The Political Desk: Election Muddle

 So, there's a lot going on this election season, and only some of it is happening on the ballot itself. 

Washington State has exclusive mail-in ballots, and I've noted elsewhere that this has been a very good system in that it makes it pretty easy to vote, and the state gets to oversee the voting rolls. The Federal Government, primarily the current Executive branch, hates that, and wants to control who gets to vote. And yes, there is voter fraud out there, but more often than not its from the people counting the votes as opposed to the voters themselves. In any event, the GOPS in charge want to crash/control mail-in voting so they can decide who gets to vote (spoilers: Not you). 

And in the primary we saw this in a gutting of the Post Office's responsibilities in this, such that they will not guarantee the postmarking your vote in a timely fashion so that it is postmarked before election day. So you can still mail in the ballot, but unless the Post Office gets around to it, it won't count.

To no one's surprise, in the primary, there was an increase statewide in rejected ballots that arrived too late. But to everyone's surprise, this increase was strongest in Republican rural areas, while in King County, where most of the people live and most of the people vote Democrat, there was a DECREASE in rejected ballots. There could be a couple reasons for this - King County and its adjacent counties have more drop-off boxes, and people used them. Or that it takes longer for the Post Office to turn around ballots in rural areas. Or it could be that King County voters are ornery enough and peeved at Federal intrusion that they got off their duffs and made sure that their votes counted.

So, good job to the folk in King County, regardless of who you voted for. And a hat-tip to the Republicans who shot themselves in the foot pushing this, as Republicans are wont to do.

But the Federal Government was not done, though, in that they went to the Supreme Court and demanded that they could crash the entire mail-in-ballot system. At the time of this writing, the court has voted 7-2 that he should go stick his head in a pig and stop this foolishness. This does not mean that the Executive Branch will not continue to try to control your votes, because, you know, they only have to win ONCE.

Oh, and the head of the Executive branch has declared that this election is all about HIM. He's not on the ballot, but this is an endorsement of him personally and the GOP's policies and candidates only secondly. Which since midterm elections usually tend to trend AGAINST the party in power, seems like he's lining up his other foot for a bullet, but whatever.

So where does that leave us? Well, first off, I'm going to recommend you vote early. We're on a short timeline here (3 November is Election day)  I'm going to recommend you find a drop-off box nearby to turn your ballot in, because the Post Office may be too busy sending out those fliers from Safeway to get around to postmarking your stuff. And I am also going to indulge in spoilers this particular go around. Yep, I'm going to tell you want I'm recommending, and THEN drag you through the thought process (such as it is). OK? OK.

And of course I'll be pointing out others - the Seattle Times has been moving through the ballot over the past month, but you can find their summary here. The Stranger is being kind of touchy right now because they got some pushback about not recommending the most progressive candidates in the primary. That's OK by me, but as a result, they've gone into detail about how they don't like most of the candidates they did recommend here. A comparison of the Times and the Stranger's endorsements can be found here. Plus, there is a "Lefty" aggregation of endorsements and support can be found here, the Urbanist is doing a deep dive here, and the Progressive Voters Guide here (and you can tune it to your particular county). 

So here we go. Some of this is going to be very familiar to those few who paid attention to the Summer Primary, but there are some new things. As usual, I'm not going to call out races where there is a single candidate, which includes a lot of the lower-level judgeships. Here's what I'm voting for, and I'll catch up with the details later.

The Heywood Initiatives (IP26-645, IP26-001, and IP 26-638): I wish there was an "oh, hell, no" option here, but I will settle for a simple NO.

US Representative District 9: Adam Smith 

State Representative, District 11: Ashley Fedan

King County Assessor: Robert Foxcurran

Washington State Supreme Court:

Position 1: Colleen Melody 

Position 3: Jaime Hawk

Position 4: Ian Birk

Position 5: Theo Angelis

Position 7: Debra Stephens

Southeast Electoral District Position No.5: Heather M. Barker

Kent School District No. 415 Proposition No. 1 Replacement of Expiring Educational Programs and Operations Levy: Yes

OK? So let's turn over the test papers and begin. More later, 

Theatre: Cringe

 Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector, Directed by Matthew Leavitt, Seattle Rep, through November 15

I'll admit, I'm not a fan of cringe humor. That's embarrassment humor, where the characters are humiliated for our personal amusement. Its the opposite of Schadenfreude, in which you get a uncomfortably positive feeling about the characters getting their comeuppance. In cringe, the characters don't really feel like they should have things explode on them, and you end up feeling more empathy than vengeance, and share their embarrassment by the very act of watching them suffer.

That said, Eureka Day is cringe, and is pretty good at it.

Eureka Day is a private school in Berkley. We get a seat at the executive board for the school as they continually seek consensus (is not adding a particular racial category on a drop-down menu othering or excluding?). People are heard and valued. Rights are recognized. Decisions must be unanimous. Well-intended liberal values rule the day. Community must be inclusive. Everyone is over-articulate. Buzzwords fly. The granola is crunchy.

Don (Jonathan Slavin) is the feckless principal, who in the words of one of the other members "Is a great captain, until you meet an iceberg." Suzanne (Sara Hennessy) is the queen bee, has been part of the board forever, and is filled to the brim with tragic anecdotes and opinions for the others to recognize. Meiko (Ashley Song) is the quiet knitter who rarely gets to finish a sentence. Eli (Quinn Mattfeld) is an enthusiastic former techbro-turned-stay-at-home father, quick to interrupt, if only pointing out the validity of another's point (Oh, and he's sleeping with Meiko). And Carina (Nemuna Ceesay) is the new girl, trying to fit in and not making too many waves. The dynamics are continual litany of explanations of the validity of each other's opinions that often the result being immobility in decision-making. More self-congratulatory sound than fury.

And then the iceberg hits. Some of the kids come down with mumps, and they have to make the decision about closing the school, for how long, and how to reopen it. They try to handle it by by including everyone in the decision-making process about vaccine requirements, but quickly discover that some are pro-vaccine and some are anti-vaccine. And the peaceable kingdom falls apart. 

This most hilarious bit is when the five try to bring all the parents online with a zoom call to discuss the vaccine requirement to reopen the school. It descends into the upper levels of hell quickly and comically in a way that anyone who has been in one of those online group chats can imagine. We can't hear the actors' lines from the laughter as the online discussion is portrayed a screen behind the struggling executive board. But that's OK, because their contribution just makes matters worse.  Because this is one of the those problems where consensus and compromise cannot work things out and find middle ground. And it threatens to destroy the school in the process. There is no good solution to make everyone happy.

And there are, in the words of the board itself, "no villains". The characters are broad but broad-based, and have good foundations for their beliefs and good arguments as the larger issues become deeply personal. And while the action builds, they do not get to the point of throwing hands at each other, which happens way too much in this type of comedy (I'm looking at you, God of Carnage after all these years). You like these characters, and you feel for them as they wrestle (and fail) at the challenge. Cringe.

The actors are really good, challenged by the fact that they spend most of their time seated in multi-colored chairs. You're watching them react to each other with facial expressions more than actions. The set design is good, and yeah, I thought the chat log on a big screen behind them actually made sense and worked (a lot of plays incorporating modern tech have a definite problem with that, but the writing here carries it through). And the characters they portray are not horrible people, even we see the moral and ethical ground beneath them leached away by the flood. 

As I said at the top, I'm not a fan of cringe. But the team here did a really good job of it, and the writer knew where to stop and provide a ending, if not a happy one. So I'm going to chalk this one up as a win.

More later,

Theatre: Stranger in a Strange Land

 The Chinese Lady by Lloyd Suh Directed by Zenaida Rose Smith and Christie Zhao,  Arts West in co-production with Yun Theatre, through 11 October, 2026

Arts West kicks off its season with a powerful entry in The Chinese Lady. We caught it the opening Friday to an admittedly light house, such which the theater's Artistic Director jokingly blamed on the fact that the rest of the Alaska Junction businesses were engaged with a Wine Walk that night. Regardless, it was an amazing piece, well-acted, spurring a lot of deeper thoughts and conversations. This one has layers.

