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A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

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Celebrating Jackals

You are here: Home / Archives for Balloon Juice / Celebrating Jackals

Are things ever going to settle down?  With everything that’s going on, that’s probably not in the cards for the near future.  Which makes it even more important to celebrate our victories and our accomplishments.

I hope this can be a place where we can all be excited when one of us has something good going on.  You don’t need to have published a book, to have received an award, or be featured in a gallery, but those work, too!  Maybe you moved into your dream house, or you finished rebuilding your 57 Chevy, or you just got married or you’re retiring, or you had a kid, or you just passed your boards.

When you have something to celebrate, I hope you’ll be willing to write up a little something and share it with us.  Send me an email if you’re interested.  ~WaterGirl

Open Thread: An Interesting Life

by WaterGirl|  February 6, 20212:00 pm| 188 Comments

This post is in: Balloon Juice, Celebrating Jackals, Open Threads

Subaru Diane has an interesting story to share.  As always!

Editor’s note: Why is she not writing a book?

Auto Draft 39

This is a picture of my mother, Elizabeth Cannon Lowry, standing next to President John F. Kennedy at the White House, in January 1962. Here’s a bit of backstory:

In March 1921, following the inauguration of Warren Gamaliel Harding, the new President was wandering around the White House, unable to sleep and looking for something to read. He found nothing — the Executive Mansion had no books!

Word of this reached the American Booksellers Association and they determined then and there to stock the WH Library with reading material for the President and the First Family. They selected 200 American books that had been published in the past four years, and in early 1922 they presented them to Harding in a low-key White House ceremony.

Every four years from that point on (the year following inauguration year) the ABA made a similar presentation, always focusing on American authors, publishers, and themes in their selections.

Presenters were usually members of the Executive Committee/Board of Directors of the ABA, and it so happened that my mother (who owned and managed our family bookstore) was on the Board in early 1962 and hence part of the WH delegation.

Of course JFK was probably the best-read POTUS since Jefferson or Lincoln and until Obama, and probably already owned most of the books presented! But the point is, the books were not selected with specific presidents in mind, nor to be part of their personal libraries.

Instead, the 200 books every four years were meant for a permanent, cumulative, ever-growing White House library, for the use and pleasure of the President, the First Family, and WH staffers during their four-year stint, then left in place for their successors.

I haven’t heard about the program in years. I hope it’s still operational. A few years ago I emailed the ABA asking about it, but never got an answer. I should try again.

Open thread.

 

Open Thread: An Interesting LifePost + Comments (188)

Two Budding Balloon Juice Commenters (in about 18 Years)

by WaterGirl|  January 9, 20212:19 pm| 107 Comments

This post is in: Balloon Juice, Celebrating Jackals

Balloon Juice commenter, hitchhiker, has some wonderful news to share with us.

I post/lurk as hitchhiker, and I thought if you want you could share some happiness from a longtime juicer. On Wednesday morning, just an hour or so before the riot got underway, our younger daughter delivered a pair of brother/sister twins.

Brand new citizens, brand new humans, and none of us can take our eyes off them.

It’s been a great counterpoint to the madness.

To which I say, welcome little ones!

Two Budding Balloon Juice Commenters? Two Budding Balloon Juice Commenters? 1

Two Budding Balloon Juice Commenters (in about 18 Years)Post + Comments (107)

Programming Note: Two Jackals Have Christmas Performances Online Today & Tomorrow

by WaterGirl|  December 24, 202011:36 am| 41 Comments

This post is in: Balloon Juice, Celebrating Jackals, Open Threads

Two fun opportunities for a bit of Christmas magic!

🎁 🎁 🎁

Ruemara’s Zoom Reading of Gift of the Magi (and more) at 6pm ET Today

Today I’ll be performing an African folktale, & O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi, at about 6 pm ET.

If anyone is interested, feel free to shoot me an email for the zoom reading link. Just doing something fun for people who don’t get to witness a table read.

Next year, I’ll be starting a table read workshop (The Rising Workshop) focused on giving under-represented minority writers a chance to have their works read/performed. We’ll see how it goes, I’m not exactly a very important person. We’ve nearly made it to the end of 2020. That’s not a bad thing.

