Author of LGBTQIA+ speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. SFWA Secretary. (he/him)
Today, the #WritersCoffeeClub prompt at Mastodon asked contributors to “Talk about an affirming experience you’ve had among your writing peers.” This was really difficult, only because it was so difficult to choose. There are so many people and groups that I value and appreciate. After some consideration, I decided to write about Wandering Shop Stories:
I really appreciate my brother, Philip M. Brewer, and my younger son, who serve as alpha readers of my fiction. When I write my initial draft, it’s really useful to have a few eyes to look it over and help me think about story structure and pacing. My brother is particularly good at coming up with ideas to strengthen the story and heighten the drama. And Daniel likes to mock the weak points, in a friendly and supportive way. His raillery always leaves rolling on the floor in hysterics. I am filled with gratitude for their support
In addition to #wss366, which I organize and manage, many other Mastodon writing communities are wonderful and supportive. They include #WritersCoffeeClub, #WordWeavers, #PennedPossibilities, #ScribesAndMakers, #LesFicFri, #WIPSnips, and others. It’s interesting to reflect on the questions, to read the responses that others write, and to receive positive reactions from the community.
I love serving on the Board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). The organization is such a positive force in support of the genre writing community. The Board is really excellent. It’s the best non-profit Board I’ve ever served with, composed of deeply committed people who are both talented and dedicated to supporting the community. When I joined the Board, SFWA was in a crisis with a loss of leadership and staff. Now, we have great leadership and are fully staffed with truly outstanding people. The organization is really hitting on all cylinders. Somewhat perversely, it’s much less work for us on the Board and truly wonderful things are happening all the time. Everywhere I turn, people are commenting how they like the direction SFWA is taking. It’s been incredibly rewarding service.
I also love the Straw Dog Writers Guild. I enjoy serving on the Program Committee and helping organize interesting workshops and presentations. I’ve been able to invite really excellent people to contribute to our programming. And I really treasure my small community at Straw Dog Writes. There are a handful of us that meet nearly every week on Wednesday evenings to write together via zoom and a number of others that drop in and out periodically. Everyone has been very supportive and friendly.
It’s so important to have community to fall back on when things are rough. I really value everyone’s support.
In 2022, I was hospitalized with pneumonia and learned that I have a chronic lung condition that puts me at heightened risk from respiratory infections. Even before, during the pandemic, my family was being very cautious due to my 90-year-old mother living with us. The net result has been that, for us, the pandemic never ended.
For several years, I only attended events where everyone was masked. I attended Arisia, Boskone, Readercon, and Worldon in Chicago, while masks were required. But, as events — one-by-one — dropped masking requirements, I have gradually begun attending events where masks aren’t required. This year, I attended Worldcon in Seattle.
I mask everyplace I go indoors, except for my own house. Or inside my own hotel room. It really kinda sucks. No dining in restaurants, no bars, no nothing. (Unless it’s outdoors.)
At Worldcon, a small percentage of people — perhaps 10% — were masked. The numbers were a bit higher in the science panels I attended. At SEATAC, perhaps as many as 5% of people were masked. At DFW, I saw thousands of people during our two-hour layover as we transited between terminals and only saw one other person wearing a mask.
Masks are really not that uncomfortable. They don’t interfere with your breathing at all. When you wear them for hours, however — especially when it’s hot and humid — the increased humidity on your face is irritating. And if I have to do any serious exertion, my mask will become soaked with sweat, which is even worse. It also causes my glasses to be less stable, especially if I’m looking down. I’ve had my glasses literally fall off my face. And don’t get me started about when I use the Portable Oxygen Concentrator (which I need in order to fly) and have to run the oxygen tubes behind my ears too.
Wearing a mask is stigmatizing. People can’t hear you as well and can’t see your facial expressions, which makes you more difficult to understand. It’s isolating because you can’t respond as effectively to social cues. It’s especially bad when you’re one of the only ones masking. It makes you stand out in a bad way.
The modern Summit Convention Center in Seattle has very high ceilings and, reportedly, very high quality air filtration. But I still masked everywhere.
Even masked, I avoided crowded events. If there were a lot of people in a room, I don’t go in. Or I got out.
