Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.
My ballot arrived on the 16th, and was filled out and placed in a drop box that same day. As of today, it has been counted!
King County voters can check their ballot status here, all Washington state voters can check their ballot status here.
Get out and vote!
📚 forty-three of 2020: The Nemesis from Terra (originally Shadow Over Mars) by Leigh Brackett ⭐️⭐️ 1945 Retro Hugo Best Novel
Rather amazing to think that this is just a year before Asimov’s Foundation win. If this was the best of ‘45, that was a bad year for SF.
📚 forty-two of 2020: Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Steven Spielberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A pretty straightforward translation of the story from screen to page, but as it’s a classic of 80s optimistic sci-fi, that’s not a bad thing. Really has me wanting to rewatch the film now.
Reposting for this year’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day — I’ve moved since I first posted this in 2018, but not far enough for any of this to change.
According to this map, I (along with many of my Seattle-area friends) live on Duwamish tribal land, part of the Puget Sound Coast Salish tribal group (is that the right term to use?). The closest village was “sawh-WAHWH-weh-wad (‘place of whistling’). Duwamish. On Cedar River about 2 miles above present-day town of Renton. This village was occupied by the riverine Duwamish or doo-AHBSH, after doo (‘inside’) referring to (present-day) Duwamish River, Black River and Cedar River, along all of which this group resided.”
Lushootseed (which has several dialects) was the language spoken in the area.
The land was part of Cession 347, taken by the United States in the Point Elliott Treaty in 1855, ratified and proclaimed in 1859 (19KB .pdf). The signatory for the Duwamish was Chief Si’ahl, namesake of the city of Seattle. For all the land taken by this treaty, the tribes were “paid” $150k (roughly $4.3 million in today’s dollars — or roughly 1.3% of the cost of Avengers: Infinity War), distributed over nineteen years not as direct funds, but “to be applied to the use and benefit” of the tribes as directed by the government.
Despite being the first signatory tribe of the Point Elliott Treaty and having cultural history and stories dating back to the last ice age, the Duwamish Tribe is still not recognized as an indigenous nation by the United States Government.
📚 forty-one of 2020: A Rock and a Hard Place by Peter David ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng 🖖
Riker’s sent off on a B-plot, so a troublesome first officer is temporarily assigned to the Enterprise in the hopes that Picard can corral this loose cannon. He’s an ass, but is he unstable?
📚 forty of 2020: A Call to Darkness by Michael Jan Friedman ⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng 🖖
Almost a standard 3-star “stranded in primitive conditions/‘Bread and Circuses’ variant” adventure, but had some really weird oversights that knocked a star off.
📚 thirty-nine of 2020: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1969 Hugo Best Novel
While it was good, it was so tough right now to read a cynical dystopian novel about overpopulation, eugenics, and colonialism, featuring endemic racism and sexism, that it was a real slog.
We decided late September was close enough to October to put up our Halloween goodies.
📚 thirty-eight of 2020: The Captains’ Honor by David and Daniel Dvorkin ⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng
Somehow the Roman gladiator planet from TOS has become a full member of the Federation, with a Starfleet ship crewed entirely by these neo-Romans. It does not go well.
In a bit of pandemic-induced curiosity about just how far along my hair loss has gotten and how much grey might be mixed in, a few months ago I stopped doing my monthly head shave. Mid-June was the last time I shaved it all down, so I’m now at three months of growth.
Verdict so far: The Hanscom hairline holds strong, and has worked its way entirely over the top of my head, leaving just a few wispy stragglers up top. On the upside, this gives me a pretty decent Picard cut, though I certainly can’t lay claim to his gravitas, so I’m not quite the sexiest captain in Starfleet. Grey seems much more visible in my beard than on my head, though it’s definitely lighter around the temples.
Mom will be pleased to know that, while it’s still too short to really be obvious in these photos (especially in shots straight out of the shower directly after having been brushed into place), it’s still quite curly and correspondingly stubborn about which direction it wants to go. Bed head is once again a thing.
I’m not sure quite how long I’ll keep this experiment going (after a certain point, I’ll just start to get back into “creepy guy with a skullet” territory), and I’m sure I’ll go back to my usual “buzz it all off” routine when we’re allowed to be broadly social once again, but since Prairie’s the only one who sees me regularly these days, and she seems to think I’m cute however goofy my head looks, I’ll keep this going for a bit longer, at least.