So, the Chinese Lady is Atong Moy (Zoe Ding) who was the first female immigrant to the US, arriving in 1835. This made be blink at first, but the Wikipedia backs that fact up. so OK. She was purchased by traders and put on display in New York within an exhibition of Chinese goods (at the start of the play, the items on the stage are described, along with their prices). She would speak about China and talk about foot-binding (she would walk to demonstrate), chopsticks, and tea. In the histories, she does not speak English, but through her interpreter, Atong (Sebastian Wang). Atong is lower caste, and informs us of the fact that he is of no relevance at the outset, but acts not only as translator, but as servant, minder, and protector. Here she gets to speak in her own voice.

Atong's performance at the outset is creepy and uncomfortable, and it is supposed to be - a performance that that overweening and saccharine for the rubes paying their coin to witness a human being from the other side of the world in their native habitat. But Moy engages with it with the optimism and positivity of youth - she intends to bridge the gap between East and West by telling her stories (the tales lose something in their translation).  Then we reset the act and run through it again two years later. And then again. And as we move through Moy's life as a captive in her role, a fly trapped in the cultural amber of her past, the world changes around her - Opium War and Gold Rush and the Indian Removals and Railroads. In history she vanished from the story in the 1850s - on stage she becomes immortal.

Zoe Ding is amazing in the role, starting at a coquettish 14 years old and moving through the years, growing more frustrated with the world and he place in it. Her dialect rounds and becomes Americanized, as does he manners, and the fact she is trapped in the same routine for decades. Sebastian Wang is excellent as Atung, the supposedly impassionate sounding board and servant lets the mask slip to show his true (and to him, impossible) devotion to her. Together they are an amazing team on the stage. 

The pacing of the play is fantastic as well. We run through Atong Moy's performance a number of times over the years, and watch the slow erosion and frustration of the character. And there are so many quiet moments within the play that carry a lot of meaning behind them. I don't talk about the pacing, but it works so well here.

The play covers a lot of ground within its small exhibition room, a curtained stage bedecked with Chinese crafts and curios. We get not only the history of the Chinese immigrants in America and the relationship between Atong Moy and Atung, but also the nature of theater and exhibition and how we tell our stories. We, the audience, are watching actors who are not Atong Moy and Atung, but are presented as them, who then present a China that altered in their lifetimes. Both Atong Moy and Zoe Ding gets her moment to address the audience and individuals, not just consumers of culture, and force us to confront the nature of what we were watching.

And its uncomfortable. And worth it. Forget the Wine Walk. Go see this instead.

More later, 

 

Book: Steampunk Roots

 The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Bantam Spectra Books ( a division of Doubleday Bantam Dell Publishing Group), 1991

Provenance: Unsure. I got this book in hardback back in '91, which means I was living in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin at the time. While we had a small bookstore in town (The Breadloaf), but I think I probably got it in hardback up at one of the big chains in Milwaukee (Waldens. B.Daltons, Borders, and Barnes & Nobles).

Review: This one is going to be a be scattershot, and I have a bunch to say, so let me divvy it add up for easier digestion.

        i. A forgotten book

I have what a friend described as a perfectly average library. Books I really like I press into the hands of others. Books I don't like I donate to libraries or sell to used bookstores. Yet those that remain are memory-enhancers. I look at the shelves, and can usually tell what the book was about without much rummaging through my mental attic. The presence of a physical book brings back memories in a way that a file folder cannot.

But this one, not so much. I know I had read work by Gibson (Neuromancer) and Sterling (Involution Ocean) before picking this up. Both authors were the bannermen and bleeding edge of the cyberpunk movement, coming out of the Austin Writing Mafia (I think I still have a button identifying them as such). And this one flips from a dark future to an alternate past, and is in my opinion the first of the modern Steampunk genre.

        ii. On genre

I've said this elsewhere, but genre is a marketing term. It is very much "if you liked X, you'll like Y". And indeed, the Cyberpunk movement gathered together a group of similar writers (many of them from Austin) and formed an Sf subgenre of it.

In the light opera Pirates of Penzance, the Modern Major General buys his estate and title, and in the process buys his ancestors as well who came with the place. In the same way, genre creates its own predecessors, who may not have been connected with the process. Mary Shelley wrote gothic romances, not SF or horror. And Jules Verne and HG Wells were writing adventure fiction because no one thought of it as Science Fiction in those days, though we look at their books as being precursors of Steampunk. And "SF set in the Victorian Age" is a good touchstone for this, though these guys were writing in the Victorian Age. 

Another predecessor, one that is closer to what I think of as Steampunk were the Edisonades (which you may or may not have heard of). These were adventure fiction of the early pulps, which usually involved some young genius (some of the featured a young and fictitious Thomas Edison) who explored the west and fought Native Americans with the aide of steam-powered robots. So we're closing in on the definition. And yeah, that feels Steampunky, and are part of the evolution of the genre.

But Bruce Sterling (one of the authors here) defined Cyberpunk as "Where the technology meets the street". It is not just cool tech, but rather an attitude as that tech moves into the mainstream, and is used by the populace for purposes not intended by their creators. A real-world example were the pagers in the 80s, which were a pre-cellphone invention to tell you you were needed on the (usually landline) phone. When they first showed up, they were posited to be used by doctors who might be needed in surgery. And they ended up being used for drug deals once everyday people got ahold of them. So the various "'punk" genres have that sense of utility to them. It's not all about dirigibles and land fortresses, its about how it affects the inhabitants of that genre.

Anyway, The Difference Engine is definitely in the Steampunk vein, and I think I can make a claim that its the definitive modern Steampunk novel, though that term would not come into common usage until later (with the joke -"Steampunk is what happens when goths discover the color brown"). This is serious tech, and how it involves the world in ways that were not anticipated.

        iii. Oh, what a world that has such creatures in it

We could easily drop The Difference Engine into the "alternate history" genre, and it fits snugly there as well (indeed, the blurbs for it key in on that). And the alternate that it proposes is one where Charles Babbage gets his analytical engine in gear back in the 1820s (in our world, the plan broke down and this initial engine was never completed). The result of this is a world driven by steam and clockwork gears as opposed to electricity and gasoline. Its an analog world with massive calculating engines figuring everything, resulting in an authoritarian merit-based dystopia where the populace have citizenship numbers. Babbage and Lord Byron are running the works, while figures like Disraeli are writers and the poet John Keats is doing analog powerpoint slides. 

The time of the novel is 1855. Maps of the world are provided in the endpapers. London and Paris are allies under their individual national thinking machines. The US has broken up and the Confederacy arrives early. New York is a commune like Paris in the 1870s. Texas is independent but rebelling against French Mexico. California is a republic, and most of the west is still "unorganized territory". Japan is developing the next level of tech with coiled springs and whalebone. We don't get a timeline here, or even a definite point where it all diverges. It just does create an alternate world.

        iv. There's a plot in here, right?

Oh, yeah, we have a plot. We've three separate protagonists, each of which spend their time on the stage, fade from the narrative, then pop up again later. Sybil Gerald is a prostitute who falls in with the PR man working for an exiled Sam Houston. Edward Mallory is a paleontologist who discovered the brontosaurus fossils in the Wild West and has returned to London to present his findings. Laurence Oliphant is a mysterious government agent who is threatened by forces within and without. All of them come into contact with a deck of programming cards, of unknown origin, which bounces from person to person throughout the novel.

And as in a lot of cyberpunk, the story is full of incidents and accidents, which may or may not have to do with the main characters, but they are swept up into them. There's an assassination attempt on Sam Houston, after which he exits the narrative. A race at the Downs as a test-bed for steam-powered vehicles, and introducing streamlining to the world. The Big Stink, a historic event where London becomes unlivable due to its own waster products, arrives early and suddenly. suffocating the city, causing the upper classes to flee, and creating the foundation for a rebellion. And all of these brush up against our protagonists, even as the deck of cards disappears for a while in all the confusion. 

        v. Who wrote what?

