an older man in front of a vendor tent

Last year, I did both the Queer Artisan Market and Amherst Pride but, this year, I decided to just do Pride. Doing two days in a row is harder for me to handle now. In any event, the weather was perfect and, thanks to my experience last year, I knew where to site my vendor tent to be in the shade. I don’t think I sold quite as much as last year, but it wasn’t too bad.

Fewer people are buying books. Partly, I think that people feel poorer than they did, so they just aren’t buying as many books. I’ve always noticed that most people simply don’t see books at all as they walk around. There are a few people who spot the books from a mile away and make a beeline to the table. But the ratio is shifting. There seem to be fewer and fewer people interested in books at all.

It was my first chance to hone my pitch for A Familiar Problem. I got better at it. A lot of people like the premise. But I didn’t sell many copies. I did still some Revin’s Heart and Better Angels: Tour de Force. And a copy of Premitaj Floroj.

I tried really hard to sell M.D. Neu’s book Hawaiian Sun. This seemed like a perfect book for Pride! It was a bit hard to pitch because it has a such weird premise. “So, there’s this guy on the Hindenberg who’s come to New Jersey to see his boyfriend, but then it catches fire and he’s like isekaied into the future where he goes on an airship over the Pacific Ocean to do some Pride stuff.” I pitched it over and over, but I don’t think I sold a single copy. Oh, well. Fail.

Now, I’m exhausted and sunburned. But it was fun. Maybe I’ll do it again next year.

coins

I recently read The CIA Book Club: The secret mission to win the cold war with forbidden literature by Charlie English. It describes a covert program to fund underground publishers and cladestine efforts to provide access to information from the West to people behind the Iron Curtain. But is primarily focused on Poland.

I had become aware of the CIA covert support for sending books behind the Iron Curtain years ago. A number of Esperanto books were published and shipped to Eastern Europe with money from the CIA. I picked up this book to learn more about the program, but I was a little disappointed when it turned out that the book is almost entirely about the effort in Poland in the 1980s.

The events in Poland, from the coup in 1981 until the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, were at least minimally known to me. I graduated from high school in 1981 and I remember seeing reports on the television news about Poland. At that time, however — as a callow youth — I was not particularly paying attention to international or political events.

The book focuses on the events principally following Mirosław Chojecki, an independent publisher. He had been publishing an anti-government newsletter and was imprisoned shortly after the coup. After engaging in a hunger strike, he was released and subsequently went into exile in the West. In the United States, he became aware of the CIA efforts, met a number of important political figures, and was brought into contact with the agent who was running the largest part of the operation with respect to Poland.

The contributions of many of the other members of the underground publishing movement are also recognized: Helena Łucywos and the other women who published Wazovia Weekly, Jerzy Giedroyc — who ran the CIA front in Paris — and many many others. The book ends with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the CIA book operation. But it never really talks about any of the other parts of the operation, since it’s really just about Poland.

It was an interesting read for me. Since I was only vaguely aware of these important events, it was nice to have a primer that provided a lot of the back story. But I would still like to know more about the CIA book program in general — and not just the parts related to Poland.

fossil sharks teeth

Palace of Deception by Darrin Lunde describes the lives of three men, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Roy Chapman Andrews, and William Akeley, who were instrumental in the creation of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The book seeks to marry and intertwine what are really four separate stories into a coherent narrative. Each of the stories was interesting: but I felt the whole didn’t quite do justice to any of the stories.

I’ve always been a fan of Roy Chapman Andrews. I first learned of him as a graduate student when I attending a workshop at Beloit College. Chapman grew up in Beloit, graduated from Beloit College, and became an adventurer who was, in many ways, the inspiration for Indiana Jones. When I saw this book that aimed to describe his amazing stories of adventure, I was hooked.

The AMNH was actually founded by Albert Bickmore, who had trained with Louis Agassiz, with money raised from wealthy New York robber barons. But it was under Osborn that the AMNH grew and took shape as an institution.

