Rosemary Kirstein

Look closely, now….

Picture One:

Picture 1

And Picture Two:

Picture 2

Picture One is the little footbridge just outside my office, crossing over a branch of the Quinnipiac River.

Picture Two is the exact same footbridge,  improved by the presence of the other two members of the Fabulous Genrettes: Laurie J. Marks and Delia Sherman!

Yes, the Genrettes have met again, and for the first time it’s in my town. In, in fact, my actual office.

This made possible by the state of Connecticut finally realizing that if they want people to use public transportation more, there has to be more public transportation.  In the form of, say, trains.

We always had some trains coming by, and my town always had a train station; but the trains were few and inconveniently timed.  Now, we have much nicer train station, and more trains.  Enabling people from, say, New York City, and who don’t like to drive, to come to my town!  And go back on the same day.

It’s still a long ride, but Delia is a veteran train-traveler.   She used the time to good effect.  Working on her novel.

It was lovely to be able to host the Genrettes right in my own special creative space.  And coincidentally, I had just rearranged and reorganized it, to make it especially roomy and and comfortable.

Laurie J Marks, just hangin’ out.

Laurie has been here before, as she lives closer than Delia does.  And does not have to negotiate New York City traffic to get here.

But I hadn’t seen Delia since before the pandemic set in.   We are all completely vaccinated, so no masks, no distancing… Just three chums, catching up, eating sandwiches, drinking tea and coffee.  Talking books, and plots and ideas, and life in general.

I have to say, it was such a relief.  And a great lift to one’s spirits.

Delia also had the opportunity to admire Laurie’s artistic projects.

One big notebook, one smaller….Both full of wonderfulness.

Laurie’s been working hard on her nature drawing, and some of her pictures are just stunning.  They really strike me as the sort of drawings that a Steerswoman might do in the field, recording her observations and discoveries.  That sort of style and clarity.

You may click to embiggen. In fact, I urge you to do so.

It reminds me of the work of Hannah Hinchman, and her book, A Trail Through Leaves, which I have mentioned before…

This is a book I love a lot.  Hinchman also has this Steerswomanly way of observing the natural world.

And in other news, Jo Walton has set up a Kickstarter to make an audiobook of her novel Lifelode.  The Kickstarter met its goal; I checked the page and it looked like they’d closed it to new contributions.  But it means that the audiobook is in the works, and that’s a good thing!

And by the way, the ebook version is currently priced at less than a cup of coffee.  I don’t know how long that will last…

I really enjoyed the book when I first read it years ago; in fact, its time for a re-read.

And in other other news: some chores and obligations that I had have now been completed, and my time is my own again!  Whew.

I’ve been cracking down on the writing lately, which tends to put the blogging on back-burner.  Just wanted you to know I hadn’t fallen off the edge of the Earth!

Random stuff you might like:

Via Tor.com, I see that Jed McGowan has created a lovely wordless graphic story about Voyager I’s trip so far.

McGowan says that at some point a print version of this comic will become available…

It’s available to view online, and you can check out his other works. All of them are wordless, but I find the silence in this one to be more than beautiful.

If you want an idea of what a real steerswoman’s logboook might be like, take a look at artist/writer Hannah Hinchman’s  A Trail Through Leaves. There are some pages of it that are absolutely what you would find if you could peek into Rowan’s logbook.

I go back to this book over and over.

The Amazon site will let you look inside the book, and there are some very steerswomanly pages. Also, you can click under the book image for the extra 9 images, which seem to have been selected as especially visually interesting. Be sure to check out the frog page — and imagine a trawler in its place!

And in the spirit of “three things make a blog post,” there’s an especially nice appearance of the ISS on October 2nd.

In my corner of the world, it’s at 5:25 AM, exactly the right time make me more willing to drag myself out of bed to get to the endless DayJob. I need some sort of reward for that, folks. On top of the money, I mean.

Heavens Above is the place to look for ISS sightings in your own backyard.

Thanks to Heavens Above, I once was able to identify a very weird sight I saw as being an Iridium flare. Clearly visible in broad daylight.

More later…