One of the main reasons people go to Worldcon is to attend parties in hotel rooms and suites. These rooms generally have very poor ventilation. There were a lot of parties on the same floor as our hotel room. We could hear the sounds of merry making in our room every night. SFWA held two breakfasts in their suite. I attended the first for about 10 minutes, when the room completely filled up with unmasked people and so I left.
The net result is that I can only get about half of the experience of going to a convention.
When I returned home, I watched the #disease-self-reporting channel of the Worldcon Discord as reports of cases came in. On my publisher’s Discord, people who had worked in the dealer’s room began reporting positive results too. Every time I saw another report, I would have psychosomatic symptoms. Is my throat scratchy? Why did I just cough?
I finally ran a test this morning, four day after departing the convention. Negative.
It appears I’ve dodged the bullets again. But that’s literally what it is: dodging the bullets. It’s constant and it’s exhausting.
The 2025 Worldcon in Seattle was generally good. I served on a lot of panels, had a good reading, and (for me) met a lot of people. But I had one unpleasant experience that left a bad taste in my mouth and left me feeling rather mixed on the whole convention.
I had a reading. At first, I realized they had scheduled my reading for Sunday when would have already left. But they were graciously able to reschedule it earlier in the Con. It was, in fact, in the second reading slot for the convention. I worried that it might not get any attendees. After Boskone, I said I would be happy if my reading had any attendees. But there were six people, two of whom came specifically to see me. I joked afterward that it had a non-zero number of attendees and some of them were not even related to me by blood.
I also served on seven panels at Worldcon. Seven is rather a lot, but I like to be busy. I moderated one panel and was a panelist on the others. Many people came up afterward to praise my performance both as panelist and moderator — and to express interest in my books. And some even came to the dealer room later to find me and buy copies.
The panel I moderated, An Hour of the Strange, Unusual, Creepy, went very well. One of the participants had emailed everyone within a day or two of the panel being proposed to start organizing it and asked everyone to introduce themselves and describe what they wanted to do talk about. I responded to the email and then, a day or two, followed up gently with the email I normally sent to panels that I’m going to moderate that introduces me as the moderator with my usual information requests, that includes how to pronounce names and solicits questions that will allow each panelist to make the points they want to make about the topic. A few days before the panel, I sent the list of questions I’d come up with. Our presentation went well and I think everyone was able to participate well and say what they wanted to say. The guy who’d tried to take over as organizer apologized after the panel for jumping the gun. He said he’d served on another panel where the moderator never reached out or did anything (which has happened to me too). I said it was no problem. I was pleased that everyone seemed happy with the result.
Most of my other panels were about biology. On Life as we know it, I got to serve with Frank Wu again. We were on a similar panel at Boskone. In the lead up to the panel, I pointed out a couple of new unusual life forms that I had heard about that Frank hadn’t yet seen. He was super excited about them and I think I earned a lot of points with him. In both Can biological research ever be independant? and Human evolution and our influence on it were well-stocked with real expertise and I felt like I could play effectively off points other people were making to add useful information and nuance.
I was on two ‘non biology’ panels. One was about self-publishing for poets, which went well where I got to show off my Esperanto books and the ‘zines I’ve made. The other was about Makerspaces. One of the participants didn’t show up for that one and so it was a little thin. But we had a good time playing off the audience’s questions and letting them to contribute useful information.
My favorite panel was Biology and Evolution of the Dog that had a perfect mix of expertise and personalities. The moderator was a PhD Doctor of Veterinary Medicine who had been deeply involved with sequencing projects. There was an evolutionary biologist and a dog training expert. And me. Since everyone else could play to their expertise, I could just be the weird author and talk about boxer dogs and my story with a character who is a NeoBoxer.
The panel got off to a rough start when it turned out that there was no projector to share the slide presentation the moderator had constructed. I suggested that we could run a zoom session that the participants could join and the moderator could share the presentation that way. In the 15 minutes before the start, I set a zoom session, everyone joined, and it worked. (Mostly. The convention center was experiencing some network issues and the moderator got dropped from the zoom session a couple of times. But we rolled with it, reorganized a couple of the points, and got through everything.)
