we're moving to Minneapolis at the end of the month! (but watch for updates)

Our realtor pal told us yet another problem had come up, and then that all the problems had been solved, so "we are back on track". Yay!

Given our home-buying adventures so far (see yesterday's post), I'm not assuming we're really moving until the cats are asleep on our bed at the new place. We do a walk-through on the morning of the closing, and I'm fully prepared for the fates to laugh at human plans then.

Still, we're excited. The place seems ideal for us in many ways: It's in our old neighborhood, within an easy walk of a light rail station. It's small, about 750 square feet, so it'll be easy to clean and cheap to heat. It's in decent shape for moving in, but it needs some work, so we can shape it to suit us over the next couple of years.

It feels good to be going, but I'm going to miss the desert and the mountains and many fine Arizonans.

the Schrodingers are moving to Minneapolis

In a couple of weeks, we're moving back to Minneapolis. Or not.

Our story so far:

Thanks to two awful things—my sister's heart attack and the collapse of the US's housing bubble—Emma and I have enough money to buy a small home in a working-class neighborhood in some cities. Alas, that doesn't include Los Angeles, or we would happily go back there. We love our current abode in Arizona where we've been caretakers, but it's a bit isolated, and at heart, Emma and I are city folk who love the country, not vice versa.

Two of our favorite cities, Tucson and Minneapolis, were both hit hard by the housing collapse, so we've been studying them closely. Despite the cold, Minneapolis edged out Tucson in a couple of areas: proximity to Emma's family and a light rail system.

So we put an offer in for a house there a few months ago. We dickered with the bank until they gave a verbal agreement for the price we wanted to pay—and that evening, we heard that a new buyer was prepared to pay more than we could.

Which made us think the fates wanted us in Tucson. But on the very day that we were looking there, we got a call from our realtor pal in Minneapolis about another house that might please us.

The fast version: it did, we offered, they accepted. But this house is a short sale, meaning several people have claims on it and all have to sign off, a process that takes a month or two. We waited patiently. Last week, the papers seemed to have cleared. We paid for an inspection—and the basement was extremely damp. Which would call for putting in a drainage system. Which would cost more than we hoped to spend.

But it turned out the seller had come by that morning to turn the water on for the inspection, and the faucet had broken, soaking the basement. The inspector returned a couple of days later, and all looked good.

Time to celebrate? We thought so. I reserved a moving container from a shipping company this morning.

And I just got this email from our realtor pal: "the title work indicates that there are some judgments against the sellers that will have to be dealt with. I hope this does not become a problem for us."

So, uh, we're moving in a couple of weeks. Or later. To Minneapolis. Or Tucson. Or elsewhere.

I ain't asking for commiseration—I wish everyone without hope of a home had our problems. This is just an explanation of why, sometime soon, we may announce with little warning that we're moving.

Or not.

ETA: Under "God plots like a bad writer sometimes": we heard that our offer on the current house had been accepted on the same day we heard my mother had died.

Also, this post could've been written up as "The Xenos are moving..."

Why the Dzur Stabbed the Yendi in the Back

This is a bit of fanfic inspired by the Vlad Taltos stories of Steve Brust. Or maybe by the Paarfi stories. In any case, it's a story that might be told in Dragaera. The nature of Dzurs and Yendis should become clear in the telling, but there's one thing that might be useful to know: A Yendi would stab someone in the back to win, but a Dzur would always choose to fight face to face, so the title suggests something unusual. —WS

Why the Dzur Stabbed the Yendi in the Back

by Will Shetterly

Once, so long ago that no one remembers their names, a Yendi and a Dzur went to war. The Yendi used seventeen strategies, each more clever than the one before, to deprive the Dzur of all her allies and resources. When the Yendi heard the Dzur had nothing left but her sword and her honor, he laughed in anticipation of her surrender or her death.

But he stopped laughing when a guard said a lone warrior was approaching the castle with a sword in her hands. The Yendi climbed the castle walls to see for himself. Before the front gate, the Dzur stood shouting, "Yendi! I've come for our final battle! One of us shall die in honorable combat!"

The captain of the guard said, "Shall I have our archers answer her?"