With books with multiple authors, there's always the temptation to try to figure out who wrote what. In the case of Cormyr: A Novel by Ed Greenwood and myself, Ed wrote the modern sections, I wrote the sections set in the past, then we switched and revised each other. Working with Kate on our Finder's Stone books, we both hammered out the plot, then I wrote the first draft and she turned it into English. And the Beatles have Paul songs and John songs but most are Lennon & McCartney. But its a chancy mind problem and guesswork at best.

Still, there are some fingerprints of the authors from their other works. William Gibson is noticeable in the presence of a mysterious McGuffin (the cards) and the idea of a final revelation that shows up what is really happening in the book behind all the incidents and accidents we encounter. The writing style and historicity feels a lot more like Bruce Sterling, who delves a lot more into the style of previous eras (indeed, Sybil comes to us sideways from a Benjamin Disraeli novel), and the level of detail and accuracy on reporting the life and times of the Victorian age. 

But that's just a guess. Every collaboration creates a new form, format, and style, and this must be judged as a separate chimera from its individual creators.. 

        vi. Why is this a forgotten book?

I don't know if it is truly forgotten - I'm going through the Internet and seeing numerous editions of it. But it doesn't seem to have the effect of Mirrorshades or Mona Lisa Overdrive did on the body literate in general. And they may be a couple reasons for it. The book's heavier than most cyberpunky tomes, and its language is deep and involved, mimicking the tone of stuff truly from the Victorian Age. Plus the level of detail is such that a post 20th century reader would be well-warned to keep the Wikipedia at hand to explains crinolines, portmanteaus, dollymops, and the various classes of London Society. Plus a map of London of the period would aid as well, since the characters cross through it great detail. 

Yet the book has value for the modern reader.  It foreshadows a lot of developments in our after-the-Millenium world. The Radical Lords are techbros in the 1800s. We're developing large language models and using them to bet in a burgeoning prediction market. Even more so now than then, we can be tracked by our purchases, our numbers, and our faces. Extreme databases on all of us are currently at large, along with cultural hackers that can make use of this endless supply of data to our own ends. And the book really sings with the promise of an unevenly-distributed apocalypse.

So Difference Engine oddly has more resonance now than thirty years ago when I first read it, and then forgot about it. It was worth a visit, and it should return to the shelf else it slips from organic memory once more.

More later,

Twenty-Five Years Ago

 

More later,

Book: Book about Books

 The Bookshop; A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss, Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2024

Provenance:  Village Books and Paper Dreams, a three-story bookstore in the Fairhaven district of Bellingham Washington. According to the receipt I was using as a bookmark (and admit it, you do the same). I was up north for one of the Lovely Bride's tax-preparer conventions, and while she attended meetings on the tax implications of crypto, I book-shopped. 

I've noted elsewhere that actors love plays about the theatre, but I don't find a lot of writers writing about the process of making and selling books. Most of the "books about bookstores" have been fiction and in particular romances (cue up the movie "You've Got Mail"). So it's good to get ahold of something talking about the history of bookstore. 

And physical bookstores are odd things in our digital world, in that they have a "baby turtle" approach to sales. A host of authors create works, which publishers create a huge printing of individual volumes, which are then scattered throughout the country to bookstores large and small, independent and chains, on the off-chance that someone will come in and adopt them. There are cases where I go in looking for a specific volume or author, but just as often I'm just browsing, seeing if something piques my interest. 

Which is how I found this particular book. Up in Bellingham.

Review: The Bookshop is more of a collection of short vignettes and anecdotes than a solid linear history of the bookstore, which sounds about right given the individualistic anarchic nature of the history of selling books. It is a swarm of origin stories, and swings all over the joint and all over the country. We intro through the author's local bookstore, the Three Lives in NYC, then spring back in time to Ben Franklin and printer/publisher/ booksellers, then the oldest Bookstore - the Old Corner in Boston. Then we go to bookmobiles, Marshall Fields to introduce the department store bookstore, and the Strand, again in NYC, as the first superstore. we skate along specialty bookstores (Socialist, Nazi, Queer, Black, though nothing on SF or Mystery book shops), then into Barnes & Nobles and the mall/destination bookstore, and Amazon's attempt at a physical bookstore (There was one at University Village, but that's now a restaurant). We take a side alley into the sidewalk vendors of New York, and finally lands on a bookstore co-owned by an author, Anne Pattchet, as an example of the modern indie, blonde-wood bookcases and all. 

Despite the scattershot vignettes, there are a lot of through-lines. The modern independent bookstore is a community gathering place - its owners are in the shop (and often characters in their own rights), and has its regulars and its signings, lectures and events. These bookstores have also always been under siege - underfunded and often running on fumes, with threats from larger chains, censorship, local government regulations, the Internet, Book of the Month, e-books, and even libraries. Plus they have taken the hits from the twentieth century - war and depression and AIDs and COVID. Bookstores close and move and get new owners. So the story of the bookstores are one of survival and community. 

And despite the wide net cast by the author, we're missing stuff. A lot of bookstores get a glancing mention (Powell's in Portland, City Lights in SF, Third Place in Seattle), with the assumption that the reader knows about them. Brentanno's gets mentioned a lot but I don't know much of their story from what is here. There is a lot of famous-authors-as-patrons. But what's missing is the publishers - they move like great dark shapes in the waters offshore, mysterious and powerful. I am STILL looking for a good history on publishers. 

Still, it is a worthy and readable volume that lionizes the independent bookshop and presents its people as unlikely community heroes. Worth diving into.

More later,

Theatre: Freak Out

 Freak the Mighty - Book and Lyrics by Anthony Drewe, Music by Ryan Fielding Garrett, based on the novel by Rodman Philbrick, Directed by Michael Barakiva, Choreographed by Patrick McCollum, Seattle Rep through 6 September 

The Rep launches its season with a big-hearted, big-cast, big charactered musical. The Come From Away  revival last year was a hit (so much so that they brought it back during the summer for another run), so they tapped the same producers - Junkyard Dog Productions - in a co-development with the Cleveland Play House for this new work. And despite the fact that it has already opened in Cleveland, the Rep is crediting this as a World Premiere. OK, fine. 

Here's the overview: Max at 15 is a big soul in an overlarge body. Traumatized at a early age by the loss of his mother, he is developmentally challenged, a slow, oversized cowardly lion. He is distant from his grandparents, has been left behind a couple grades at school, bullied by the tough kids, and has no real friends. That is, until Kevin moves next door with his mother. Kevin is physically disabled, on crutches, and has Morquio syndrome, where his organs are growing faster than his diminutive body. Brainy, acerbic, hopelessly optimistic and a know-it-all, Kevin, who takes the name Freak and is unashamed of his appearance, adopts Max as his best friend. Kevin is a big fan of King Arthur, and an imaginative sequence set in the court of the King is one of the highlights of the show. Together they are adventurers in the town of Portsmouth, Maine. Together they become Freak the Mighty, brains and brawn.

This is a full-fledged, Broadway-bound musical. A large cast with great voices and solid dancing. Big production numbers combine with small spotlight moments. The live orchestra is based in the adjacent Poncho Theater (didn't realize this until after the show). Coming of age. Big-hearted themes. The REP tends overdo its staging, but it works oh-so-well here as background fly in from above, sets skate onto the stage, and everything moves with a clockwork precision. A lot of the numbers feel like they have Come From Away in their DNA, and it has a lot of structure of a modern musical - the initial "I want" song, the sad lament, and the big production number right before the intermission, the reprise of an earlier song in a darker key, and the big Finale. Its a musical, so my writer's brain can identify the plot points as I go along, but it is so well done that I really don't mind. And yeah, I got emotional about it.

Netza Jimenez is a beautiful ogre as Max, who starts to heal his trauma and inertness. Cornelius Kittrell is the dynamic, unstoppable Kevin, undaunted by his physical limitations. Both have great pipes - there is a lot of great singing here, but a particularly call-out goes to Kanoa Sims as Gwen, Kevin's mom, who brings an innate warmth to all her songs. But they're all good, and their characters earn their moments.

