How often do other people have anxiety dreams? Lately I've been the Anxieticia, Queen of Anxiety Dreams of Anxietica. (These are dreams where you're specifically trying to do something fairly simple -- find a sweater, get to class, make a phone call, put your shoes on, open a door, remember where your phone is OMG, etc -- and you just can't, either through fumbling, interference, whatever.)


Couple of Halloween links, from Rick Klaw:

10 Awesome Homemade Halloween Costumes

and Historical Halloween House Tours. This includes the Ashton Villa in Galveston, TX, which is doing haunted tours this October. They have a little blurb about the house's history, but leave out the part about Miss Bettie during the 1900 hurricane, standing on the second floor balcony with a pole and a rope, trying to rescue people who were being carried away by the water. In better pictures you can also see the tiny little foot-high ornamental iron fence around it. That fence is actually over eight feet high, and was buried when they raised the island after the 1900 storm. They didn't bother to lift the house, just buried the lowest floor.

The Big Picture: One Year After Hurricane Ike. There are some really poignant before and after photos of Galveston here. From photo 2 on, click on the photo to get the alternate version.

One of the big differences that's hard to see in photos is the dead trees. Galveston used to have tree-lined streets, but the saltwater killed a huge number of them.

We were in Galveston on vacation when Ike was about to come in, and left at the first mandatory evacuation, so we were back home by the time it hit. Here's my before and after photo set.

And this one, showing the Ike waterline on the Strand:



ETA: Photo 10 on The Big Picture, where it says "Murdoch's Pier and restaurants amid the debris..." That debris was Murdoch's Pier. There was nothing left of it but the pilings, but it's being rebuilt. It was originally built in the late 1800s and rebuilt after the 1900 hurricane.

ETA2: Dallas Morning News Before and After Pictures

ETA3; The Short but Eventful Life of Ike from The Big Picture, September 2008.

Another great informational post from tacithydra: Freivald's Flash Fiction Online is a Queer Unfriendly Market. They refused an ad for Crossed Genres Magazine LGBTQ issue.

BTW, the lovely art for the ad is by Paul Davey: Mattahan and he's got some new art up on his deviantart site, including some Dossouye portraits (from Charles Saunders' fantasy novel Dossouye).


On the personal front, things are not good. As far as we know, Troyce is still scheduled to be laid off at the end of this month. He's applied for the few IT jobs that are listed at the university, here in town, and outside of town, but there's been no word back yet. The jobs tend to appear for a short time in the listings, then get pulled, probably because there are so many applicants.

I got a hellaciously painful cramp in my left hand from typing Tuesday, so bad I thought I had actually sprained my hand somehow. It started to feel better fairly soon and was pretty much gone by yesterday afternoon, but damn. I think I have a better idea now of how much I can type in a ten-hour period and how I shouldn't do more than that. stinabat said that calcium can help, and I noticed I had been slacking off on my calcium pills lately. So let that be a lesson to the rest of you.

And the weather has been much better. There was a cold front last week that dropped the temperature to 90, and the past couple of days it's been raining. It's also hurricane season, so I need to remember to start stocking up on canned food, cat supplies, etc.

And here's a link to a list of Hurricane Ike Anniversary Events at Galveston

Someone had asked, and yes, it's absolutely fine to friend me. I may not friend you back, because I don't do a huge amount of reading on LJ anymore. Oh, and my writing question posts are here.

And I'm also on Dreamwidth at marthawells.dreamwidth.org.


ArmadilloCon Schedule August 14-16, in Austin, TX.

I'll be there Friday, but I'll be one of the teachers at the writers workshop, so I'll be in that all day.

Sa1100DW City Building
Sat 11:00 AM-Noon deWitt
R. Rogers, S. Lynch, M. Wells, S. Shinn, V. Docherty, J. L. Blaschke*
Creating a city that both works for your story, and makes sense for the world it is in.