The Yendi nodded, then smiled and said, "Ah! She obviously has a spell to deflect arrows, and her last allies are hidden in the woods to aid her if I come out to fight. Send half our soldiers by the back gate to scour the forest and thwart her plan."

"My lord, she's a Dzur."

"Yes, but she's no fool. Do as I say. Even if I'm wrong—" And here he laughed at the idea that a Yendi could be outwitted by a Dzur. "—a dozen warriors and a stout gate remain between us and the Dzur."

So the captain did as she was told. Half the Yendi's warriors left the castle to search the countryside while the Dzur pounded the front gate with her pommel and shouted, "Yendi! Open this gate, or I'll batter it until it falls!"

The captain said, "Shall we reply with a shower of boiling oil?"

The Yendi nodded, then smiled and said, "Ah! She obviously has a spell to deflect falling objects, and she wants us to stay within our walls to give distant allies time to gather and lay siege to us. Open the gate."

"My lord, she's a Dzur."

"Yes, but she's no fool. Do as I say. Even if I'm wrong—" And here he raised an eyebrow at the idea that a Yendi could be outwitted by a Dzur. "—a dozen warriors remain between us and the Dzur."

So the captain did as she was told. The castle's front gate rose, and the Dzur walked in. As she climbed the steps toward the Yendi and his soldiers, she shouted, "Yendi! Meet me here, or send your soldiers against me! I'll fight them one by one, and then I'll fight you!"

The captain said, "Shall I have the guards attack her from all sides?"

The Yendi nodded, then said, "Ah! She obviously has a spell to kill all who crowd around her. Send our people one by one against her until she's exhausted and slain."

"My lord, she's a Dzur."

"Yes, but she's no fool. Do as I say. Even if I'm wrong—" And here he frowned at the idea that a Yendi could be outwitted by a Dzur "—I am the best fencer in all of Dragaera."

So the captain did as she was told. Each warrior attacked the Dzur, and each fell with a slashed throat or pierced heart. At last, the captain faced the Dzur. Their combat lasted longer than any previous encounter, but ended no differently.

The Dzur raised her blade toward the Yendi. "Yendi! Now one of us dies."

The Yendi raised his sword in turn. "You know I am the finest fencer in the land."

"What do I care, so long as you face me like a warrior!"

As the Dzur's sword drove forward, the Yendi nodded, then said, "Ah!" and whirled around. The Dzur, unable to stop her thrust, stabbed him in the back.

The Dzur cried in horror and shame, "Yendi! Why did you turn?"

The Yendi gasped, "To see the assassins you obviously sent to slay me while we fought."

The Dzur said, "But there are no assassins!"

The Yendi grimaced, and the Dzur thought he would speak no more. Then the Yendi whispered, "Ah! The assassins were obviously invisible."

And he died smiling.

Less writing online means more writing offline

That's true for me, anyway. If you define yourself artistically as a blogger or commenter or networker, go you! But I'm not, so I'm radically simplifying my online life. If I've unfollowed or unfriended you online, it means nothing about my offline relationship to you. It just means life is short, and I have stories to write.

my mother gave me my heart

I got a call a little after 1am this morning saying that my mother had died in her sleep. It was expected, and it wasn't, because death is never completely expected, and because my mother had been told she had six months to two years to live about five years ago.

When I say she gave me my heart, I'm being purely metaphorical. She taught me how to love—none of my flaws as a pupil are her fault. She loved indiscriminately. Children naturally exaggerate the virtues or flaws of their parents, but I was always able to test my belief that Mom was a great mom by seeing how people everywhere adored her. One of the happiest periods of her life was after I had left home, when she and Dad and my sister Liz ran a trading post by an Ojibwe reservation in northern Ontario. When I think of Mom, I think of her looking like this, with this sort of smile of delighted surprise:

But when I think of Mom's spirit, I think of this picture, from long before I was born, when she was a WAVE during World War II:

And shortly after the war, when she and several girlfriends drove through Mexico for weeks:

And when she married:

I wish I had more pictures of her at Dog Land in Florida, because she taught me about courage there. She was usually the photographer, but I've found one pic of her with Ranger, our beloved Kuvasz:

Mom was not brave in the sense most people imagine when they hear the word. Now that I'm an adult, I know why: she loved people, so she worried about them. When my family became involved in the civil rights struggle, Mom answered the phone and opened the mail to more than one death threat. They left her shaking, imagining what could happen to the people she loved.