Osborn was a follower of Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton was a statistician who extended the thinking of Darwin to create eugenics and social Darwinism. Osborn — not unlike racists today — became convinced that immigrants were endangering the “superior” race, and he began to use the museum to propagandize this theory. He was also suspicious of laboratory science, and preferred the term “naturalist” for people who were studying the natural world. He hired both Roy Chapman Andrews and William Akeley as part of his plan to develop the museum.

Roy Chapman Andrews, unlike Indiana Jones, was primarily a field biologist. He wanted to document and collect specimens of animals in regions of the world that had not yet been studied by Western science. He was successful at raising money for long expeditions to Asia (Japan, Korea, China, and Mongolia) that collected animals, and later fossils, to bring back to the AMNH. His exploits were extraordinary and the book touches on a number of them.

William Akeley was a taxidermist. He developed a number of innovative techniques to create elaborate dioramas that showed animals in their natural setting and also went on long expeditions, principally to Africa, to collect big game (elephants, lions, and gorillas). Many people believed that Africa would be settled by white people, much as North America had been, and that all of the large animals would be driven to extinction.

Each of the four stories, about the museum and these three men, is interesting in itself. There is a lot of fascinating detail, and the book does a good job of showing the complexity of the history around the subject. The book is also timely, given the current fascist push toward expelling immigrants and promulgating a racist “great replacement” theory.

At the same time, the whole doesn’t quite hang together as a coherent story. The individual stories have the feeling of being incomplete as each has been subordinated to the overarching narrative. It’s still a good read, however.

The 2026 Nebula Awards Conference was fantastic. I attended with my brother Phil. I had driven in a few days ago and spent several days with him before we traveled together to the conference. At the conference, I had only minimal obligations so I could spend most of my time attending the programming and hanging out with Phil. It was equal parts relaxing, interesting, and inspiring. It makes me want to get home so I can start spending more time writing.

O'hare Crowne Plaza hotel

The conference was held in the O’hare Crowne Plaza in Rosemont, near Chicago. The hotel was comfortable. There were a lot of stairs, but ramps had been constructed to allow bypassing them in a number of places. There wasn’t really any comfortable place to hang out outdoors at the hotel, which was a little annoying to me since I need to take my meals outdoors to unmask to eat. Phil and I found a “garden patio” which, although it didn’t have any seating, did have a small section of halfwall where we could sit to eat.

There was also an “entertainment district” only 0.3 miles away with a bunch of restaurants with outdoor seating. We visited several times. Crust Brewing, a brewpub had really good thin crust pizza and Fat Rosies served excellent margaritas. There were several other places that looked amazing too. But it was a little too far away to get there and back between program events, so we could only go there a few times.

On Wednesday, I spent the entire day attending a SFWA Board Retreat and Meeting. I spent the entire day taking careful notes of the meeting. I never fail to be impressed by the insight and varied perspectives that our board members bring to the issues. I can confidently say that it’s the best board I’ve ever served on.

On Thursday, the conference proper began and I attended two panels and served on a third. Historical Perspective: the Evolving world in SFF brought Joe Haldeman and Jonathan Brazee, moderated by Dean Wells to discuss the phases of development of speculative fiction. Anthony Eichenlaub moderated a panel with Greg Kasavin, a Nebula finalist to discuss the role of worldbuilding and story in creating engaging games. Finally, I served on an Ask the SFWA Board panel where we introduced ourselves to the membership and let people ask us questions.

On Thursday evening, we attended a reception to recognize volunteers. The president called up each volunteer to receive a surferticket and gave people an opportunity to make a brief statement. She asked me to say something that people didn’t know about me, so I said, “Mi parolas Esperanton.” A guy heard me and found me after the reception to talk about Esperanto. He’d started learning and was excited to hear I had some books of Esperanto haiku in the book service.

