Finish The Story Blog Hop – Part 7

Teresa’s challenge details can be found here: Finish the Story # 8, 25 August 2018.

The rules:

  1. Copy the story below as it appears when you receive it (and the rules please)
  2. Add somehow to the story in which ever style and length you choose
  3. Tag only 1 person
  4. If you choose to not participate or finish the story, please comment/tag the original post here so we know.

Iain Kelly tagged me to continue this “story blog hop” and I resisted the temptation to finish it. However, I did not resist the temptation to make it weird.

Here’s the tale thus far:

PART ONE – by Teresa @ The Haunted Wordsmith

After serving thirty-five years in the military, Austin retired to a quiet little town in the middle of the Catskills. He had saved money every month since he enlisted so that he would never have to work another day when he left. His plan worked, but now he found life boring and uneventful. Every morning he walked down to Jennie’s Diner for coffee and a little conversation, then over to the library where he would whittle away the day. Three months of this routine and he was going stir crazy. That was until a strange woman asked if he had ever considered writing a book.

“I never really thought about it,” Austin said, flipping through a magazine.

“I have a story to tell,” the woman said, “and I have a good sense about people. You are the right person to tell my story.”

“Um, I’ve never written before. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing I do. Meet me here tomorrow and we’ll start.”

She disappeared before he could even answer. He looked around, but she was nowhere. Austin shrugged. He would be at the library the next day anyway, maybe he would be able to ask more about what she wanted…and why him.

The next day, as the grandfather clock rang eleven, the woman tapped Austin on the shoulder.

Continue reading →

Psyche Poised Against Infinity

woman at night

Found at the High Style Life website – no photo credit available

Psyche stood on the edge of the rooftop contemplating the city’s nightlife far below. If anyone saw her swaying twenty stories above the street, they might vitiate her plans and try to persuade her to go indoors, or perhaps to a hospital, but suicide wasn’t on her mind.

Privately celebrating the occurrence of her twentieth birthday, she took a single rose pedal from inside her diaphanous gown, where it had been nestled between her breasts, and released it to the wind, letting the obsidian sky receive its tribute.

She knew the monstrosity was out there somewhere between the wind and the darkness and the sky, and she, her young, lithe body wrapped only in barely tangible moonlight, poised like a pigeon at the edge of eternity, chose no longer to have feet of clay, but the talons of an eagle.

Continue reading →

Quoting: Love Criticism

pliskin

Rabbi Zelig Pliskin – Found at the website promoting the book “The Light From Zion.”

Work on developing a love for accepting criticism. When you have a sincere desire to grow and develop, you will appreciate the opportunities that arise for further growth and development.

Criticism expressed with profound love and concern is easier to handle than criticism expressed with anger or condescension. But if what is said to you is beneficial for you, accept it regardless of how it is said.

-from Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s Gateway to Self Knowledge, pp.184-6

This one’s particularly difficult, because while some people criticize you in a sincere effort to help you improve, others do so as a method of tearing you down. That said, even the latter can sometimes be useful, but only if you can accept the criticism without blame or shame.

Here We Go Again: Comicsgate

superman

A public service announcement published in a DC comic book in the early 1960s

I’ve heard of this thing called Comicsgate, and after doing a bit of reading, discovered it’s pretty much the same sort of critter that launched the efforts of the Sad Puppies a few years back.

Allegation: The mainstream comic book industry (DC, Marvel) is overrun by Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) forcing their very narrow agenda down the throats of all comic book readers, no matter how totally unrealistic it is, so we independent comic book creators will fight back by creating more classic heroes of our own.

You can find out more about this perspective by following Jon Del Arroz’s twitter feed, particularly THIS and THAT.

Counter-allegation: Conservative, white, racist trolls want to destroy all participation of strong women heroes, people of color, LGBTQ+ writers, artists, and characters, and all other marginalized and vulnerable populations in comic books so comics are totally owned by white people, and we have to stop them.

You can read about Bill Sienkiewicz rebuttal at “The Mary Sue” (a fairly biased publication) as well as on his twitter feed HERE.

Continue reading →

Quoting: Worry is Created by Self-Talk

pliskin

Rabbi Zelig Pliskin – Found at the website promoting the book “The Light From Zion.”

The more you engage in joyful and grateful self-talk, the more your mind will be free from worry.

Some people tell themselves, “It’s my nature to worry.” But the truth is that no one is born a worrier. A person might have started worrying at a young age and have many early memories of worrying. A person might find it very difficult not to worry. But this isn’t someone’s basic nature. Worry is essentially self-talk about something negative that you hope won’t happen. You feel anxious and distressed about the possibility.

One way out of the worry pattern is to think of potential solutions. Whenever you worry about something, imagine three or more alternate outcomes.

A happy and joyful person has mastered the art of thinking in patterns that create happiness and joy. Let this be your mind.

from Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s book: Conversations With Yourself, pp.258-9

The Sad Puppies vs. the Hugo Awards OR Being in the Crossfire in the Fight for Significance

quote

It’s easy to be intimidated by mean people. See through their mask. Underneath is an insecure and unhappy person. They are alienated from others because they are alienated from themselves.

Have compassion for them. Not pity, not condemning, not fear, but compassion. Feel for their suffering. Identify with their core humanity. You might be able to influence them for the good. You might not. Either way your compassion frees you from their destructiveness. And if you would like to help them change, compassion gives you a chance to succeed.

-from Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s book Happiness,p.179

I’ve already talked about Toxic Fear, the extreme Us vs. Them mentality in our nation that begun in during the Obama administration, and that has been greatly exacerbated during the Trump administration, all in relation to the WorldCon implosion and redemption, particularly given THIS and THAT point of view.