But though she was terrified, she always did what needed doing.

There's a picture that I wish existed, but since it doesn't, I'll try to describe it:

A boy about four or five years old is playing in one of Florida's springs—maybe Manatee Springs, but I don't remember which. I'm clinging to a huge red plastic baseball bat that I'm using as a floating aid. I'm not supposed to go out where the water is deeper than my shoulders, because Mom never learned to swim and Dad must've told us to go have fun while he worked.

But maybe I was having too much fun, or maybe I just got caught in a current. I'm screaming as I cling to the plastic bat. The current is taking me under a little walking bridge, and I'm terrified of what's beyond it—I have no idea now if I was afraid there might be water moccasins there, or if the area was thick with water lillies and I was afraid of getting tangled up in slimy things. All I know is I was helpless and as frightened as any kid could be.

And Mom ran into the water in her street clothes and pulled me out.

I'm sure it wasn't the first time she saved me. I know it wasn't the last. All my life, I've known that in every way that mattered, my Mom was there for me, always.

Martin Luther King Debates Mitt Romney

Martin Luther King Debates Mitt Romney - YouTube:

Thomas Jefferson defines a real Christian

"I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials (The Gospels) which I call the Philosophy of Jesus. It is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen. It is a document in proof that I am a REAL CHRISTIAN, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call ME infidel and THEMSELVES Christians and preachers of the Gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature." —Thomas Jefferson to Charles Thompson

For anyone who says the comments about Jews makes Jefferson a bigot: the god or gods (Elohim is plural, after all) of the first books of the Bible approves of slaughter, rape, and slavery. For anyone who claims Jefferson's keeping of slaves proves he's a hypocrite: when you're right, you're right, no matter how many other times you're wrong.

The doll and its maker are never identical

In Diane Duane's The Affair of the Black Armbands, she shares something Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in response to a rhyming critic. I love the conclusion:

So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle:
The doll and its maker are never identical.

percent of US households with incomes within 50% of median

Krugman: racial wealth disparity is due to limited class mobility

How Fares the Dream? by Paul Krugman: "Think of the income distribution as a ladder, with different people on different rungs. Starting around 1980, the rungs began moving ever farther apart, adversely affecting black economic progress in two ways. First, because many blacks were still on the lower rungs, they were left behind as income at the top of the ladder soared while income near the bottom stagnated. Second, as the rungs moved farther apart, the ladder became harder to climb."

identity bigots

Yves Smith writes in Ron Paul Debate Flushes Out Gender-Baiting Right Wing Opportunists Masquerading as Progressives « naked capitalism:

...identity bigots like Pollitt apparently can’t wrap their minds around the notion that many people see themselves as citizens first and their demography second, and can and do have nuanced views based on how they weigh multiple political considerations: class, concentration of power, rule of law, civil liberties, and gender/race/sexual orientation.

To disprove the contention of identitarians that only white men could say anything good about Ron Paul, Smith links to rejections of identity politics by folks who don't fit the white male category, including Yvette Carnell in Rethinking a Rethinking – Andrew Sullivan and the Ron Paul Unendorsement | breakingbrown.com:

… at the heart of the teeth gnashing are Paul’s racist newsletters and their import. For me, this would be a much tougher nut to crack if structural and/or cultural racism were still the most heinous defect in the American body politic. But in a country where indefinite detention just became the law of the land, it’s not. In a country where unmanned American drones are killing innocent children abroad, it’s not. And in a country where mortgage scammers are protected from prosecution while Americans are being foreclosed on in record numbers, it’s not. Sorry black folks, but race and racism are not the biggest issues of the 21st century and to imagine otherwise is to conflate the issue and put the needs of your community ahead of the needs of America in particular and the global community in general. In that way, it’s a selfish usurpation of the political agenda to placate the few, and it shouldn’t be tolerated by black people of conscience.