On Friday, I attended three panels. The first was about diverse sexuality in worldbuilding for speculative romance with Cecilia Tan and Somto Ihezue, moderated by Jennifer R. Povey. Then Ben Francisco, Michael Solis, Charlie Jane Anders and Gabrielle Byrne talked about creating characters that are outsiders. An interesting distinction that they made was between characters that are new outsiders: still trying to understand how and why they don’t fit in, versus old outsiders, who are only too aware of the rules and made have developed strategies to conceal themselves or pass. A particular treat was a reading of speculative short plays with Alex Kingsley, Mary Robinette Kowal, Russell Davis, Jordan Kurella, Curtis Chen, and David Levine. These were amazing and a lot of fun.

The Grandmaster this year was NK Jemisin who had an hour and a half slot to offer a crash course in creating compelling characters. Instead of presenting, she simply used the entire period for Q&A. I’ll admit was a little disappointed at first to not have a presentation, but SFWA members ask great questions and her responses were insightful and interesting.

In the evening, I got to help with a reception for the Nebula finalists. Each finalist was invited to walk down a purple carpet to receive a certificate, get photographed, and then receive a pin from one of the Board members. In this way, everyone could recognize who the finalists were for the rest of the event.

Steven D. Brewer and Anthony Eichenlaub at the Nebulas Autographing event

After the Nebula finalist reception, there was an autographing event with a few VIPs and a bunch of the rest of us. I was seated between Anthony Eichenlaub and Somto Ihezue. I brought some giveaways and a few people took zines, ribbons, and stickers. One brave person ran the Makasete DNA Analysis Tool to fill out their percent human DNA for a ribbon.

A few people even brought me books to sign! Philip bought a copy of A Familiar Problem and the guy who’d expressed interest in Esperanto the day earlier brought copies of Premitaj Floroj and senokulvitre. A bunch of people also brought their programs around and had everyone sign them. Jonathan Brazee, who was a Nebula finalist, brought his surferticket around for people to sign. My fountain pen got a good workout and I didn’t even squirt ink all over anyone.

The next morning, Phil and I attended a presentation by Anthea Sharp about how to be successful on Kickstarter. A lot of authors (and even some of the pro markets) are using Kickstarter to raise funds for projects. She had a bunch of guidelines for how to run your first, small kickstarter. How much to ask for, how long to run it, setting reasonable targets. I took a lot of notes. I might consider using it for a small project just as a test run.

We also attended a panel on speculative screenwriting for plays, comics, and audiodramas. I asked a question in this one: perhaps very basic, about how to structure scenes. I’ve never had any education about writing fiction: I’ve just read a lot of stuff. When I working to intersperse two timelines for The Ground Never Lies, I realized that I really wasn’t writing in scenes at all. I realized then that it was an obvious way I could probably punch up my writing a lot. Daryll Gregory answered my question and recommended a memo by David Mamet about how to heighten drama in scenes, which he shares on his website.

Once again, I was scheduled to play a small role in the Nebula Ceremony as a “floor escort” to lead people to the stage at the appropriate moment for their speaking roles. They called this role a “runner” last year, which I commented that I was willing to try as long as hobbling around with my stick was close enough to running. So they changed the name this year. They ran a rehearsal that gave every speaker and finalist the opportunity to practice making their entrance and exit from the stage. Cat Rambo, a former SFWA president, commented that the team was really nailing down the details to make sure the show would come off smoothly.

In the last evening, Philip and I dressed in our finery to attend nebula awards reception, banquet, and ceremony. At the reception, we mingled a little. Charlie Jane Anders noticed my airship pirate ribbon and, with unconcealed excitement, said she wanted one. I had left a few on the giveaways table, so I grabbed one and a sticker for her.

Phil and I separated when we entered the banquet and I was seated with members of the board. The servers were running a bit late with the food and I had only just been given my plate when I was summoned to start acting as a floor escort. I stuffed a couple of bites of food in my mouth and then was up hobbling around with my stick escorting people to the stage.

The ceremony was fantastic. Tananarive Due did a fabulous job as Toastmaster to warm up the crowd and serve as the master of ceremonies. NK Jemisin’s speech was really outstanding. I encourage everyone to watch it. It starts about 30 minutes in. Many of the other presentations are also excellent. SFWA people can write really well — as one might expect. People are generally overwhelmed when they win, which is charming to see. The ceremony ran for three hours. By the end, I was exhausted and went went straight to bed.