However, it was the quote from Rabbi Pliskin this morning that gave me a different perspective on Sad Puppies vs. the Hugo Awards thing.

Part of the inspiration for crafting this essay comes from fellow blogger Joy Pixley’s report of her attending WorldCon 76. She had a pretty good time, and in my discussions with her, she didn’t see any (or at least not much) evidence of bias at WorldCon. However, she did notice a number of Christians and religious Jews in attendance, and no one mobbed, beat, harassed, or otherwise attacked them for their faiths.

Now speaking of bias, it seems female authors swept the Hugo Awards for the second year in a row. Interesting, and statistically a little unlikely, but as I said before, the Hugo Awards are absolutely not designed to be fair and objective.

Continue reading →

Human Flagpoles

resolute

Circulated between 1974 and 1979, the two-dollar bill features Joseph Idlout and his relatives preparing their kayaks for a hunt. (Bank of Canada / National Currency Collection)

“But it’s so cold up here, Grandfather.” The nine-year-old huddled with the rest of his brothers and sisters around the aged Inuit in front of the fireplace in the family hut.

“I know, George, I know it’s much colder here than in Inukjuak, but we were starving there. The white government says they will help us.”

“By moving us and seven other families to this frozen wasteland, Father?” Joseph paced back and forth in frustration. “You know why they’re doing this, don’t you?”

“Please, Joseph. For the children’s sake.”

“They might as well know the truth, Father. The Canadian government is using us as human flagpoles, sticking us in Resolute to establish a far north dominance and rattle their sabers at the Soviets.”

“They’ve lied to us many times before, put us on their reservations, but we have always survived.” The old man’s voice was resolute. “We will survive this.”

I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw flash fiction writing challenge. The idea is to use a Google maps image/location as the prompt for crafting a wee tale no more than 150 words long. My word count is 150.

Today, the Pegman takes us to Resolute, NU, Canada. Naturally, I relied on Wikipedia as my “quick and dirty” information source, but I had to read no further than the Settlement section to get my ‘hook.” It’s the sad tale of the High Arctic Relocation of “seven or eight families from Inukjuak, northern Quebec (then known as Port Harrison) first transported to Grise Fiord on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island and then to Resolute on Cornwallis Island” in August 1953. Click the link to learn more.

To find out even more about this dark time in Canadian history and why I titled my story “Human Flagpoles,” read ‘Human Flagpoles’: Dark story behind Inuit scene on $2 bill (which is where I got the image for my story) and Ottawa sorry for using Inuit as ‘human flagpoles’.

Read other stories based on the prompt by visiting InLinkz.com.

Quoting: Get Beyond the Mask

pliskin

Rabbi Zelig Pliskin – Found at the website promoting the book “The Light From Zion.”

It’s easy to be intimidated by mean people. See through their mask. Underneath is an insecure and unhappy person. They are alienated from others because they are alienated from themselves.

Have compassion for them. Not pity, not condemning, not fear, but compassion. Feel for their suffering. Identify with their core humanity. You might be able to influence them for the good. You might not. Either way your compassion frees you from their destructiveness. And if you would like to help them change, compassion gives you a chance to succeed.

-from Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s book Happiness,p.179

The Last Frontier

forest

© Sue Vincent

“What am I doing here? I wanted to get away from it all, but the smoke’s even worse here.” Gary Flowers didn’t hike often anymore, but life in the city and suburbs had been wearing him down over the last decade or so. Married, three children, two grandchildren, divorced, semi-retired, he had in his grasp what people used to refer to as the American dream. Of course, all those who didn’t have the opportunity to seize that dream resented people like him, or maybe they just weren’t in the right place in history he had been when he was up and coming.

Yes, he had grasped the American dream, but then slowly let it slip away. Life had become dull and meaningless. His children were grown and didn’t need him anymore, and besides his grandchildren, he couldn’t say that anything mattered to him these days.

And every summer there were these fires. The governor blamed global warming and the utilities company, and the news agencies blamed the governor’s poor wildfire planning, and his emphasis on social reforms over thinning the overgrown forests.

Continue reading →

Quoting You Are Not At Risk

pliskin

Rabbi Zelig Pliskin – Found at the website promoting the book “The Light From Zion.”

Fear of failure is a prime cause of anxiety. People think, “If I don’t succeed, I am a worthless failure.”

Someone who fears failure is not willing to take the risks that are an essential ingredient in every new undertaking. This prevents him from taking action in many situations in which he could accomplish a great deal.

If someone accepts that his intrinsic worth as a person is never at risk ― even if he does not succeed at a given task ― then he is likely to try much more to accomplish.

-from Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s book “Gateway to Happiness,” p.131

Every morning, I get an email from the Jewish educational organization Aish.com containing, among other things, quotes like this one. Although I’m a Christian, I tend to “resonate” more with Jewish theological perspectives. Since lately, I’ve been discussing some rather negative trends in the world of SF/F relative to events at the recent WorldCon convention in San Jose, I thought I should provide a counterbalance. We should define ourselves by our best qualities, not by who or what we oppose.

So I thought I should start providing a quote from Rabbi Zelig Pliskin on this blog every morning that I’m able (next week, I’ll be taking a trip and may be offline for a few days). This is probably more in line with my religious blog My Morning Meditations, but I think it’s needed here.

Perhaps it will convince some people that the world of religion isn’t always evil or hateful, and that there may be a profound wisdom, kindness, and joy inside the hearts of many who have faith in a power greater than human beings.