I also had several SFWA events. I attended a board meeting, served at the SFWA “fan table” a couple of times, and attended a breakfast (for a few minutes: it was tightly packed in a small, poorly ventilated room so I left once it got busy to reduce my exposure to COVID). They had a networking reception that I unfortunately couldn’t attend, because I was on a panel at the same time. But I got to introduce myself as the Secretary to a bunch of SFWA folks, including John Scalzi, while I was serving at the fan table and selling books.
I was too busy to spend a lot of time selling books in the dealer room, but I was there much of my free time. We had brought some books (my own and others from my publisher) and dropped them off before the dealer room opened. I managed to sell most of the books I’d brought and ended up bringing home only a handful. I didn’t manage to sell any of my Esperanto chapbooks, which kind of surprised me. But not that much.
Everything went very well with one exception. One of the other authors with my publisher decided to try to chastise me on two separate occasions for things they misunderstood about what I was doing. In both cases, I felt that they were very aggressive and kind of an asshole about it. I reported the conflicts to my publisher and said that, as things stand, I will not work with this person going forward. But it made me somewhat upset and rather colored the whole Worldcon experience for me.
I should recognize my son Daniel for coming along with me. He was a boon companion and made sure I got at least one good meal each day. Plus he helped me schlep the books all the way there. I really enjoy having him come along with me for many reasons but also because, honestly, I don’t quite trust myself to manage all of the travel details anymore, and so having second set of eyes on everything is reassuring.
We checked out of the hotel around 6am Sunday morning and spent the whole day traveling home: light rail to the airport then two 3-4 hour flights with a long layover in DFW. We finally got home around 1am. I’m rather glad I’m not traveling again until November for LOSCon.
My son, Daniel, and I brought ~90lbs of books (two full checked-bags) for Water Dragon Publishing to sell in the Dealer Room at Worldcon in Seattle. So we took the books to the Dealer Room during the set-up time to drop the books off. There was a little old man wearing a convention center staff uniform standing at the door to prevent unauthorized entry.
He peered at our badges and said, “You’re ‘members.’ Members aren’t allowed in until 2pm when the Dealer Room opens.”
We had been listed as dealer-room staff by Water Dragon, so we should have been able to get into the Dealer Room but, due to a snafu, we ended up with “member” badges that didn’t list our role as dealers.
While we were standing there another person came up and then another with the same issue. The guard kept saying the same thing, “Your badge has to say ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.’ I can’t let anyone in unless their badge says ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.'”
One woman was quite irate, “Can I speak to Amy? Can you get Amy? I need to drop off these books.”
He replied, “Your badge says ‘member’. Members aren’t allowed in until 2pm when the Dealer room opens.”
The woman became nearly apoplectic with rage when Amy happened to come by. She listened to us and then promptly directed us to bring in our stuff and drop it off.
When I was leaving, I thanked the guard for his service. He said, “I just can only let people in if their badge says ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.'”
“Yep. It’s waaaay above your pay grade,” I said. “Thanks again.”
Privately, Daniel commented to me, “I’ve never seen someone go full NPC before.”
I commented that he didn’t have much experience with the military because that’s what they train you do to: follow orders.
Later, I was on a panel where someone with a dealer badge said, “Where do you get those name placards?”
“They’re in your participant packet,” someone said.
“Participant packet?”
“Yeah. That white envelope you got when you got your badge.”
“I didn’t get one!”
When I got my badge, I just said my name and gave them my ID and assumed they had everything cross correlated regarding the various roles people had. But evidently their system only tracked one role. So you were either a member or artist or dealer. That’s just my hypothesis.
Later in that day, I was able to get a dealer ribbon that now gives me access to the dealer room during set-up time. So it’s all good.
In Thin, White and Right: The Ideal Christian Woman the speakers describe how it’s currently “in” in Conservative circles to be fit. One of the biggest, weirdest successes of the so-called Conservative movement is how they’ve convinced people to judge and hate who they themselves are. This is something I’ve never understood. Obesity and poverty are huge problems everywhere in the US, but in the South, especially. But a vast number of those same people have been persuaded that these things are their fault — some kind of moral failing. And they hate and mock people for being like that.
They say, “Poor? You’re a loser and it’s your fault. Fat? You’re a loser and it’s your fault. Addicted to drugs? You’re a loser and it’s your fault. Can you believe those woke people not hating poor, fat, drug addicts and telling them that it’s OK to be like that? What a bunch of leftist freaks!”
