Tag Archives: life

Tiptree Award Name May Change (Here We Go Again)

light

Cover image from “Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home”

I read Alice Sheldon’s (pen name James Tiptree Jr) anthology of short stories Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home decades ago when I was a kid (all right, a young man) and recall thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve probably heard of the award named after her, but didn’t pay much attention until reading Mike Glyer’s pixel scroll this morning.

In this case, the award name may be changed due to a personal tragedy in Sheldon’s life. From Wikipedia:

Sheldon continued writing under the Tiptree pen name for another decade. The last years of her life were not happy ones, as her husband was a nearly blind invalid incapable of caring for himself, and she herself was suffering health issues caused by a lifetime of smoking. In 1976, then 60-year-old Sheldon wrote to a friend expressing her desire to end her own life while she was still able-bodied and active, but she was reluctant to act upon this intention, as Huntington would have no one to care for him, and she could not bring herself to kill him.

Eleven years later, on May 19, 1987, Sheldon finally carried through her plan—by shooting her husband in his sleep, followed by herself; she had telephoned her attorney after the first shooting to announce her actions. They were found dead, hand-in-hand in bed, in their Virginia home. According to biographer Julie Phillips, the suicide note Sheldon left was written years earlier and saved until needed. In an interview with Charles Platt in 1980, Sheldon spoke of her emotional problems and of her previous suicide attempts over the preceding 20 years.

The James Tiptree Jr. Award is given in her honor each year for a work of science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender. The award-winning science fiction authors Karen Joy Fowler and Pat Murphy created the award in February 1991. Novels such as Half Life by Shelley Jackson and Light by M. John Harrison have received the award.

At least one person commenting on File 770 had compassion, but who knows how many other people judge without understanding what Sheldon may have been going through (I still read 770 but choose not to comment there because of how I was recently treated by some of its other readers).

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Quoting: Shrink Problems Down to Size

The best way to gain a proper perspective about life is to visit a cemetery.

You might have many problems, but that is part and parcel of being alive. Compared to those buried in the cemetery, just how serious are your difficulties?

Learn to have a sense of proportion to events. If you fail to do so, you might react with equal levels of distress to someone’s spilling soup on your clothes as you would to news of the outbreak of global nuclear warfare.

Today, when something bothers you, ask yourself: “On a scale of one to 100 (with 100 applying to nuclear war), what number would I give this situation?”

You’ll find with this perspective that many potential mountains will easily shrink to molecules.

Rabbi Nachum of Huradna used to say, “If I had already died and the Almighty told me I could come back to life again, imagine how happy I would be. Now that I am alive, I should feel that same joy!”

Sources: see Chayai Hamussar, vol.2, p. 176, 200; Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s Gateway to Happiness, p.65

Quoting: Breathe in Life

Often what seems to be a depressing situation is due only to the lack of fresh air. Get out into the air and breathe deeply, or at least open the window and fill your lungs.

Your emotions become normalized when your body is invigorated by the influx of cool, moist and moving air. This often has immediate effects. Drink deeply of the Almighty’s bounty, and inhale a lungful of the champagne of life.

Sources: Sing, You Righteous, p.315; Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s Gateway to Happiness, p.182

Retrieval

nostromo

Promotional image of the landing module of the USCSS Nostromo spacecraft from the 1979 film “Alien”

“We’re going to have to delay exploring the base of the escarpment until Reggie and Austin repair the lander’s main engines.” I don’t want us to encounter anything out there we can’t runaway from in a hurry if we have to.”

Captain John Weiss was addressing the other four crew members of the freighter “Joseph Conrad” in the galley.

“Well what the screw is taking them so long, John? They’ve been at it for over six hours and if we don’t recover the Company’s lost probe, we’ll never collect our cut of the reward.”

“Calm down, Linda. You know this kind of work takes time.” His first officer was intelligent and competent but impatient which is why even with her service record, she’d never made Captain.

“They’re probably snoozing down in the engineering bay.”

“Not likely, Santiago. I just got a progress report from Reggie fifteen minutes ago. They don’t want to be down there any longer than necessary.”

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Back to Life

shoes and books

© Magaly Guerrero

She pulled her grandmother’s shoes out of the packing case, dusted, and then polished them. Leah regretted neglecting her passion, the one she learned from Grand Mama. Mendel had been such a good husband and they had a wonderful life together, but looking back, she had devoted all of her life to his pursuits. Poor, dear Mendel passed last month, and it was time for her to pull her art books and paints out from under the vase and put them to good use again. It was time for Leah to live for herself.