Phil and I departed early the next morning. We’d had a rough time with traffic driving in, so we slipped away right after breakfast to beat the rush. I’ll spend another day here with him and then start my long drive back to Massachusetts.

It was great to see everyone and I look forward to next year in Seattle. But I don’t think I’ll be driving to that one.

a group of dice

Since January, I’ve a lot of extra Tanuki Time, but I haven’t had the focus to work on my longer fiction. I have several projects that are essentially completed, but it’s beginning to look like I’ll need to find a different outlet for publishing them. While I’ve had less focus, I’ve been working more on shorter fiction.

What’s For Breakfast, Toasterella is about a wizard who patented a method for contracting with sprites to compel them to work for you, but he discovers a limitation when he needs to change the contract. It’s been rejected twice.

A Persistent Curse is about a dog caught between his owner and his witch grandmother regarding a particularly nasty curse. It’s also been rejected twice.

Exit Interview is my newest complete short story. It’s what happens when the entities that are running the simulation your universe is in decide to shut it down. It’s been rejected once.

Jimmy and Coral is a work in progress that’s not actually speculative fiction. It began as a series of vignettes posted to Wandering Shop Stories but, now that I’ve figured out the rest of the story, I’m just writing the rest in a document. It’s about a young woman whose mother is kidnapped and has to turn to her estranged father to try to get her back.

Now that the semester is over — and once I’m through the Nebulas — I’m hoping I’ll have time to get back to the business of writing. I plan to start querying to look for a new publisher — or maybe self-publish my current book projects. I also have made arrangements to use a recording studio to try to create an audio book for Revin’s Heart. I’ve had a lot of interest in have an audio book available, so I’ll see whether I can do a good enough job myself. It will be fun to try.

As May ends, I am enroute to the Nebula Awards Conference in Chicago. I am currently rusticating with my brother for a few days before we head up to Chicago on Tuesday. It should be a fun time.

I had originally planned to travel with my son too, by driving. Trapping him in a car to drive is a nice way to have long conversations, which we rarely seem to be able to do under normal circumstances. But this year, he had plans to attend another event and it didn’t work for us to travel together.

I like driving. I just wrote a post about taking the bus to avoid driving, but — in fact — being out on the open road is a pleasure for me. I really enjoy the feeling of flow: of having just enough engagement to keep me occupied, but not so much that I can’t let my mind wander and think about stuff.

It takes two pretty long days to drive here, but it’s a drive I’ve made many times before and it’s interesting to see the changes that have taken place over thirty years. Each time is a little different. This year, I took the northern route along the New York Thruway.

Gas prices were not as high as I might have feared. The highest prices I saw (in New York) were $4.78. The most I paid was $4.57. Prices were generally around $4.50, except in Indiana, where they have suspended the gasoline tax and the sales tax. I saw it for $3.82 at one place, and it was generally around $4.00. But it went right back up once I crossed the state line into Illinois.

Speaking of Indiana, I drove through the largest construction area I’ve ever seen in my life near Lebanon. It was an area that almost defies comprehension: 10,000 acres, or 16 square miles. It was immense. Evidently, Indiana has created a special regulatory/tax district called LEAP (Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace) that is basically a scheme to enrich the extremely wealthy. The wealthy are incredibly happy to be enriched, so they’ve taken advantage of this opportunity and they seem to be building at least two gigantic projects, a $4.5 billion project for an Eli Lily “Medicine Foundry” and $10 Billion for a Meta data center.

I saw a lot of other interesting stuff on the way. There’s a place near Erie, Pennsylvania that has billboards for Big Woodie’s Fireworks. They sell not only fireworks but pepper spray, tasers, and swords. Nothing like enjoying fireworks with a nice squirt of pepper spray! Hoof Hearted Brewing sounded like place worth visiting: weird brews and weird artwork. I saw a car that had a bumper sticker that said “Serene Transportation” that was zipping frenetically in-and-out of traffic. And no trip would be complete without a stop at the Uranus Fudge Factory, which has to be the best name for a confectioner ever. “The best fudge comes from Uranus!”