We now know, of course, that treating these things like they are moral failings doesn’t work. There are systemic reasons for obesity, poverty, drug addition, and many other things that we could work together to solve for everyone. Blaming people for being unable to individually solve them is purely hateful.
Of course, they also hate people for sexual orientation and gender identity which is similarly not a moral failing. Furthermore, we know that, among them, there a lot of people — maybe 20-25% — that would be much happier being able to express other orientations and identities. Instead, they live out their lives hating themselves and feeling like there is something wrong that needs to be hidden, bottled up, and repressed.
All I can say is that it’s deplorable that people would rather go through life hating themselves and engaging in self-abnegation. If that’s actually how you want to live, maybe you really are a loser and it is your fault.
Early this spring, at a meeting of the Faculty Senate Rules Committee with the Campus Leadership Council (the Chancellor, Provost, and Vice Chancellors), a key campus administrator mentioned that they didn’t understand why it was so difficult to recruit people to serve on the Faculty Senate. I was able to enlighten them with a story.
I read to him an excerpt of what my department’s Personnel Committee wrote about my service on my Annual Faculty Review (AFR) from 2023:
Recap: Dr. Brewer was a member of the biology awards committee, the biology climate committee, Chair of CNS lecturer review & promotion committee, Presiding officer of faculty senate, a member of the rules committee of the faculty senate, a faculty senator, an ad hoc reviewer for the journal American Biology Teacher, and serves on the Program Committee of the Straw Dob Writers Guild, an organization that supports writers in Western MA. Although not part of his job responsibilities, Dr. Brewer also published several short stories, novelettes, and flash fiction works.
Evaluation: Dr. Brewer’s service contributions meet departmental expectations.
For comparison, in many departments service on a single departmental committee would be considered sufficient to “meet expectations”. By contrast, I served on two departmental committees, I CHAIRED a personnel committee for the College (which is a particularly heavy load and for which many faculty would secure a release from other service), and I served as one of the two highest, elected positions that lead the Faculty Senate. I have to preside over the Senate meetings plus my service on the Rules Committee is heavier than most departmental committees. Moreover, I do additional outreach outside the University. (It’s Straw Dog Writer’s Guild, btw.) In short, I did a fuck ton of service that year. I’m not sure what I would have had to have done to get an “exceeds expectations” — maybe win a MacArthur Genius Award or something.
For 2024, BTW, my assessment was the same, even though I didn’t chair the College lecturer review and promotion committee. But they didn’t even mention the General Faculty Meeting that was one of the most difficult and challenging things I’ve ever done in my life (which I did prominently cite on my AFR — they just didn’t mention it). But departments just don’t value Faculty Senate service much. And that’s why it’s hard to recruit people to serve.
Several weeks after this happened, I happened to be awarded an inaugural Delphi Leadership Award by the Center for Faculty Development, which recognizes exceptional leadership in service to non-tenure-track faculty. It was nice to have my service recognized by someone, even if my department does not.
“Steven D. Brewer is recognized for his sustained leadership in the Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP) and in the Faculty Senate in improving working conditions for NTT faculty. In MSP, Steven has served as an Officer, on the Executive Board, as the only NTT member on the MSP bargaining team, and multiple bargaining subcommittees to establish NTT promotion ladders, continuing appointment status, and the professional development fellowship. Steve was the first NTT member of the Senate Rules committee and now serves as Presiding Officer of the Faculty Senate.”
I’ve always known that my department did not really appreciate my university service, but it never stopped me from serving. I’ve always believed that faculty governance is critical to a university’s independence from outside influences. The faculty need to be involved in order to push back against efforts to control the university. Without a strong culture of engagement with faculty governance, there would be little to stop the university from being taken over. So, even though I knew that my service efforts would not lead to recognition at the department level, I believed it was important enough to do anyway. And it’s gratifying to see that service recognized, even if not by the colleagues in my department.