Sat 12:00 Autographing

Sa1300R Reading
Sat 1:00 PM-1:30 PM Robertson
Martha Wells

Sa1700DW Religion and Mysticism in SF/F
Sat 5:00 PM-6:00 PM deWitt
J. Vinge, K. D. Wentworth, P. Benjamin, S. Lynch, M. Wells*, M. Cardin

Su1000DZ If I Knew Then What I Know Now
Sun 10:00 AM-11:00 AM deZavala
J. Vinge, E. Moon, L. S. Carl*, M. Wells, D. Webb


***


Also: Tattooed Librarians The Texas Library Association is selling a 2010 calendar called “The Tattooed Ladies of TLA.” Twenty-one librarians show off their tats over 18 months. The calendar is a fundraiser to assist libraries that are still recovering from damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The FACT auction benefit writer Aaron Allston will be July 19th: Aaron Allston Fundraiser and Auction
Austin, TX -- A fundraiser and auction to benefit the Aaron Allston Donation Fund will be held on Sunday, July 19, from 1-5 p.m. at Arbor A in San Gabriel Park, 445 E. Morrow, Georgetown, TX. The Aaron Allston Donation Fund is a medical fund established by his friends to help Mr. Allston, an internationally known science fiction writer and author of several Star Wars novels, with large medical expenses recently incurred as a result of emergency bypass surgery. Mr. Allston is a long-time resident of Central Texas.

I sent some autographed books in for it but I can't remember which ones.


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Some good news for Galveston:

Delegates vote to keep all Shriners' hospitals open: Separately, the delegates voted 756-482 to reopen the Shriners Hospital for Children-Galveston. The burn hospital has been closed since Hurricane Ike hit in September.

Wetlands Rescue: The money for West Galveston Bay will be used to rebuild 328 acres of marshes with dredged sand...
The intertidal wetlands are critical because they act as nature’s speed bumps against wind and waves. They also serve as a productive nursery for a variety of sea life, including white and brown shrimp, blue crab and red drum.

links:

Jennifer Jackson is doing a drawing for free books to celebrate her 16th anniversary as an agent.

A.M Dellamonica's new book Indigo Springs is now up for preorder and you can read the first chapter online.

looniewolf let me know MSNBC did an article on Galveston: Galveston still hurting from hurricane’s beating 8 1⁄2 months after Ike slammed Texas, island city struggles to recover.

redplasticglass asked: So you're reading a story and it's trotting along great - what irritating thing, either content or style (or both), will throw you out of the story and either ruin things for you or just makes it really difficult to immerse yourself again?

There's a lot of things, actually. In fantasy (unless it's comedic fantasy) anachronisms will really throw me off. People who are at the swords and spears level who tell each other, "I'll meet you in fifteen minutes." Basically anything that feels like an intrusion of the author's real-world culture into the imaginary culture of the book. POV problems will also do it, like switching from third person personal to omniscient so fast you get reader whiplash.


***

Here's the picture of where the hurricane Ike waterline was on the Strand:



***

I'm going to be dog-sitting today for a friend who has to spend some time at the hospital waiting for a partner to have minor surgery. So yay, I get to hang out with a little dog! Though it'll be interesting to see how the cats react.

Galveston photo I forgot to post:



Obey the sign

Just got back from Galveston, and we had a great time.

There's still a lot of visible damage from hurricane Ike. Most of the old oak trees down Broadway are dead or dying, from being saturated with salt water during the flooding, and there are dead trees and crepe myrtles everywhere. Lots of stores and restaurants and clubs are still closed, and this was especially obvious in the Strand. (Hendley Market, my favorite store, was still closed.) You could see houses with missing walls or roof sections, or hotels or condos with their outsides peeled off. The beaches are still much smaller in places, with missing sections of greenbelt. At the far end of the east beach area a lot of little buildings were gone and there were random chunks of concrete everywhere. Murdock's Pier is completely gone, but is being rebuilt. The poor Balinese is completely gone, with all its long history of illegal gambling and booze and celebrities and being raided by the Texas Rangers. We saw a big fishing pier that was mostly gone, and the part that was left had a pickup truck wedged into it.

But there were lots of people there, swimming and surfing and having a good time, and a lot of places along the Sea Wall had been repaired and spruced up. And the beach house we stayed in last summer was still there.

Gaido's is also still going strong and though we had an hour wait to get in, it was worth every minute. And we got up at 5:00 am this morning and walked down the beach, and it was wonderful.

( photos )

Some good news for Galveston and UTMB: UT Medical Branch rehiring after layoffs.

***

Unrelated, here's an interesting Clay Shirky link passed on by Rick Klaw: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable:
Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of "When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem."


***

We've had thick ground fog for the past two mornings now. Around 7:30 am today it was so thick I could barely see the neighbor's house. Troyce said he was going outside to search the driveway for the Newspaper of the Baskervilles.

I haven't been doing much except being sick. For most of last week I had exactly zero working nostrils. We did clean out two small corners of the garage, so I have more stuff to take to Good Will.