Anyway, for two days, I can rest and visit with my brother in Champaign. We don’t have any particular plans, other than to write, take walks, and maybe drink some beer. It’s nice to visit with family.

PVTA bus in Amherst

Today, I started riding public transportation again. Amherst has a great bus system provided by the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA). When we first moved to the Pioneer Valley, I lived for two years in Pelham — one of the “hill towns” that surround the valley. During those two years, I had to purchase an expensive parking sticker and drive to work. As a newcomer, the only parking stickers I could get were a long way from my office. I initially selected the closest lot I could find but when I asked my colleague he said, “Do you want to die? That’s on top of Orchard Hill. In the winter, you will slip, fall, and die trying to get down the hill.” So, I picked a lot that was essentially as far as you could get from my office and still be on campus.

When we purchased our house, it was about the same distance as that parking lot had been. But, even better, there was a bus stop at the corner of our property. It took about 15 minutes to walk to my office but, if I timed it just right, I could take the bus and get from my front door to my office door in under three minutes. It was so efficient, it made it kind of hard to walk. If I did walk, two or three buses would go past. Eventually, when I did want to walk for some reason, I started walking a slightly longer route that took me along a different street where I didn’t have to have it rubbed in my face that I could have ridden the bus.

During the pandemic, I pretty much quit riding the bus. Even before the pandemic, I had started my Professional Improvement Fellowship and was going to the Makerspace, instead of my office. The Makerspace was even closer than my office and not on a bus route, so I just walked to that. And once the pandemic started, I wasn’t going to my office anyway. And then I was hospitalized and needed to avoid respiratory infections, so I started working remotely.

Looking back, I also realize now that, even before I was hospitalized, I was already showing symptom of chronic lung disease. It became harder and harder to walk any distance. It was a very gradual process that I explained to myself by saying I was “out of shape” or that I’d gained some weight. In fact, my lungs just weren’t working very well and I was constantly suffering from hypoxia. Doctors would ask me if I suffered from “shortness of breath” but I literally didn’t understand what that meant. Since I had been suffering from shortness of breath for so long, it just seemed like my natural state. A respiratory therapist I worked with in the hospital said, “Wow. That must have been really hard.” I felt seen.

Although I didn’t need to go to an office anymore, I did take daily trips to visit and check on my son. This was particularly true after his hospitalization this winter. Since then, I’ve visited often twice a day to support him and take care of his boxer dog. While the students are in town, the buses tend to be very crowded through campus, so I decided to drive. And I didn’t think much of these trips until gas prices began to spike after our mad king’s unconstitutional war against Iran. Today, with the students gone for the summer, I decided to mask up and start taking the bus again.

It was fun to refamiliarize myself with the practices of riding the bus. The bus tracker website, that you can use to see when buses will arrive at the stop. The various bus routes and their vagaries. The unwritten conventions, like the fact that you don’t have to signal for stops at some places, like the middle of campus or Cowles Lane (my destination). And that you do have to signal for the stop nearest my house, but that you should wait to signal until you get past the previous intersection. (Over the quarter century I rode the bus, I learned that if you signaled too soon, the bus driver would occasionally forget and blow right through the stop. I saw that happen a handful of times when people signaled too soon, but never if you waited to signal.)

I was also reminded of the slower, more relaxed, pace of life the bus imposes. When you drive, you can stay busy right up until you leave. Then you’re busy driving. Then you arrive right at your destination. With the bus, you have a short walk to the bus stop, a brief wait until the bus arrives, a relaxing ride, and then you arrive at a short remove from your destination and have to walk a few steps to get there. It’s relaxing — and it fits well with my new-found freedom as a retired person.

Next fall, when the students come back, I might start driving again. But, for now, I’m having fun.