There is one kind of service I’ve stopped doing. For 25 years, I served as Director of the Biology Computer Resource Center and, during that time, I did extensive university service related to information technology (IT), serving on the Faculty Senate University Computing and Electronic Communications Committee (the euphonious FSUC&ECC). When I served on the Rules Committee the first time, I was involved in rewriting the charter for the committee to elevate it to become the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), which had a larger charge and higher level administrative representation. During those times I worked ceaselessly to try to make the University IT responsive to the needs of departments and the faculty. But when the department rewrote my job description so that I wasn’t responsible for information technology anymore, I dropped all of my service related to IT. It’s not my job anymore.
Next year, I will complete my phased retirement and then none of it will be my job anymore. It’s been an wonderful career and I’m looking forward to one more wonderful year. But I’m also enjoying my transition to new challenges.
Representing disability is important in fiction. Many years ago, I saw someone who said that, rather than calling some people “disabled,” we should call everyone else “temporarily abled.” Because if you don’t have a disability now, you will. If you live long enough, almost everyone will go through some period of their life with a disability: a broken foot, gout, a bout of depression, etc. After I was hospitalized, I discovered that I have a disability: a chronic lung condition that limits my life in significant ways.
Today, my wife and I attended a flag raising for Disability Pride Month. The Town Council of Amherst wrote a proclamation and raised a flag to recognize and celebrate people with disabilities. And to commemorate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has been transformative for ensuring access for disabled people. It was an opportunity for to me to reflect on the writing I’ve done representing disabled characters. I have several stories that represent characters with disabilities, both physical and mental. But one character stands out.
One of my favorite characters in the Revin’s Heart series is the Professor. Revin’s first meets him when he sees a glider fly from the mountain top of the island where the pirates have their base and land on the beach.
[The glider] skidded to a stop, and then flipped over. Revin, with his sharp eyes, could see someone strapped into the device with a harness.
Revin sprinted down the switchbacks of the trail to the sea. A few of the most athletic pirates got ahead of him by running straight down, bypassing the switchbacks. But five or six of them arrived at more or less the same time to see the man — for they could see now it was a man — with wild white hair and a gray beard scramble out of the harness. But Revin could see something was terribly wrong. The front half of him was crawling out of the harness, but he was leaving his legs behind.
“Aaaa! What’s happened to your legs?” Revin asked in shock.
“Those aren’t my legs,” the man growled. “Those are just for balance.”
“But you don’t have any legs! What happened to your legs?” Revin persisted.
“Airshark got ’em,” the man replied, gravely. “Have you ever seen an airshark? Terrible creatures.”
Revin was dubious. He started to open his mouth, then realized that all of the pirates were standing in a circle, watching his facial expressions, and trying not to laugh. He turned bright, bright red and they exploded with laughter, rolling on the ground. Gently hazing the new cabin boy was a popular pastime among the pirates. And now the strenuous efforts of the pirates to get there ahead of him were explained.
The backstory of how the Professor came to not have legs is never described in the books. Revin discovers soon, however, that the Professor brilliantly supervises the team of pirates that maintains the airship and keeps it airworthy. He uses hand-braces to move around and is clearly a genius inventor, scientist, and engineer. He’s blunt, plain-spoken, and gruff, but you soon learn that he really cares about Revin and the other pirates.
Grip […] sent Revin to the Professor to request he construct a practice sword with similar properties to the real sword. He looked at the sword, then looked at Revin fiercely from under his bushy eyebrows.
“You’re going to get yourself killed if you play with these things,” he grumbled.
“I want to be able to protect my friends,” Revin said.
“Worry about yourself first,” the Professor said. “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”
“Please?” Revin said, sweetly.
“Ugh. It’s your funeral,” the Professor said. “We’ll have something for you by tomorrow.”
It isn’t until much later that Revin learns that there’s larger backstory to the Professor than he realizes. They travel together on a secret mission when Revin discovers that the Professor is actually a famous member of the Royal Academy. Everyone in academic circles knows the Professor.
[Revin] stood conferring with the Professor about what to do for the night when someone said, “Professor Grexin? Is that you?”
“Eh?” the Professor said, turning toward the newcomer, a middle‑aged academic wearing University garb.
“It is you!” the man continued excitedly. “You probably don’t remember me: Niles Ender. I saw your talk five years ago on hydrogen generation using algae and we spoke for a bit at the reception that followed. What are you doing back here?”
“I’m just visiting my nephew,” the Professor said, clapping Revin on the back.
“Wow! You must be so proud to have a famous uncle like Professor Grexin!