I wrote this for The Friday Fictioneers photo writing challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. The idea is to use the photo above as a prompt to write a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 86.

To read more photos based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

What I Feel When I Hold You

“No! No! No! No! They can’t be dead. They can’t be.”

The hospital. My son and daughter-in-law are in ICU. The car wreck. They survived, but my grandchildren…eight year old Patrick, 2 year old Sarah…they’re dead. They’re dead.

I’ve been a failure all my life. I’ve been a failure as a husband, a father, a provider. I’ve tried to live a normal life, to keep my family safe, to keep anyone from finding out about me. But that was a mistake.

I had the power to save their lives and I let that bitch tell me I wasn’t worthy of using it.

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The Fairies Pond

fairies pond

© Google Maps

On most days of the year, The Fairies Pond was just a pond. It’s an isolated body of water in western Oregon with only one trail in. A serene place certainly, but not always worth the eight hour hike to get there.

But on one day of the year, what’s called “The Fairies Day,” it’s either a place to adore or fear. Those purest of heart, those who knew which day it was, came to witness the blessed event. The impure hearts who happened to be present suffered the horrible wrath.

This day was the anniversary of when the fairies created all green and living things. On that day, the pure hearts were blessed for loving the living. The impure, who hated life, were summarily damned.

Cathleen brought Charleston to the pond to hope miracles would soften his heart. Instead, he came to his doom. Was this too her blessing?

The photo prompt for this week at What Pegman Saw offered four possible images and I chose the one above. The challenge is to take an image and write a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. Mine is exactly 150 words.

For more stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Entering the Slow Dark

wraith“Why am I so tired? Where am I? Is this my bedroom? Everything’s all gray.”

Rand Chambers found himself in an indeterminate environment. He was lying down and covered up like he was in bed, but this was different. He could neither fall asleep nor wake up and was suspended in a state somewhere in between.

“You all ask the same questions. It’s as if it hasn’t been explained to you before.”

He heard a woman’s voice but it was not kind. Rather, she sounded impatient and annoyed and bored, as if she couldn’t be bothered with Rand’s condition, whatever that was.

“What do you mean? Who are you? Where are you?”

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Ascending Sparks

sparksThis experience, to give life, to watch it grow, to be torn apart by it, to receive pleasure from it, and to give life again—for this the soul descended from its ethereal heights.

And when it shall return to there, enveloped in these memories, it will finally know their depth. And with them travel ever higher and higher.

“Life’s Memories”
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Based on the wisdom of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory
Chabad.org

I’m so tired. I can’t remember when I didn’t feel exhausted. I wake up exhausted. I barely have the strength to lift a spoonful of soup to my mouth. My bladder only can hold on so long anymore before I either make it to a toilet or embarrass myself. I have a hard time remembering what I did last week or even yesterday.

I am so old.

But I do remember many things before yesterday and last week.

I remember watching “Gunsmoke” when I was five, and trying to outdraw Marshall Dillon with my toy six-shooter (I never could).

My Dad was in the Air Force and we lived in Spain near Seville when I was little. Instead of Santa Claus, one of the Three Kings from the Bible (well, not a real one) would ride the streets of our neighborhood in a horse-drawn wagon. I got my picture taken with him once.

My Dad pointed up to a shiny thing in the night sky and told me it was called “Sputnik”. I didn’t find out until decades later that the satellite couldn’t be seen by the unaided eye and what we were looking at was one of its rocket boosters tumbling end-over-end in low orbit.

I remember when we had vinyl 45s and to play them on a record player, you had to put this funny disk thing in the big hole in the middle so it could fit on whatever the little stem sticking up in the middle of the turntable was called.

I remember the one-eyed, one-horned blind purple people eater.

I remember my Dad growing roses in our yard when we lived in Spain.

I remember getting sick on the airplane when we flew back to America.

I remember getting lost after my first day in first grade when we lived in Omaha. My Dad came and found me. I was so scared. I was only six.

I remember always getting picked last for sports during recess at school because I couldn’t run very fast and I was lousy at throwing and catching.

I had a crush on a girl when I was in the second grade. I got teased about it a lot.

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