Money

The History of Money by David McWilliams (2024) is subtitled “A story of humanity.” It skims over a vast landscape, dipping in now and again for a deeper dive into moments when innovations in how societies created and managed money (or failed to do so) contributed to world-changing events. The complexity of our current world economy has grown up guided and constrained by the cautionary lessons of history, but ever spurred on by people’s greed and prurient interests. This book provides an enjoyable and useful introduction with a lot of fascinating details along the way.

He begins with the earliest known examples of commercial tallies, records of values, and transactions, going back to the stone age. The theme of money shifting between measures of commodities (e.g. grain or precious metals) or value (as anchored by fiat and monetary policy) plays out over and over throughout the book.

Many important historical figures are introduced with the roles they played in advancing innovations in monetary practice and policy. I’ve always lamented that, as someone in the sciences, I had little flexibility to study history and classic literature. McWilliams has prompted me to consider reading at least two important books out of history: Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, the foundational text of economics and Liber Abaci by Fibonacci.

The books ends with a pretty harsh dismissal of cryptocurrencies:

Over the years we have seen that money is a technology designed to solve a problem. I’m scratching my head as to what problem Bitcoin in particular and crypto in general actually solve. Despite the small foothold Bitcoin has gained in the mainstream US investment market, crypto looks set to remain on the fringes, a source of obsession for its supporters and aficionados, but not very useful or practical in reality. Bitcoin is to money what Esperanto is to language.

Other than the slur against Esperanto, I am in complete agreement. I mean, he’s not actually wrong about Esperanto either, but I would have preferred he slander Volapük rather than Esperanto to make his point.

If you’re curious about understanding how money works in practice and how it came to be the way it is, this book is a great place to start.

an old railroad pocket watch

Two years ago, I began a phased retirement. Last Thursday, I conducted a University class meeting for the last time, presided over my final Faculty Senate meeting, and (by coincidence) also celebrated my 38th wedding anniversary. And today — Tuesday — is special because, on my Tuesday/Thursday teaching schedule, I would have been teaching today. (I mean, I wouldn’t have because it’s finals week so class wouldn’t have met anyway, but you get the idea).

My brother, who retired fifteen years ago, recently had a piece of advice for me.

The weeks leading up to retirement, and the weeks after retirement, are particularly nice. Do savor them. Don’t just let them slip by as if they were ordinary weeks.

I’ve been trying to take this to heart.

Although we agree about many things, we sometimes actually come at things from quite different perspectives. He never really wanted to work and pursued a career with the goal of retiring early. I, on the other hand, aimed to find a career that gave meaning to my life and represented what I would have wanted to be doing anyway. I tried to embody the aphorism, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I am not a spiritual person, but I believe in the sanctity of work.

I decided to dedicate myself to science education. As an edutainer, I had visited hundreds of elementary-school classrooms and had seen how few teachers understood what science really was: Not merely a collection of facts, but a way of knowing and apprehending the world. I believed that improving science education was a potential way to help people make better, more-informed choices about the environment.

When the Internet happened, I was given a front-row seat to helping faculty transform education using technology. For a brief moment, I was in a position to show people how technology could be used, not merely to reproduce the existing paradigm, but to create new environments to foster learning.

The work felt important to me. It seemed like work worth doing. I could make a case to myself that it was worth dedicating my life to the task.

In part, I was motivated by Journey to Ixtlan. It’s a rather silly book. But I read it as a young man and certain themes appealed to me. In particular, the notion that, since death may arrive unpredictably, you should aim to use what time you have intentionally.

This was reinforced for me when I had a cancer scare in graduate school. A barber spotted a questionable mole on my ear and recommended I get it looked at. I made an appointment with the campus health service and a physician’s assistant inspected it. She studied it, pulled out an illustrated guide, studied it some more, paged through the guide, and then finally announced, “I think you’re OK because it looks like this one.”

I said, “You’re pointing at a picture that’s labeled ‘Deadly Melanoma.'” It was. It was literally labeled “Deadly Melanoma.”