When they’re attacked by highway men, Revin learns that there is more to the Professor than meets the eye.
Revin and the Professor got ready to sleep. They were about to get into the bedrolls when Art [their coachman] appeared around the corner of the wagon accompanied by two other men. With their swords drawn, they charged toward Revin and the Professor.
Revin drew his sword and put himself en garde. Considering the Professor no threat, Art and the two men bypassed him to attack Revin. Revin began to panic, wondering how he could possibly defend himself against all three of them. Suddenly, the two other men staggered and, with their eyes rolling up in their heads, collapsed. Art looked surprised and distracted at the sudden loss of his allies. Revin lunged forward and caught him in the throat. Art fell over clutching at his neck and expired with blood spurting through his fingers.
Revin stared wild‑eyed at the Professor, who stood with his arm braces raised.
“What just happened?” Revin gasped.
“I keep each of my arm braces loaded with a poisoned dart,” he said. “They must have figured me for no threat. But they were wrong.”
When they arrive at the Hermitage (a research institute), the Professor is again recognized as the famous scholar he is and they are invited to attend a formal dinner, Revin learns yet something new about this enigmatic character. When a toast is proposed that celebrates using science for war, the Professor pours out his glass on the floor and hand-walks out of the room.
With the toast out of the way, Revin was concerned that his lack of knowledge about polite dining would make him stand out. But he needn’t have worried. The scientists couldn’t care less about etiquette and appeared to use forks and spoons randomly — or not at all — which allowed Revin to relax and enjoy the meal. Watching the servants, though, he began to awaken to how easy it was to become complacent about your station in life. And to become complicit in sustaining inequalities. His respect for the Professor went up, to be willing to be true to himself and publicly demonstrate his commitment to his principles. And he began to see how the Professor and Will, a captain of pirates, had found common ground.
The Professor is one of my favorite characters in Revin’s Heart. He continues to show up in the (as yet) unpublished sequels to Revin’s Heart. In Ecorozire, Revin visits the Hermitage, where the Professor has retired after the pirates disbanded.
“How is your second retirement going?” Revin asked.
“Oh, it’s wonderful!” the Professor said. “I just come in, sit around, and argue with people all day.”
“Not getting bored, then?” Will pressed.
“Oh, no. No boredom here!”
“Well, then,” Revin said. “I guess you wouldn’t want to go investigate these mysterious coins with eternite in them.” Revin pulled out the necklace shook it at him
When I was a kid, I started walking with a staff as a walking stick. My family lived in a forest in southwest Michigan. My brother Philip had a friend, Richard Molenaar, and they were always doing all kinds of creative fictional things, making fantastical maps and stories and artwork. At one point, they constructed an imaginary religion and used a wind-thrown tree in the forest as their “Temple of the Staff.” I liked imitating things that my older brother was doing, so I cut a staff too and started walking with it. In those days, I usually cut a staff of ironwood (Ostrya virginiana), which I would often mark with runes.
I had learned to make runes when I read The Hobbit in fourth grade. Tolkien had adapted futhorc runes when he created the dwarven map and I had reverse engineered them once I realized that it was just a substitution cipher of the English text from the book. My friends and I exchanged all of our notes in class in runic when I was in high school, so I was quite proficient at writing in runic, once upon a time. It worked really well, although one time I wrote the note in Spanish and my friend (who was studying French) was very puzzled when he tried to read it.
Years later, when I moved back to Michigan for graduate work, I decided to cut a small red oak (Quercus rubra) tree in the forest and made two staves. I peeled the bark just at the top on each and, on one for myself, I carved an S rune and, on one for my wife, I carved an A rune. I still have those staves, thirty years later. I used them only occasionally for most of that time but, when I fell on the ice several years ago, I injured my right knee. Since then, I’ve found using a walking aid helpful, and so I’ve taken to using a staff pretty much any time I have to walk for more than a few blocks.
The staves are pretty long — around five feet — so they don’t really fit conveniently in the car. When we began our road trip, it became clear, I couldn’t bring either of my existing staves, so I decided I would undertake to make a new staff while en route.