And I should note that this is based on a young adult novel of the same name, and that was made into a movie about 25 years ago. And the plotline holds in all the versions. But this is its own animal, adapted to the stage with all its advantages and challenges. And the result is this world premiere, the test run, the out-of-town opening, and it is so heartful and engaging and well worth it that I actually hope that it makes it, and that in ten years we see it come back as a revival. 

Good start to the season. More later, 

Political Desk: Primary Colors

 So, why are you taking so long to report this? 

Well, a big part of it is our mail-in ballot system. While we have strict limitations (the ballot has to postmarked or in a voting box by the 8 PM election day), it usually takes a couple days for the smoke to clear and results finalized. Plus, there are usually one or two results that a so close you have to wait to find out who wins. Older and conservative voters tend to vote early in the process, while more progressive types and young folk vote later, which can really swing results. And I think that this lack of instant gratification is a reason some folk don't care much for mail-ins, but I'm willing to wait for final results (I tend to look askance at exit polls, by the way).

In any event, there were few surprises out here. The big one is one I didn't talk about - a levy to support the Seattle Public Library system. It wasn't on my hyper-local ballot, so I didn't talk about it. The Seattle Times did talk about it, and said, "No Thanks".  Everyone else gave it an overwhelming "Yes" with 75% of the vote in favor. My only problem with all this - Why do we have to vote to raise money for overwhelmingly popular items for the greater good, while other budgetary matters (Like, oh, salaries of our elected officials) slip through without a second thought?

Anyway, here's the results from Grubb Street

US Representative District 9: Adam Smith (48%) vs Doug Basler.(29%). The more progressive candidates split the vote and the Republican talk-show host gets through for the third time. He's about topped out his final numbers from the last two runs, and there is little doubt it with tri-peat here. 

State Representative, District 11: David Hackney (43%) vs Ashley Fedan (31%). Both are Democrats. The third candidate in this race was a Republican, so it is likely those votes will swing to Hackney.

King County Assessor: Robert Foxcurran (47%) vs ....? At the time of this writing, Dominique Scarimbolo is at 19.17% and Christopher Roberts is at 18.69%. This one will continue to hang fire for a while, but it is worth noting that Scarimbolo got no endorsements, raised no funds, did little active campaigning, and was running on a platform of "Property Taxes Suck". So it is interesting to see how this one will play out. 

Washington State Supreme Court:

Position 1: Colleen Melody (53%) vs Scott Edwards (29%)

Position 3: David Stevens (35%) vs Jaime Michael Hawk (33%)

Position 5: Theo Angelis (36%) vs. Sharonda Amamilo (32%)

Position 7: Debra Stephens (54%) vs Todd Bloom (27%)

The only note I have on the above is that 50%+ for a nonpartisan position is pretty solid for the upcoming general election. 

And with that we close the rolltop on the Political Desk for a few weeks until things heat up for the general, and go back to talking about games, books, and theater. 

More later,

Theatre: Shakespeare in a Quarry

 The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare, directed by Susan Weingarten, Shakespeare Northwest, Rexville-Blackrock Amphitheatre, Through 7 August.

OK, you can come back now. I'm done with local politics for a couple weeks. 

All the World's a Stage

The Skagit Valley is pretty far off my beaten path, but a member of my playwriting group is the director, so I and two fellow Quills decamped the far-off lands of the Skagit Valley north of the city for this production. Shakespeare Northwest is a plucky band of thespians who bring the Bard's work to life in a natural setting.

That setting is alongside Pleasant Ridge, in what looks like would once be a stone quarry. It is near the Rexville Grange, a large hall for the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, set back among the trees in the back of the property. The outdoor stage is simple bare stage with a few backdrops. The groundlings (and everyone is a groundling here) bring their own chairs. blankets, and drinks.

(And as a note, I stopped for dinner at the nearby Rex Bistro, a bustling place with a good smashburger. Just passing that on.)

The play itself is classic mix-up. Two sets of twins, master and servant, separated as babies, find themselves in the same town. They bear the same name (Antipholus for the master, Dromio for the servant) and appearance. The native Antipholus is married, the newcomer is not, but is stunned by the fact that everyone recognizes him by name, and is convinced the entire town is beset by witches. There are mixed deliveries, assignations, tasks, tokens, the Dromios are beaten for following their masters' orders, and the new Antipholus falls for the native Antipholus's wife's sister. And their original parents are on the scene, though they don't realize it yet. Hilarity results.

It is at its base a screwball comedy, and the troupe leans into it, decked out in 1930's garb. Add to that some songs from Cole Porter and Rogers and Hart, and you has more than a whiff of that decade. Abbot and Costello would fit right into this version. One of the challenges of the play is dealing with twins (A mystery is never about twins, while a Shakespeare play its a good bet). This version uses the same actor as the Antipholus (Antipholi?) and the same actor as the Dromios, and pulls it off with mild costume changes (hats and ties). 

The actors themselves were very good, though un-microphoned and outdoors, they had to project over the wind in the trees and the occasional truck on the main road. Carolyn Travis threw themselves into the roles of both new and original-flavor Antipholus with increasing frustration over the situation. Stacy Brooks as the suffering wife Adriana was excellent, as well as winning the "Sonnet Slam" at the start of the evening (five actors each present a Shakespearean sonnet - a hat is passed and winner gets the proceeds). My fellow Quill, Susan Weingarten, did an excellent job directing this, the farcical of Shakespeare's plays, and yes, it was a long trip home in the dark, but worth it.

Shakespeare Northwest's site is here, and here's the calendar of their performances. Some of which are actually down in Seattle. Worth checking out.

More later, 

The Political Desk: Summing up a Summer Primary

 What, that's it?

Yep, this year's primary is kinda quiet. The biggest ticket is US Rep for us up in the Panther Lake area, and we're looking for a replacement for County Assessor, as well as a slew of State Supreme Court candidates. 

Here are my recommendations. You don't have to  pay attention to them, and I encourage you to make your own decisions. One of the great advantages of mail-in ballots is that it gives you the chance to deliberate as opposed to being in a voting booth facing a bunch of strange names and no idea what to do. 

There are whole slew of other people's endorsements and recommendations, but I recommend people start with the Voter's Guide, which allows the candidates to present themselves in their own words (or their approved words). Sometimes its a great place to see red flags, or to reveal their personal story or preferences. You want to see who is giving money to the various candidates? Check out the Public Disclosure Commission here.

The two big sets of media endorsements are:

The Stranger. which tends to be lefty loosie, swung more away from progressive candidates this time around. Their arguments can be a little loose, and they often do not get this far south of the city.

The Seattle Times goes a little more righty-tighty, but aims at centrist and pro-business. Oddly, they've currently got their recommendations behind a paywall, which is just dumb.

And I should note that here you can find a summary of the two major papers, with notes about where they agree with each other.

Other than that?

The Urbanist does a damned fine job summing up the races and covers a lot of the races that the mains don't deal with.

Washingtonsupremecourt.org does a great job summarizing the state of the state's supreme court, 

The Fuse Progressive Voters Guide weighs in, giving their choices and why other candidates may not have made the cut. Here's the link for King County, but you can search around for other locations as well. 

The Lefty Cheat Sheet does a good job gathering together all of the endorsements of the center-to-left crowd, for your viewing enjoyment.

The Sierra Club's notes are here. The state GOP talks about their chosen judges here. The King County Dems talk here. 

And with all of that out of the way, here's what I put down. You can find my rationale and rationalizations in the earlier entries.

US Representative District 9: Adam Smith 

State Representative, District 11: Ashley Fedan

King County Assessor: Robert Foxcurran

Washington State Supreme Court:

Position 1: Colleen Melody 

Position 3: Mike Diaz

Position 5: Theo Angelis

Position 7: Debra Stephens

And that's it for me. The deadline is 4 August, and I strongly advise voting early because of all the craziness at the National Level. And if you no longer trust the post office, here is a link with your friendly neighborhood voting drop-offs.

