extreme form of this is found in the psychopath, who cannot believe in anyone other than himself (or herself). I suppose the Lord of the Flies defines me about as well as the other books mentioned here, as an example of everything I'm against.

Karen

Checking in by Mac

I just looked at this journal on my iMac (AOL for OS X) for the first time in a while, possibly ever. Loath as I am to admit it, this diehard MacUser has been using her Compaq almost exclusively lately, because the Mac isn't portable, or compatible with the UoP web site. So anyway, I went online on the Mac to let Norton update, and checked this journal. What a mess! The font size problems on the entry below this one, which I worked so hard to fix in Windows, are decidedly not fixed in the Mac version of the page. Furthermore, the Mac version of "edit entry" has no text controls at all.

Phooey. The world seems determined to part me from my Mac, simply by refusing to let software work properly on it.

Well, I'll experiment. If I can fix it in Word or Netscape and then paste it back in, maybe it will look okay.

Or maybe the Windows version will end up in 64 point reversed Comic Sans. Who knows?

Karen