When we arrived at Phil’s apartment, I mentioned my plan and inquired whether there might be a good place to cut a staff. He said that he had a number of walking sticks already that I could borrow to see if any might be right. One was from the Kalamazoo Nature Center, but it was too short. Another was a big crooked piece of osage orange driftwood. It was closer to what I wanted in height, but just wasn’t a good fit.
We puzzled for a while about where to cut a staff but we couldn’t come up with a place where it would really be appropriate to do that. So I fell back on my plan B: to look for a wooden handle at a hardware store that I could adapt to be a staff.
We went to a local hardware store to see what was available. They had axe handles and shovel handles, but they were all too short. Push broom handles were longer, but too narrow. There were dowels, but they were also too short. There was a really long piece of heavier wood, but it was so long there was no way to carry it in the car. A wheelbarrow handle was long enough, but the bottom two-thirds was squared off, making the whole thing a bit cumbersome and heavy. There were a bunch of other cylindrical objects that we joked about making into a staff: water pipe insulation (not rigid enough). Florescent light bulbs (too brittle). Eventually we gave up. I nearly resorted to going to one of the large chain stores, but Phil remembered another local hardware store and, after we looked there, we found a dust mop handle that had a metal part at the end (to hold the dust mop), but which was otherwise about the right length, diameter, and heaviness. Plus, it was absurdly cheap (like $10). We bought some rubber feet and took it home to work on it.
I wanted to decorate it a bit and had been thinking about how to do it as we investigated the various possibilities. I considered buying a dremel motor tool and routing out some runes, but that was a bit more expensive than I had bargained for. Phil suggested wood burning. He had an old woodburning kit he had gotten as a teenager that he’d been carrying around for fifty years. So, after cutting off the metal head and sticking on a rubber foot, we got out the woodburning kit and I gave it a try.
I wanted to put on a rune, or runes. When I had carved runes before, it was enough work that I just put on a single rune at the top. But with the wood burning kit, I aimed to do three runes to spell out SDB. I looked through the various tips and selected one that was rather like a standard screwdriver. It worked admirably to made wide, even strokes for runes. Then, I added a diamond-shaped mark between the B and the S, to make it clear in what order the runes were to be read. But then the rest of the staff looked very plain, so I considered adding more runes.
I experimented making small runes with the wood burning tool. By pressing the tip into the wood, I could easily make small line segments and, from those, I could construct runes. Putting one above another, I could make the stem and then I could add two more to make a T or an A rune. But a D rune required like 8 little segments and was so hard to keep aligned that the result wasn’t really readable. So I decided to cheat: I went to the store and bought a pack of fine-point sharpies and so I could just write the runes in several colors.
I decided to have the text spiral around the staff. I wound a piece of masking tape around and around the staff and then wrote out the words of La Vojo in runes going down, above the tape in black, and then back up below the tape in red. It only took me about 40 minutes of focused effort and, although the runes are little scribbly, I’m quite satisfied with the result, which is very mystical.
On Saturday, Phil’s Historical European Martial Arts group was tabling at their local farmer’s market. I went along and took my staff. Even before I was introduced, my staff was an object of great fascination, which I found quite gratifying. And it serves its primary purpose, as a walking aid, very admirably.
I visited the Leverett Peace Pagoda today. It’s only a short drive from Amherst. You park at the bottom and walk up the mountain for around a quarter mile. It’s always an opportunity for quiet reflection. It is one of many pagodas constructed after Hiroshima and Nagaski by a Buddhist order dedicated to opposing nuclear weapons.
I can’t remember when I first discovered the Peace Pagoda. I probably hadn’t been living in the Pioneer Valley for more than a year or two. At the top, there is the amazing pagoda with gold statues at the cardinal points. Nearby, there’s a little pond with an island in the middle. Just beyond, built in the foundation of an older temple that was destroyed by fire, there is a little zen gravel garden. Usually, there are several strings of multi-colored prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. The pond is covered with lily pads and has frogs, tadpoles, minnows, and newts. It’s the among the most peaceful places I’ve ever visited.
Over the nearly 30 years I’ve been visiting, a number of changes have occurred. Over many years, they built new temple near the pagoda. There is a new area near the pond dedicated by and to native American people. A number of new monuments have been erected. There are number of new buildings and residences on the road up to the pagoda. But the message of the pagoda is the same.