OK,  I went to all the trouble of providing all the links. Now go out there and vote!

More later,

The Political Desk: The Supremes

 This, surprisingly, is the big ticket item for this election. Washington State Supreme Court judges are elected as opposed to appointed, and we have no less than five races going on right now for nine positions. This site does a pretty good job laying out the state of the court, along with their websites, cash raised, and endorsements. And the more conservative factions in the state are throwing some cash behind the more conservative candidates who are running. Because one thing we need in this country are more conservative judges.

We have five positions up this year. One has just two candidates, so is not on your ballot, and is to fill an open slot from mandatory retirement (something else WA state does for its justices). Two are special elections for positions that have been temporarily filled. One is an open seat because of a retiring judge, and the last one is just a regular election. The candidates are:

Position 1: Colleen Melody was appointed at the start of this year to replace the retiring Mary Yu. However, she's shown her chops and her law, impressing the Times and even the persnickety folks at The Stranger with the depth of her legal knowledge. So, yeah, Colleen Melody.

Position 3: The current incumbent is not seeking re-election. Mike Diaz comes with a hole heaping pack of experience, endorsements, and knowledge. Yeah, he knows his stuff.

Position 4: The current incumbent has hit mandatorily retirement. This position has just two candidates, so I'll save any comments for the general, except to note that the Lovely Bride worked very hard not to accidentally skewer one of the candidates at the recent Mercer Island parade. But that's a story for another time.

Position 5: Theo Angelis is another appointment, replacing retiring Barbara Madsen. He's still the new kid here, but I'm going to recommend him in any event. Sharonda Amamilo is also good.

Position 7: Chief Justice Debra Stephens is up for re-election, and, well, she's done a good job over all these years. Yeah, let's keep her. 

And that's it. One more post, and we'll be done.

More later, 

The Political Desk: Assessing the Assessor

 A single county position is up this year, and with it comes scandal. The King County Assessor's office is responsible for setting the taxable value (valuation) of residential, personal, and commercial property for property taxes. They do not have influence on what those taxes are (though they have opinions) but are responsible for setting the base number that those taxes are based on.

Here's the current scandal, the current County Assessor, John A Wilson, has served long and well, and has on occasion ran without competition. However, of late he has been hip-deep in personal problems, including stalking and harrasing his ex, at one point being fitted with an ankle monitor to track his migratory habits. The surprise here is that he hasn't stepped down before now (because we kinda take that sort of thing serious in these parts) but he has stated he will not run for re-election. So we have four candidates that are are up for his position. 

Al Dams is the Chief Deputy Assessor under the current guy, and has been keeping the lights on over there while his boss was posting taunts from his hot tub. He points out there will be no ramp-up period for a new guy to get his bearing. He has a bunch of endorsements.

Rob Foxcurran was the Senior Appraiser of the City of Seattle, and, as such has been deeply involved in valuations of properties in the city. He also has a whole pack of endorsements.

Christopher Roberts is a former mayor of Shoreline and has managed big budgets and delivered on housing affordability. He is pushing transparency in office and regaining the trust of the electorate. He is also weighing in with a lot of endorsements.

Dominique M Scarimbalo is a wraith. She's on the ballot, has a web site, but has raised no funding according to the Public Disclosure Committee. Nor has she showed up in discussions from The Stranger or the Times of the candidates. According to her Voter's Guide entry, she's proudly not a politician (she runs a brewpub down here in Kent) and is protesting our current tax system overall. So if you want a protest vote of the entire system, have at.

Me? I'm going to go for Robert Foxcurran, who combines both experience in the field with a fresh face and outlook.

More later,

The Political Desk: State Positions

 After the single Federal-level position on my ballot, we slip quickly down to the list to the State Legislature. We're in the 11th Legislative District, which overlaps the heart of the 9th Congressional, and includes Tukwila and Renton and just the northern tip of Kent. We're in the northern tip, while the rest of Kent is split between the 33rd and 47th., so yinz folk will have to look elsewhere.

In elections with an incumbent, you are often looking at an asymmetric conflict. The incumbent has experience, imbedded access to the mechanisms of politics, a set of previous endorsements, and a track record in that job (which can be good or bad or sometimes both). They also have been in touch with their constituents throughout their term through mail and emails (and yes, I DO read those). Challengers, on the other hand, often benefit from the fact that they DON'T have a track record in that particular position, and can ofter their intent for once they get into office. They may often have applicable experience in the "real" world (as opposed to politics). 

Anyway, there are two representative positions in the state legislature for each district (and a state senator, but that positions is not up for a vote this time). Position 1 has three candidates:

David Hackney is the incumbent, a Democrat that has done very well in the position over the past few terms. I would put his highpoints as his recent vote for the the "millionaire's tax" and one requiring base qualifications for sheriffs. He's pushed transparency in government as well. He's pushed anti-fraud bills but they have not progressed through the chambers yet, so that's a work in progress.

Ashley Fedan is his Democratic Party challenger, a former Navy Nurse (Lt. Commander in the nursing corps). She was a precinct committee officer for the 11th District, and is running on health gace, housing and pro-working families and pro-union. That's a good platform.

Christian Rombourgh is the Republican, which I think is a good thing because most of the GOP has given up King County for dead. Christian is an ironworker who demands real accountability, reducing red tape, supporting good-paying jobs, supporting trade unions and defending working peoples. Good approach, to be honest. His web site, alas, is still under construction as I write this. 

It feels like, when the dust settles, it is going to be Hackney against Fedan, a choice between two very good candidates. I'm going to recommend Ashley Fedan, at least for the Primary.

Also, there's Position 2, which has a single candidate - incumbent Steve Berquist. This blog does not pass on endorsements for single candidates, but just between you and me, Berquist has bee doing a good job, so I'm not too bent out of shape about him not having competition this time around.

More later,

The Political Desk: US Rep. 9th District

The biggest prize on my ballot is the US Representative, 9th District. The 9th runs from Bellevue and Mercer Island down to Federal Way and Auburn and has an incredibly diverse population, strong ties to Boeing, and includes SeaTac airport.

The incumbent is Adam Smith. Nope, not the 18th Century economic philosopher, but the 30-year Democratic incumbent. He's usually challenged from the right, but most recently from the left. He is currently the head of the House Armed Services committee. He's of the Centrist Moderate breed, but has been against a swollen military budget, against the war/conflict/whatever with Iran, and has most recently come out in favor of impeaching the President. By the same token, he's partially responsible for Trump retaking the White House in 2024 by being a leading voice in advising President Biden not to run for re-election. So now we have a guy in charge who is in even worse physical and mental condition (while Biden, when he pops up in public view, is looking pretty spry for a dude fighting cancer).

His big opponent is Kshama Sawant, socialist and former member of the Seattle City Council. As a member of council, she led the charge for raising the minimum wage in Seattle. She's also a passionate firebrand who has been disciplined and arrested on occasion for public protests. The Stranger likes her because she does not play well with others and throws elbows. [Addendum: After initially posting this, I was reminded that Sawant refused to endorse Kamala Harris last Presidential election, instead popping for the Green Party candidate. So if I'm going to gripe about Smith for damaging his party's chances, its only fair to be broad-based.]

Also to the left of Mr. Smith is Melissa Chaudhry, who ran against Smith the last time and is running a grassroots campaign. She's anti-ICE (for good reason - her husband was picked up in the sweeps - she fought against them in court and won). She's also admitted that she's running as a Democrat for the primaries, and should she win, she'll switch over to the Green Party. She's an excellent candidate, but that gives me a little pause.

We also has a Socialist Workers Party candidate Jacob Perasso, who supports, well, worker's rights, and his other position (opposing the whatever in Iran. infrastructure, Ukraine) all comes from that basis. There hasn't been a lot of noise about his campaign.