She paled. “Oh. Oh! Oh… Let me me go get the dermatologist.”

They took a biopsy and, a week later, the results came back. It was not malignant. They still recommended getting it removed, so I scheduled the surgery. But a week of having that in the back of my mind was rather… focusing.

Similarly, my decision to retire was significantly influenced by my hospitalization when I was diagnosed with a chronic lung condition. This made working and teaching seem a lot less fun. And got me thinking that I had better things to do than keep beating my head against a wall.

As I’ve approached the end of my phased retirement, I’ve attended several workshops where people talk about retirement. One person suggested that, rather than “retiring from” one should aim to “retire to”. For a lot of people, this is perhaps a useful distinction, although it was never really in question for me. If I wasn’t doing work, I would be doing something else creative. I have no shortage of interesting projects I intend to work on in retirement.

I have plenty of things to work on. I have several fiction writing projects. I have several books in progress and a lot of short fiction that I should be shopping around to publishers. I have wanted to make a new book of haiku for a couple of years and just thought of an idea for an accompanying art project that might be fun to work on. There are also some gardening projects that might be fun to try. I would also have fun doing some technology projects again as well. And, of course, there are also my service commitments to SFWA and Straw Dog. There is plenty to keep me busy.

After my two years of phased retirement, I still have several months to savor as I approach full retirement. This week, I’ll get the grading completed for my last class. Since I’m on a nine-month appointment, the summer is a period of “non-responsibility” (or irresponsibility, as my brother likes to joke.) So, although I’ll still be formally employed, I won’t have any more official duties. I can attend a few Rules Committee meetings and join them to meet with the Campus Leadership Council. And August 31 will be my last day. I will have been a faculty member for 30 years and one month.

It’s enough.

Today, I was scheduled to attend the Watch City Steampunk Festival to sell books. But it wasn’t to be. After several days uneasily watching the forecast, this morning I checked the radar and made the final decision to cancel my appearance. It was a “perfect storm” due not only to the rain, but also a shortened festival and higher travel costs.

I was planning to bring a small selection of new books. I was ready with copies of A Familiar Problem, M.D. Neu’s Hawaiian Sun, and Lawrence Rafael Brother’s The Shadow Minister. I was also planning to bring Brightstar’s The Working (which had been released last year, but was out-of-stock during Watch City) and, finally, my own backlist including Revin’s Heart and Better Angels: Tour de Force.

Rain means death for book sales. Books themselves are particularly vulnerable to rain. Perhaps the only thing worse to try to sell in the rain would be cotton candy. Or maybe owls. Any books you put out for display are likely to get water damaged and become unsellable: nobody wants to buy books that have gotten wet. Moreover, the wet ground also makes it difficult to even protect the stock you don’t put out. And, of course, it suppresses attendance which also reduces sales. Furthermore, rain also often brings wind, which knocks over books, scatters promotional giveaways, and can even blow over the tent.

Last year it also rained. But last year, the rain was predicted to wrap up around the start of the festival. Although we got wet during setup, the festival itself was mostly dry (though cold and pretty miserable). This year, the rain is just getting started and it looks like it will only get heavier as the day wears on. There’s even a chance of thunderstorms during load-out.

In addition, this year the organizers were compelled to shorten the length of the festival. The town passed a new ordinance that events on the Common may only run for four hours. I suspect a lot of vendors were already planning to skip the event due to the difficulty of justifying the costs of attendance with the shortened time frame of the festival.

Finally, of course, gasoline prices are a lot higher this year. The trip represents about four hours of highway driving, which costs almost twice as much due to the mad king’s unconstitutional war against Iran.

As I wrote in my bookselling post at Planetside and on my blog, even in the best of circumstances, you’re doing well if you make back your table fee at these kinds of promotional festival events. It’s rare you actually come out in the black when you consider travel and other costs — to say nothing of labor. It wasn’t going to happen this year. As my mother says, “There are times when you just have to give up on things.” But at least I’m warm and dry.