At some point, I started writing haibun in Esperanto about interesting places in the Pioneer Valley. In 2010, I published Patro kaj Filo ĉe Sukerpanmonto (Father and Son Visit Mount Sugarloaf). Three years later, I published Spuroj sub Franc-Reĝa Ponto (Tracks Under French King Bridge). And in 2014, Morto… kaj vivo en Amherst, Masacuseco (Death… and Life in Amherst, Massachusetts), a haibun about a visit to the Emily Dickinson homestead, that tied for second place in the Belarta Konkurso. I had always intended to follow it up with a haibun about the Peace Pagoda. I made notes and had started writing it, but it was around that time that I had my falling out with the Esperanto movement. And I pretty much quit doing anything with Esperanto.
I think the last time I visited the Peace Pagoda was shortly after I got out of the hospital. I wasn’t well enough to make the climb, so I drove up and parked near the top. This time, I made the climb on foot. With my reduced lung capacity, it’s a struggle. But I had my walking stick and walked slowly, while other people passed me on the climb. Going back down was also difficult. I injured a knee in a fall maybe 10 years ago and doing downhill is painful. But I used my stick, took small steps, and made it back down.
It was a glorious day in the sunshine at the top. I sat to enjoy the view, walked around the little island, and was inspired to write a haiku.
pinpinglo falas / a pine-needle falls
aliĝas la aliaj… / and joins the others…
jam mararmeo / already a flotilla
As I was getting ready to leave, I ran into another old man at the announcement board getting ready to mow the lawn. He mentioned a ceremony planned for early June. I thanked him and said I had been coming for nearly 30 years and it was nice to see the changes and on going commitment of the community. He said he’d been coming for nigh on 30 years himself. “It doesn’t seem we’re getting any closer to peace, though,” I said. We shook our heads sadly and parted.
During the winter, I do all of my writing in my chilly, basement office. It’s a nice place to work. It’s brightly lit. I have a laptop and a portrait display. I have posters of my book covers surrounding me. It’s a great place to write! But all winter I can’t wait for spring to arrive, so I can emerge from my cave, set up my tent, and write out in my yard.
One of the first things we bought after we moved into our house was a picnic table. We put it in our front yard so it was convenient to the kitchen (there was no door into the backyard when we bought the house). And we also liked hanging out near the street so we could chat with neighbors as they walked by. Or use the table to meet with guests when they arrived.
It took on new importance during the pandemic when we could no longer invite people into our home. The table became the de facto place where I would meet with friends and colleagues to have a beer and talk. And, while for many people the pandemic is “over,” my chronic health issues mean that I still can’t meet with friends indoors or at restaurants or cafes (except outside).
Pretty soon after getting the table, however, we discovered a shortcoming: mosquitos. During the daytime, mosquitos were not too bad but, once the sun started to go down, the mosquitos made the table almost unusable. And, of course, even a light rainstorm was enough to chase us inside and leave the table too wet to sit on for hours.
One other hazard was our delightful sakura tree. Not the tree, itself, of course, but the flock of cedar waxwings that comes to gorge on its tiny, bitter cherries every year. After the birds “process” the cherries, they leave droppings everywhere and the table would be covered with them.
Our solution was to buy a tent for the yard that we could erect over the table. We tried several models that didn’t last very long but, eventually found a frame that was sturdy enough that we’ve had it for years. We have to replace the canopy and mosquito net every two or three years due to UV damage.
Last year, after a quarter century, the picnic table finally gave up the ghost. My wife and I discussed what to replace it with and I said I wanted to get a patio sectional sofa. She was skeptical. She said that we would need to get a patio to put it on! And I said, “Let’s do it!” So we hired our local handyman to do the work. He dug out a hole, packed sand at the bottom, and laid the patio blocks inside. Then I purchased the sectional sofa to sit on top. Boy, is it a wonderful place to work — when the weather’s nice.
I purchased the red izakaya lantern years ago. My innovation this winter was to buy a string of 75% off holiday lights after Christmas to clip around the frame. They really light up the tent and gives it a very festive atmosphere inside. My sister-in-law who saw the pictures said it looks like “glamping.”
Does it improve my productivity? Probably not. But it makes writing a whole lot more fun. And it’s an even better place to meet with small groups of friends and colleagues for a beer.