Finally, we're looking at the lone Republican, Doug Basler, who pushes the idea of "common sense, moderation, and "practical solutions in a highly charged political environment" in his voter's write-up, without mentioning that his previous election-denying conspiracies as conservative talk-show host, he contributed to that high charging. 

As a gamer, I'm looking at Mr. Smith, holding the most moderate position, carrying through the general, and since we have three candidates to the left, and one candidate to the right, it is likely the more progressive votes will splinter and it will be Smith vs Basler, where the republican candate gets about a third of the total votes. 

As a voter? A lot of pundits are going for "No choice" so far here, but I'm going to put my counter on Adam Smith. Not because I agree with him on everything, or forgive him for past mistakes, but because he actually sounds like he's listening to his constituents and representing them accordingly. 

More later, 

The Political Desk: The Primary Madness Begins

 All right, he says, rolling up his sleeves. Let's do this.

This time of year, I descend into madness and talk about upcoming elections, chasing off those readers who are expecting theatre reviews, book reviews, and the occasional cavalcade of new game releases. I've been doing it for twenty-five years now, so why stop now?

And, for people who have just stumbled onto this site, I have rules, because what are we as a civilization if we don't have rules?

• I comment on races that are on my personal ballot. And those are for the northern portion of Kent, Washington, that includes Panther Lake, on the East Hill. And I like it that way. I mean, who am I to tell you what to do with your vote if I don't have skin in the game? And while I will on occasion dabble in elections beyond my normal ken, I try to keep it to a minimum. 
• For the primaries, I ignore races which have only two candidates, usually. Washington State is a top two primary state, which means that top two vote-getters go ahead to the general election. That has a tendency to reduce (but not eliminate) the power of traditional political parties. Now, they have money and the ability to get their message out, but that's not always the case. Further, because it is top-two, we often see two Democrats (and rarely two Republicans, but it happens) vying for a position.
• I really want to put good people in office. You know, folks who will do the job, even if they don't agree with me on every point. I further like people who are willing to listen to opposing viewpoints, and maybe, maybe see their own viewpoints altered as a result. And for a bunch of offices, we don't even list who is the official Dem/GOP candidate, so you have to do your own digging and see who is endorsing who.
• I don't post these on Facebook, Bluesky, or the other socials, because these are frankly my opinions and I don't feel like splattering them over the joint (there are enough people already doing that sort of this - go have at!). So if you want the very-local political dirt, you have to tune in here to this station. 
• I give other references, though that number has subsided in recent years, much to my frustration (I really miss the Municipal League). The Seattle Times tends to lean towards pro-business, centrist views, though they have a new publisher, who is son of the old publisher. The Stranger also has a new publisher (and is looking for a new editor-in-chief), and usually swings to the left, though this year they don't like much of anyone because even the progressives don't tick all their boxes. There are a few others out there, like the The Urbanist, which endorses on a wide swath of offices and for the serious lefties among you, the Lefty Cheat Sheet compiles all the various endorsements (unions, blogs, newspapers) in one place. We also get a voter's guide, which should help as well, since all the entries are penned by the candidate, or at least by candidate's people, and while there is a high percentage of "I'm honored to serve you" type of statements, there are often red flags and windows into dark souls in that mess.

Now, Washington is mail-voter state, which means you get a ballot, you fill it out, and you mail it back (or drop it off in one of a number of drop-boxes).  I think that works. When I first moved here, we had more traditional voting, where you had to take time off whatever you were doing that day and get to a polling location. We were in Rush precinct, and the polling location was at the bottom of the hill at Meeker School. I would pop in before I went to work and would be voter #3. The Lovely Bride would show up in early afternoon and be voter #16. So, yeah, I like getting more people voting, even if they don't vote the way I want them to.

Now, some of our conservative brethren are not wild about this state of affairs. They love elections, mind you, but of the authoritarian breed, where there is one official candidate, selected for you in advance, and only certain people are permitted to vote. And opposition candidates tend to get arrested, exiled, or fall out of dangerously unsafe windows. They've already tried to get an initiative this year where they can go through the voting roles and get rid of folk they don't like (which failed to get enough signatures to get on the ballot this fall, so I'd say it wasn't popular). On the National Level they've been trying to convince people that Trump won in 2020 (they've lost 60 court cases so far trying to prove that) and want the Post Office to stop delivering ballots to your home, and to stop counting those ballots if the Post Office doesn't postmark them in time. So vote early folks, while you still have the chance.

And that's about it. We are on a fairly tight schedule here  - the due date is 4 August, which is right around the corner. So let's blow through the ones on my ballot and I can get back to talking about collectable quarters.

More later, 

Book: The Old New Weird

 Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville, Del Rey Books, an imprint of Random House, 2016

Provenance: I picked this up at the Page Turner in downtown Kent, when I was looking for a completely different book. And that's the nature of the Page Turner in that sort of thing happens quite often.

Review: OK, I'm a fan of China Miéville, but I haven't read everything that he's written. I started early with Perdido Street Station (published in 2000), and the two other books set in the same world, The Scar and The Iron Council. I enjoyed The City and City and Kraken (which I did not review - I don't review everything here), and really liked (and reviewed) October, a non-fiction book about the Russian Revolution. So I picked up this collection of his short fiction, adding it to the To Be Read pile, and finally getting into it in the past month or so. 

And, to my lack of surprise, I enjoyed it tremendously. There are a LOT of stories here, ranging from widely-published works to stuff that was used as handouts at a exhibition in Liverpool. As a result, though you get a good feeling for how and what Miéville writes over a number of different stories. 

When Miéville first showed up with Perdido Street Station, he quickly got folded into his own subgenre- the New Weird. This was over 25 years ago, so the patina of "new" may have gotten a bit threadbare since then, but there are not a lot of other books that fit neatly into that category. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer gets mentioned a bunch as a sister volume, and I could put The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin in that general category. Piranesi could elbow its way in as well with a good argument or two.

But genre is a slippery marketing term - it effectively says: If you liked THAT, you'll like THIS. But it also sets up it own set of walls - This is NOT magical realism. This is NOT urban fantasy. This is not old school or cozy or like a lot of other things you've seen. It is akin to all of that, but it is a thing of its own right. The Old Weird belongs to Clark Ashton Smith and Lovecraft, and it has a good linkage with that as well, but this is a different animal.

So what is Miéville's encampment of the New Weird? Well, it has strange doings - icebergs calving above the skies of London, animated oil rigs. card decks with suits that only appear once in a lifetime, or etchings on bones newly-pulled from cadavers. It has body horror, in addictive parasites to people who put on dead animal heads or medical actors who suddenly present with symptoms for future diseases.  Miévilles brand of the New Weird is very urban (usually) and Londonian (keep your wiki link open for when you hit something idiosyncratic).

Most of all (and I think this applies to the New Weird in general) - it is unexplained. No one steps forward in the story with a reason why animated oil rigs are blundering ashore like kaiju.  Even those seeking the truth discover nothing but dead ends and unsure resolutions. Miéville in his short fiction keeps his focus tight on his protagonists (who are also usually his victims), and they are awash in this unsurity as well. This may be a hallmark of the NW, or at least Miévilles patch of earth within it.

It is interesting and puzzling and amazing and horrible and wonderful. It's worth hunting down and reading.

More later, 

Book and a Movie: Kick in the Pance

 The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dyne, Charles Scribener's Sons, 1926

The Benson Murder Case, Directed by Frank Tuttle, Paramount Pictures, 1930

Provenance: Picked this up at the Page Turner, Kent's expansive used and new bookstore. It particular book also happened to be of the collection of Sacnoth, who had been cleaning out his shelves over time. He in turn had purchased the book in 1996 in Madison, Wisconsin (he tends to annotate all his books). This book was one of my "waiting books" - read when I'm waiting for an appointment, or for friends to show up at a restaurant. As a result, I may get two or five pages in before I have to put it aside. So the "waiting books" will be carried around for a while in a deep-pocketed jacket before finally getting finished.

