[insert typical “sorry I don’t blog here more often” paragraph]
The fact of the matter is that I am still writing, rather a lot, over at Making Light, a blog owned by my friends Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden1.
This is kind of unfair to everyone who keeps looking here for news of me. I know this. I’m going to start doing pointers to Making Light when I’ve posted something there that people here might be interested in, and hanging out here for people who want to talk about those things with me rather than a large crowd of strangers2.
My most recent post is about the quilt that I made this spring: Works and Days of Hands. It’s also about the process of making something like that, and how process and design mirrored each other for me.
 |
 |
Another post I really enjoyed writing was Op anger tale, which is an exploration of the relationship between a particular Dutch dialect and Wikipedia.
One thing I’ve been talking about over there, rather a lot, has been the US health care situation. The conversation can get quite heated from time to time, of course, but that heat has certainly caused me to clarify and reaffirm my own beliefs in this matter.
- Pushing Back
- Been lied to so long you wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and kissed you on the mouth
- Fighting fire with fire: an email forward
- I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours
- Touching back to principles
- That phrasing makes it sound like we were friends, and then I pitched up on their blog. Really, it was the other way round.
- Though many of my friends here are also friends on Making Light, it’s a smaller group.
Hello Abi
I have found you through the Making Light website, which I absolutly love by the way. I discovered it through meeting Theresa and Patrick (neither of whom would remember me) at the memorial service for John M. Ford (who I knew as Mike, one of Elise’s partners). I was there purely to support Elise and knew only our contingent (female friends through our church First Universalist) I didn’t know the rest of his friends (stunned by all the Sci-Fi writers present, so many of whom I admired).
Anyway, I digress. I am half-Dutch and spent a lot of time in the Netherlands when I was a child. I loved it and still do. I have so enjoyed your comments, especially because of your location. Your perspective of observing Dutch health care first hand (I have a cousin, who is a doctor there, just retired from being the director of a hospital) and being an American expatriate has been so interesting. I have Canadian relatives also. Canadians think the American health insurance system is insanity.
I have also greatly enjoyed your post about your quilt and LOVED your post with the photos of your bicycle commute. So jealous! Plus really enjoyed the typically Dutch scenery. Anyway, I have been too shy to comment on Making Light, since it is filled with such erudite individuals, but wanted to at least tell you personally how much I enjoy your posts there. Although perhaps now you won’t see this comment for quite a while since you’re mostly posting over there. And now I finally understand your Evilrooster moniker (quite mystifying until now). So thank you very much for your delightful writing.
Hi Monica,
I do check back here rather a lot (spam cleanups, mostly), and I get email notifications of comments besides. So no, don’t worry that your quite pleasant comment was going to vanish in the ether.
I never knew Mike; I think I’d exchanged maybe one comment with him on Making Light before he died. I’ve had some contact with Elise since his death; we chat on IM from time to time, particularly when she’s having trouble sleeping and time zones work out. I’m fond of her, and glad she’s got such a good contingent of friends around her.
(Did you notice the book from the memorial service? I did that, because although I didn’t know him, Mike really did make a difference to me, just by being and writing.)
Thank you so much for the kind things you’ve said about Making Light. I’m often uncertain, before I post things, if they’ll fly. (I often mutter Abraham Lincoln’s comment after giving the Gettysburg Address at times like that: “…that speech won’t scour. It’s a flat failure, and the people are disappointed.”)
But there’s a certain recklessness to doing something as well as you can, hitting the button, and seeing what happens next. And the worst thing that will occur is that what I write will be ignored.
You should try it.