Also, when cleaning out the guest room closet, I finally went through the box of stuff my father gave me after my mother died a few years ago. A lot of it was things she had saved for me, like all the cards my relatives sent her when I was born, a letter she wrote to my sister when she was still in the hospital after having me, a picture of my cousin who was killed in an accident when he was 14. And a bottle with all my baby teeth. I have no idea what to do with that. I guess if I ever disappear and the cops need DNA, they'll come in handy? I have no idea.

I've been having an LJ hiatus this weekend, and after this I think I may continue it for a bit longer. My offline life is very stressful at the moment, and restricting my online presence helps (it gives me less to worry about), even though I miss all the people I keep in touch with this way.

But I've debated this for a while and I do want to mention how I feel about the discussion about race in SF/F that's been going on for the past couple of months on Live Journal. (I've followed it in other SF/F venues since I first got active in fandom in the 80s.) I think it's a vitally important discussion, and I don't think I can contribute much to it except listening to the people with a far deeper understanding of it than I could have have. I also feel very strongly it's part of my job as a writer to take criticism.

I'm going to steal from naominovik's post, and suggest that people check out rydra_wong's links and summary, and to recommend a few LJers I've read on this: zvi_likes_tv, ciderpress, and ktempest.

***

Something I'm extremely worried about at the moment:

Texas House Bill #6: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/81R/billtext/pdf/HB00006I.pdf

This is the bill which will supply funding for the UT Medical Branch in Galveston, which was terribly damaged in Hurricane Ike. For more info, here's an earlier post with links to articles about how important UTMB is:
For poor Texans considered "indigent," 160 of the state's 254 counties use the UTMB system for affordable health care.
...
"This is going to be devastating to every county, not just to our county," Alfred said.

Storm-tattered Sails: The Elissa, the tall ship docked at Galveston, is getting the sail repaired that was damaged in hurricane Ike.
Brink, 54, will use the experience gained over 30 years of sailmaking to craft a new 630-square-foot fore lower topsail, also known as a storm sail and the last of the Elissa’s 19 sails to be furled in a storm.

Brink began the task a week ago by spreading panels of sailcloth over a pattern taped to the floor of the ballroom at the 1859 Ashton Villa, one of the historic homes maintained by the foundation.

Hurricane Ike, long gone but still wrecking everything:

Galveston Daily News: Rental Assistance Slow to Arrive: Ford, who has been living in a rental house on the federal Disaster Housing Assistance Program, is worried she soon will be evicted because the Galveston Housing Authority, which is administering the program, has not paid her rent in three months.

Some Galveston County residents who are enrolled in the program have received eviction notices from their landlords, who say they haven't been paid the promised rent from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The agency is contracting with the Galveston Housing Authority to administer the program.

Of the 7,000 Galveston County families who qualify for federal housing assistance, 1,800 or 26 percent, have found houses and 74 percent have not.

Happy inauguration day!

Now I need to figure out the station with the least annoying commentators so I can watch it.

***

Damage From Hurricane Ike Threatens Seawall: Ike left so little sand to shield the Seawall's base that the underpinnings could corrode or wash away, causing the 17-foot-high concrete structure to collapse.
...
Ike pounded the seawall with waves and debris for at least 12 hours, damaging pavement, causing sinkholes along the sidewalk on top of the wall and swallowing up the protective beach.

The Seawall maintained its structural integrity, but will require the first major repair job in its 105-year history, said Harrison Sutcliffe, chief of the engineering branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Galveston office.

Galveston's December Dickens on The Strand Festival to Raise Money for Post-Ike Recovery. That's next weekend, December 6 and 7. If you'd like to throw some money Galveston's way, tickets can be purchased online through that site and it's only $9.00 for general admission. Even if you can't go, your ticket purchase would help.

There are a lot of restaurants, shops, and clubs on the Strand that employ a lot of people, and if those could get going again it would really help.

ETA: Other places to donate: Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund
Coastal Recovery Fund
The Rosenberg Library

encorecrazay found this link where the New York Times finally prints something on the FEMA situation down here.

***

Another neat abandoned buildings link: 7 Abandoned Factories, Mills, and Mines. Some nice ones in the US, too.

***

I've been reading Dial Me for Murder by Amanda Matetsky, which is part of a mystery series set in New York in the 50s, where the protagonist is the first female writer on Daring Detective Magazine. Sounds good, doesn't it? And the setting and situations are really good, and the writing is good, but the voice of the protagonist is sort of borderline annoying, at least for me. I'm still going to finish it, but I may not get any more in the series until I read another bunch of books first.

Next I'm reading Why Mermaids Sing by C.S. Harris, a mystery set in the Regency period. After that it's probably The Aware by Glenda Larke or Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg.

