Brief pop-in to share.

Not sure this needs the music, but whew.

Nature should remind us all how small we are, how precious and fleeting our lives are, and how much we need to be present for one another for as long as we can. 🌎

Anything less, and I'd even go so far as to say that we aren't looking at it right.

#Space #Milton
https://youtube.com/shorts/GZORg0fS1bw?si=kfblU1BAU4jRnw6h

There is way too much shaving cream going in the world today.

Offline for a bit, to run errands and finish an editing job. Will try to find a *kinder* approach to Tough Times Tuesday for the newsletter later today, but right now it's all just... a lot.

Watch your hearts.

Adjust your expectations.

Forgive yourselves and those around you for not being at your/their best with so much nervous energy and trauma blasted everywhere.

To be here at all in the struggle is *enough*.

It has to be. 🕊️

Two of my students are, respectively, a forestry engineer and a psychologist. This means that when I pick an article like this for one of our classes, we get to work on vocabulary for them both: first, for the forestry engineer, in using phrases of relevance to his field; then, for the psychologist, as we come up with vocabulary for coping with watching the world fall apart in ever so many ways.

Sucks for the planet (and us)!
But great English class material, thanks! 🙃
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/08/deforestation-destruction-demolition-beef-soy-palm-oil-nickel

My contribution to 🇨🇦 Thanksgiving this year came yesterday, when I wrote out a menu for a family member, along with a shopping list & order of prep tasks.

Did this involve making up three simple dessert recipes? Yes. And teaching her how to make gravy? Yes.

But the hilarious part was that, for all her worries about not having enough options for 20 guests, I learned that she draws the line at *vanilla* ice cream. A road too far, apparently!

🙃 In Colombia you just make a meal and people eat.

No weight training in the park for an hilarious reason: a giant military/police event in the stadium. My equipment was surrounded by men in dress uniform, down to the swords. 😅 Ah well, good business for the tiendas, at least. One had to run an extra pot open-fire style, to keep hot water on site.

I'll restart at home instead. 👌🏻

#Colombia! Where even the rats are packing arepas 🫓. 😋

Back to weight training today? Yes please!

(Me two days from now, after my A and B routines: *shrieking muscles everywhere*)

Morning, 'Nauts! 💪🏻

Tried to stay up long enough to finish reading this academic book for a review, but the sound of car wheels on wet highway asphalt, under the soft static of rain with rumbles of thunder in the distance, keeps calling me away from the page.

Time to return to the dream of the world.

Wake before dawn, and start (maybe) anew.

🕊️ Goodnight, CoSo.

Heading into a meeting in three minutes. Anyone else up for some #PotatoLit, as well?

"I Have No #Potato, and I Must Scream", anyone?

Or maybe Anne of Green Potatoes?

#PotatoMovie

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Potato

How's everyone doing? Mood okay as the evening barrels in?

A decent summary of the long-term thinking lurking around the lastest looming crisis with #Milton.

Take care of yourselves. 🫂

"Faced with the impossible logistics of relocating a city like Tampa or Miami, that’s what will happen: repeated pulses of abandonment, performed chaotically and with almost limitless potential for immiseration, modernity’s wagon trains set out for who-knows-where as a warmed world reclaims chunks of land rendered, piece by piece, uninhabitable."
https://www.splinter.com/at-some-point-you-dont-go-back

Today for Monday Media Review, we're reflecting on a US anti-fascist film from the 1940s--but looking at it in full, and not just the excerpt often shared online.

The lessons from the full film are more nuanced: they remind us that even living through history doesn't guarantee our understanding of it; and also, that we stand a better chance of defeating horrible ideologies when we acknowledge how mundane their starting-points in recruitment usually are.

#MediaLiteracy
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/the-real-message-of-dont-be-a-sucker

#Wellness #MediaLiteracy

This was the first news page to greet me today: another day in which so much fresh trauma will be heaped upon grief.

My first task today was counselling a blind friend trying to help her father with dementia in Florida right now.

I think we all have smaller crises we're trying to be present for, while navigating the greater violence of our world.

I want to encourage folks to take breaks and focus on what they *can* do.

Survive today, maybe to thrive later on. 🕊️

A little beauty to start your week.

So much of nature has no idea what we humans get up to.

Let's not tell it, eh?

Let's dwell awhile among the flowers and the trees, the birds and the beetles, and speak of simpler things instead.

#CoSoNature #Colombia

Did I get everything I wanted finished today? Nope!

But boy howdy, do I feel good about having been able to uplift and support some CoSonauts this weekend, and learn from them in turn.

To see you shine in your creative practice, and rise above the madding fray of terrible news to focus on what we can do for one another... that's a real gift.

I mean, I *am* still going to try to get some fiction written before bed now, but...

This was already a good day.

Thanks for spending it together. 🕊️

#AFSR #SFF #ScienceFiction #audiobook #Reading

Hey folks! This one's free-to-read.

Chapters 15 & 16 are now up in audio and text format for A FERTILE SOURCE OF RUIN, my wartime space opera inspired by Thucydides.

Each post includes some historical reflection, along with a summary of the story to date. Today we talk about the uncanny similarity of an old regional incident threatening to spill into greater war.

(History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes!)

Enjoy, if you do!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/113450749

Second time's a charm!

Today for #BookTube, I talk about the strange shifting world of #SFF publishing, and the challenges it creates.

I talk about the red flags indie writers need to look out for, and my experiences as both indie author and editor.

And...

I frame my conversation about why indie *matters* around the work of two #WritersOfCoSo, @cmskiera & @joycereynoldsward: two authors whose work addresses niches & ideas often overlooked in the trad world. 🎉

Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/mhE2TmDri6g