As for the movie version, Sacnoth and friends watch old movies on Saturdays when we are not playing Call of Cthulhu, and have gone through all four of the William Powell Vance movies. While the book is the first of the Vance Vance novels, the movie version was the third starring William Powell. 

Reviews: As the first Philo Vance novel, and it is interesting in what it shows and what drops away later in the series, as well as changes made for the movies. Philo Vance is one of the elite dilettante school of detectives (Lord Peter Wimsey beats him out, since he first showed up in 1923 and who, like Vance, has a friend in law enforcement that allows him access to ongoing cases. 

In the case of the book, Vance's bud, District Attorney Markham is approached by an old and respected friend to investigate the death of his brother, who was his partner in a stock firm. The brother was found seated in his chair in his living room, dressed in his smoking jacket, shoeless and without his toupee, shot through the head. There was a large amount of evidence cast about, and the DA and police go through several suspects, all of which get proven innocent in turn by Vance.

Vance rejects such trivialities as facts and evidence and concentrates on the psychological nature of the killer - what sort of person would kill Benson in this matter? He claims to know the murderer from the get-go, but dances about, demonstrating to the DA that the latest prime suspect fails the test for some reason or another. In fact, he seems to delight in proving the agents of law enforcement wrong, all the while concern trolling their predicament. He's a bit arrogant about the whole thing.

The Van Dyne who is the narrator claims that position as being Vance's lawyer, and is only telling the tale now because Vance has retired to Europe. In the book, he serves no purpose as a character but to declare Vance as being brilliant and noting the growing frustration of the DA as Vance shows off one blind alley after another. Vance in this initial book comes off as insufferable, such that the DA (and the reader) just wants to shout "give us the answer, already". He actually becomes more likeable in later novels, but still absolutely sure of himself.

The movie, on the other hand, junks about everything except the title, Vance, and some of the supporting cast. Our invisible narrator did not make the transfer. In addition, the movie version riffs off the recent stock market crash. Benson is confronted with a bunch of clients who have lost money and are fed up with his shenanigans. Benson then retires to his country house and is shot. And it turns out Benson lives right next door to his good friend DA Markham, who brings along Vance to investigate. And one of the suspects says that Vance just got lucky in a previous case and challenges him to find the real culprit.

Which of course, he does. But he does it with a bit more grace than his novel incarnation, and more attention to the little facts and clues. He uses less psychobabble in his  explanations (I swear, the last chapter of the book is filled with his explanation of why the killer HAD to be a certain suspect, in part because women are not cool-headed enough to shoot a man accurately in the head). The movie version really hinges of William Powell's performance, who makes Vance actually likable. You can see the bits and bemused  mannerisms that he will bring to the Thin Man movies (and yeah, he's more likeable there than in the original book version as well).

So yeah, the novel is a time capsule - Vance was incredibly popular in his time, and the line "Philo Vance needs a kick in the pance" from Ogden Nash (of limerick fame) in 1931 just underscores the both the character's popularity and division he presented to readers. The movie version is traditional for its era as well, but a lot easier to swallow and worth hunting down if you're a fan of old pre-code Hollywood.

So yeah, check out the movie if you have a spare afternoon. The book? Only if you have a deep interest.

More later,

Faceplant

You know, I don't talk a lot about my personal life around here, but this one was an adventure, so I'll share.

Last Saturday, the Lovely Bride and I went to Bainbridge Island, which is across the Sound from Seattle. We were invited to a friend's housewarming party and decided to make a day of it. So after our Saturday morning Tai Chi class we changed out of our uniforms and headed into downtown Seattle to catch the ferry. There was no FIFA soccer game that day, and the Pride parade was going to be Sunday, so it was a pretty straight shot, and after about an hour's wait on the Seattle side, we drove onto the Wenatchee ferry and headed to Bainbridge.

And Bainbridge was pretty classy, though we only saw a small fraction of it this time. We had lunch at poke place in a converted gas station not too far from the ferry docks, and took in the Bainbridge Island Art Museum, a small museum with very nice paper and fabric art.

And then ...

I missed stepping up onto a curb while crossing back to the parked car. I pitched forward, and had my hand in my pocket, fishing out the car keys so I could not catch myself. I went down like a sack of wet cement at the side of the road, my head bouncing off the asphalt and driving the frame of my now-broken glasses into my eyebrow. 

There was blood. A lot of blood. And a lot of concerned, helpful passers-by who helped me to my feet and suggested calling an ambulance. The LB and I got back to the car, and I ruined one of her handkerchiefs mopping up blood while she found the nearest urgent care on her phone. We went there, expecting to get cleaned up and maybe a few stitches for the eyebrow.

Instead ...

Due to my age and the fact that I had a bit of resistance turning my head to the right, they put me into an immobilizing collar and popped me into an ambulance bound for Silverdale, which was the closest ER. That took about twenty minutes, and was the first time I was conscious in an ambulance. Not bad. At the ER, they did a battery of tests on me - an MRI which showed I had no concussion, an x-ray that said I had extreme arthritis in my right hand, and an ultrasound that determined I had no blood clots in my right leg (though I still have a pain in the front quad muscle there, but I had that before I stage-dived on the road). And then they cleared the asphalt fragments out of my wounds, closed the eyebrow gash with some glue, bandaged me up and sent me on my way.

At this point, the shortest route home was south through Tacoma, so we stopped at the Lobster Shop for a pleasant meal (The LB had refitted my glasses together enough that I was presentable, though of course she was driving by that point). And since then, I've been at home, self-medicating on Tylenol and rum & colas and taking my meetings in on slack and zoom.

And that's about it. The only interesting note was that the Lovely B was really impressed with Bainbridge, and liked the idea of "island life", right up to the point that she found out the nearest hospital was a half-hour drive away. That cooled her ardor a bit.  But in the mean time, I'm still working from home and concentrating on healing up.

And that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. 

More later, 

Book: Women in Their 20s

 Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties by Marion Meade, Harcourt Books, 2004

Provenance: Unsure, but from the pencil marking on the inside cover, I'd guess Half-Price Books. It looked like an overstock as opposed to a truly used book. 

Review: First off, bad title. The hair style of the title make is only glancingly noted, and references to bootleggers and speakeasies are mostly incidental. It doesn't exactly scream 1920s, but maybe. The secondary title is kinda incomplete as well, since we're going to be talking about four women who write as opposed to everyone else in the field. Only when we get to the third sub-title down do we address who we are talking about - Edna St. Vincent Milay, Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, and Zelda Fitzgerald. Important female writers of the era.

OK, quick summary for those under 100 years old: Edna Ferber was a popular and award-winning novelist who is best remembered for her Broadway adaptations (like Showboat, which you may have seen in high school productions). The other Edna - St. Vincent Milay, known here as Vincent, was a popular poetess. Dorothy Parker made her way on essays, short stories and sniping reviews in the nascent New Yorker. And Zelda labored in the shadow of her husband F. Scott, who wanted to be more successful than he was. 

They were not a group. They were not a movement. They worked in different spheres. They attended some of the same parties, but direct encounters between them were few and unmemorable. They all worked in the hothouse environment of New York City literati in the 20s, a neatly-compacted decade that ran from the creation of Prohibition to the Crash. 

And we have a lot of information about these writers because they were wrote everything down - diaries, notes, letters, and stories on things based on their lives. Moreso, since they ran about with a bunch of other writers, we have all of their notes, diaries, letters, and stories as well. The end result here is a chatty, gossipy, personal, and in places honestly bitchy presentation of the 20s in New York City. And Europe. Because post-war France was a great, cheap place to escape to if you were a member of the Lost Generation and had the petty cash. 

The book itself travels through the decade year by year, and concentrates on the lives and adventures of its subjects. Alcohol and abortions. Insights and illnesses. Trysts and travails. It gives a good scan of their growth and success as writers, but also the pitfalls of their craft - writer's block and problematic relationships and too many house parties and summer homes. 