ETA: More book recs in the comments

Couple of fun links:

Book View Cafe a new site offering free and subscription fiction by twenty authors, including Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Madeleine Robins.

Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcasts with interviews and news.


***

Hurricane links:

From KFDM in Beaumont:
The group that spoke before council this afternoon, did so, after receiving letters from the city that they are not allowed to begin repairs, until their flooded homes are elevated five feet. To most aging residents, and the children of those residents, that demand is unreasonable.
...
The city says the five-foot rule is a requirement of FEMA, one they unfortunately cannot alter on their own.

From Galveston Daily News:
The festival will be held, in part to draw attention to a recovering Galveston, even though the hurricane left The Strand battered and abandoned.

Two months after Ike, businesses along The Strand have not reopened. Shattered windows are blocked with butcher paper or newspaper. Doors are padlocked and chained shut. The streets are still littered with trash, Sheetrock, broken glass and dirt. (If you want to help, buy tickets for Dickens on the Strand.)

I'm lookng forward to a big early-Thanksgiving party next weekend, which friends in the area have put on for a number of years. Not sure what I'm going to make for it yet. Morfin experimented with making pumpkin pie yesterday and it made the whole house smell wonderful.

There's been a few late additions to the book recommendation post, if you're still looking for book gift ideas.

***

hurricane link:

From the Houston Chronicle, a story about the Vietnamese community on Oak Island after hurricane Ike:
Hurricane Ike devastated Oak Island on Sept. 13, leaving little to nothing inhabitable, where the Huynhs and 25 other Vietnamese families once eked out a living catching crabs from the adjacent bay. Not only are their homes gone, but so are most of the boats and traps they need for harvesting crabs.

Their recovery looks daunting.

***

links:

rachelcaine has a post about Ripple Effect, a charity anthology to benefit the New Orleans Public Library System.

eldritchhobbit linked to The Year of Readers, with many bookish charities.

The Rosenberg Library in Galveston still needs donations to repair damage to be building from hurricane Ike. My offer of signed books for people who donate is still open.

Writer Beware has some good links on how not to get taken by vanity publishers, both by Marian Perera:
Five Misconceptions About Vanity Presses
and:
Justifying Upfront Fees:
I soon found Tate Publishing, which charges $4000 and still has authors willing to defend the practice of charging fees. Tate doesn’t count as many victims as PA does, but the correspondingly larger cost makes up for this.


***

News from the hurricane front continues bad:

From AP:
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, a teaching hospital severely damaged by Hurricane Ike, will lay off about 3,800 workers - nearly a third of its work force - because it is running out of money.
...
Ike caused nearly $710 million in losses to the hospital when it struck the Texas coast in September and officials have said insurance covered only about $100 million of that.


And the fallout from this at the Beaumont Enterprise:
"Medically speaking, we have a lot of serious cases that cannot be seen because of this problem with UTMB, and I don't see it being corrected in the near future," said Dr. Cecil Walkes, director of the Jefferson County Health Authority. "If UTMB cuts back to just a community hospital, it's going to be a disaster for those counties that refer patients down there."

UTMB will release next week what positions will be cut. The obstetrics ward, which treats high-risk pregnancies from across the state, has continued to operate, as well as the research portions of the complex.

For poor Texans considered "indigent," 160 of the state's 254 counties use the UTMB system for affordable health care.
...
"This is going to be devastating to every county, not just to our county," Alfred said.

From the Beaumont Enterprise: Bridge City Might be a Disaster Area But For Many Folks It's Still Home:
A few blocks away, Betty Head, 63, and her husband have made a camp in their garage on David Street. "We didn't have anybody to live with, and we couldn't find any place to rent," Head says.

"Camp David" is not only their temporary home but has also become a local gathering place for friends, family and neighbors. Canvas folding chairs are the furniture that sit on the other side of a makeshift wall for the "bedroom" with an inflatable mattress.

They contacted FEMA five weeks ago for a trailer but were denied because of their location. Now, the agency is saying trailers will be allowed in their area, but Head and her husband, Edmund Loper, 63, are at the bottom of the list.

***


I'm hoping to get the car fixed today, so cross your fingers for me that the insurance pays for it.

Couple of more links:

jimhines is having his annual book donation drive for the local domestic violence shelter.

Via arcaedia: Buy a Book, Save the World. Any book, paperback, fiction, non-fiction. For yourself, for a Christmas gift. Also from agent Nathan Bransford: Tough Times and the Publishing Industry. I'm a big believer in bookstore gift cards for Christmas gifts and will probably do a lot of that this year.