All of the writers have their own arc and some sense of resolution. Ferber got a Pulitzer and showed you could succeed both commercially and literarily and ended the decade hosting small parties at her penthouse. Milay ascended into poetic godhood, retreated to the country, and pursued a young muse with her husband's permission. Zelda suffered under F. Scott (who comes off as complete asshole here), who only started to support her when she went into physical and mental decline. And Dorothy kept plugging along through boom and bust times, just writing. Of the group she's probably the best-remembered, owing the wit and meme-worthiness of here poems and short works.

The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there. I'm a fan of the 20s, which dovetails neatly with my interest in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. From this volume I've picked up that a trans-Atlantic cruise was not THAT big a thing if you had the money, and at the time, writers were actually being paid more (An easy conversion was to multiply any figures within by ten). There are a lot of bits and bobs here that I may find use for elsewhere, and you might as well. 

In the meantime, I've excavated a collection of Dorothy Parker's short stories from the basement library, and intend to curl up with that. 

More later,

Book: Timestop

 The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, Avid Reader Press (Simon & Schuster), 2024

Provenance: World Con was in Seattle last year, and though I did not attend, I resolved to read the Hugo novel nominees for that year. And I failed, bailing out halfway through one of the Adrian Tchaikovsky novels. But I did get a copy of The Ministry of Time front the local Barnes & Noble, which has, it should be noted, very much improved over the past couple years.

Review: This book was well-lauded before I even reached it. It is a New York Times bestseller, a pick for the Good Morning America Book Club, a monthly pick for Barnes & Noble, a Best Book of the Year for NPR, Vanity Fair, Good Housekeeping, and some 25 more outlets. Oh, and Obama liked it as well.

I liked it. It didn't win a Hugo. And yeah, I think I understand why.

So here's the skinny. Our unnamed narrator/protagonist works for government ministry in London, and discovers, after she has been hired, that it has a time machine. Sort of. They have access to a "time door" that they can open into other eras. And not to mess up the timeline, they are taking/kidnapping people from the past near the end of their lives in situations where they would not be missed. One of these is Graham Gore, one of the crewmen on the Franklin Expedition. 

Now, the Franklin Expedition rates up there with Nikola Tesla in the things-nerds-care-about-department. The Franklin Expedition consisted of the ships Terror and Erebus, which were dispatched with two years of supplies to find the Northwest Passage. They didn't find one, but instead got trapped in the ice for a couple years, and its people (including Gore) died either on the ice or trying to escape it. Including Gore. Except Gore got kidnapped and was brought to this near future London where the effects of climate change is already starting to flood the city. 

Our unnamed narrator serves as a "bridge" for Gore, along with some fellow workers for other expats from the past. And "bridge" is a good title for combination minder/agent/guide to the modern world. She and Gore fall in love, discover a conspiracy from their future that intends to capture or destroy the time door, and their allies start dropping like flies. 

So the novel veers from dark workplace comedy into rom-com, then slingshots into a thriller, and finally sticks the landing in a science fictional space. Our narrator is relating what she knows of the story, which is more about the effects of time travel on a relatively small group of people - the bridges, the ex-pats, the management, and the assassins from the future.  Early on, she lays down the absurdity of the situation.

"How does it work? How can it work? I exist at the beginning and the end of this account, which is a kind of time travel, and I'm here to tell you: don't worry about it. All you need to know is that in the very near future, the British Government developed a means of time travel but had not experimented with it."

That's a pretty piece of writing, with tenses spilling all over the place. But what its talking about, the nature of the document you're reading does get explained, and it makes sense by the end. At the time, I thought it was going to be a denial of the SF tropes we all know - paradoxes, grandfather clauses, alternate futures. But you're going to run into them, but from the ground-level view. So we embrace the tropes, but not the way you might think.

The book is really good, and deserves to be a Hugo nominee, but I can see how it didn't make the final cut, and much of that is because of the nature of genre. As noted above, the book refuses to "stay in its lane", and while I like that, I understand that it might not resonate elsewhere. But also its part of its own provenance, and how it entered the market. Ministry of Time first showed up in the new fiction release as opposed to the SF areas of bookstores. Most of its high praise comes from traditional/mainstream sources. It was therefore "not of the body" of SF-Dom. Genre can be both a leg up (a "guaranteed" customer base) and a limitation (reaching out beyond that "guaranteed" base). 

Still, Ministry of Time is worth considering on the quality of its writing, and I recommend you check it out. 

More later,

Book: Dreams of a Strange House

 Strange Houses by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion, HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2025, original Japanese 2021.

Provenance: Browsers Bookshop in Olympia. A nice, well-staffed bookstore in downtown Olympia. Purchased on a whim, in part because the front cover had a house blueprint on the front with Japanese icons on it.

Review: Long ago, before I became a author, game designer, and general worldbuilder, I was a civil engineer. And as a result, I have always had a fascination with buildings and how they work and grow over time. In particular, I find blueprints and floor plans interesting, in what they say about the house and people who live there.

Strange Houses is set in modern Japan. The narrator, an author of macabre fiction is approached by a friend who is homebuying with his spouse. And they found a excellent modern house, but there was just something off-base about it. And they sent the floor plans to the author, who quickly noticed some things that were off-kilter. He brought in an architect friend and together the two start unspooling a mystery, which quickly turns disturbing and horrific. 

The book produces the house plans, as well as other house plans as the story unfolds, along with family trees and timelines. And these are presented in the running text as well, allowing the reader to discover the evidence as the author does.  Now, I read a lot of old detective novels from the 20s and 30s, and in such venerable tomes by Christie and Van Dine, they provide floor plans as well. In fact, putting a map or house diagram on the back of paperback editions was a thing back there. So that's not much of a surprise, but what the book does is that was they learn more about the house(s) they make changes to the house plans to reveal new ideas. 

So there are clues in the house plans, which is cool, and I noticed most of them before the two investigators spelled them out in text. But, I also noticed stuff that they left uncommented-upon. In the plans, there is one large room on the second floor without any exterior windows. OK, that's odd (though my first thought was to ask if there was a skylight). But (and this is the weirdness they don't address) there also is one toilet on the floor, and you'd have to pass through the windowless room to get there. It is a little strange that the investigators that are looking really, really hard at the house don't call it out. 

I've mentioned this before in my comments on various Call of Cthulhu products, where the maps don't line up with the text, or have their own discrepancies,  like chimneys that are prominent on the first floor and disappear on the upper floors, or locations of kitchens and bathrooms that would be logistical nightmare regarding the pipes. So I'm sensitized to such things, and in this case seeing stuff that the (real) author would prefer me to miss. And if fact, at the time I wrote it off as simply "Well, they lay out houses differently in Japan", but I went to the trouble of looking up Tokyo floor plans (thank you, Internet), and nope, the ones here look like they make no sense.

In any event, the investigators make some immediate assumptions, which turn out to be mostly true, but the logic leaps are a bit much. And then they find a second house, where the family had previously lived, which also had some odd features. And then there's the family house, of more traditional design, which had its own sense of weirdnesses.

And all of this is presented in drawings and conversations between the investigators, and interviews with various people. It is all presented as evidence, in a fairly bloodless fashion (though there is blood in many of the descriptions and conclusions). In this way it feels a lot like Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", where nothing really happens to the narrator as he goes through the files of his deceased uncle and comes to a chilling conclusion. Same here, though there are more questions than answers in the final tally.

The clinical approach of the investigators left me cold, and the fact that things are (maybe) not wrapped up neatly bothered me. The (real) author is a mystery figure whose photograph is a black robe and a white mask (very Studio Ghibli). The books (there are more in this style) are huge in Japan. I want to say that it is the cultural differences that ultimately frustrated me, but I think the translation is on-target.

It is ultimately a case that I bring too much to the book. I know too much about a subject and it brought me in conflict with the reality presented in the novel. And the ultimate loose ends and unreliable testimonies frustrate me, particularly in comparison with the venerable "The Call of Cthulhu". Strange Houses is a short, compact read (given all the house plan illos), but I can't really recommend this even to friends who have spent time in Japan. It was a misfire, though apparently a very successful one.

More later,