Christmas Eve reading at about 6 pm ET.
Email ruemara or me for a link.
(Her address is just like mine, only ruemara instead of watergirl.)

I had to ask Rue if she has a fundraising link, in case anyone is so inclined.  She does!  Any donations will go to fund the table read workshop she mentions above.  Donations welcome but not required.

🎁 🎁 🎁

Miss Bianca’s Christmas Play with a Modern Twist tonight at 10 pm ET and tomorrow 8 ET

Letting you know, in case you find yourselves with an odd hour to kill, that my theater, The Westcliffe Center for the Performing Arts, just did a radio production of “The Business of Good Government: A Christmas Play”, by John Arden – a Nativity/Epiphany Play, but with a modern twist – will be airing tomorrow night, Christmas Eve, at 10 pm ET, and Christmas Day, 8 pm ET, on our local community radio station, KLZR-FM – you can stream it here: https://klzr.org/

It’s rough-cut, not polished – we basically knocked it out in a couple days, in the theater, all masked up and with socially-distanced microphones scattered around the stage. Some stuff got cut that I wanted to keep, and some stuff I wanted to cut, got left in. You can hear pages rustling and footsteps and hum from the room. The sound quality differs depending what day we were on.

In short, it sounds like…a community theater doing a Nativity play. On the radio. : ) But it’s got heart. Like Arden would have wanted, I think. We threw it together for KLZR, but also for ourselves – we hadn’t seen each other or tried to do anything for almost a year. I’m sure you can understand.

Christmas Eve performance time is 10 pm EST
Christmas Day performance time is 8 pm EST

I asked Miss Bianca about a fundraising link, too.  Donations welcome but not required.

OPEN THREAD.

Programming Note: Two Jackals Have Christmas Performances Online Today & TomorrowPost + Comments (41)

Celebrating Jackals: Narya – Kitchen Reveal (finally . . .)

by WaterGirl|  November 28, 20202:00 pm| 98 Comments

This post is in: Celebrating Jackals, On The Road, Open Threads, Photo Blogging

Time for the big reveal! And apologies for taking so long to organize this; I was so stressed about the election that I couldn’t think, much less try to write coherently. It’s not that big a space—but I was also having trouble fitting things into the frame (not least because I’m not a good photographer). Of course, that will make the tour easier.

Things I would have done a little differently: I might have replaced the butcher block with new butcher block and with a little more of an overhang. The cabinet handles stick out a bit, and I occasionally snag a hipbone on them. The light over the sink shines directly in my eyes—I should have had that light under the cabinets. The microwave kinda sucks—the light over the stove is too dim AND it gets very hot (it might be halogen, which would be stupid); I had no idea that that was something I needed to even think about. The fridge is only adequate—there’s no light in the freezer and no cheese drawer in the fridge—but it was really the best I could find that wasn’t French doors or freezer on the bottom. It is SUPER quiet, though, so I now realize just how close to dead the old one was.

Things I like even more than I thought I would: all of the storage space! The stacked cabinets were totally the way to go. The stone counter—it is so nice to not have to watch my countertop rot. Three racks in the oven—awesome. The floor is wonderful, and the light color means I end up cleaning it WAY more often, so there’s that. And the tile—I love having some color in the kitchen. May I point out that the tiles are all the fault of John G. Cole: after his last trip to the Fiesta factory outlet, I was noodling around on their site and discovered that I could get tiles in licensed Fiesta colors, from a factory in Pittsburgh. I have Fiesta dinnerware, in multiple colors, so spending the extra on that tile was a no-brainer. 

And now that I’ve been using it for a couple of months, I realize just how many workarounds I had in place. I’ve added a curtain to the window (I MacGyvered a roman shade that looks . . . okay, but I will make a new one when I get the sewing machine fixed), which, in the two days it’s been up has already improved the temperature in there. All in all, the whole thing is such an awesome upgrade—definitely a thing for which I am grateful this year.

Celebrating Jackals: Narya - Kitchen Reveal (finally . . .) 5
DR to porchNovember 27, 2020

First up: This is looking from the doorway into the kitchen; the fridge is out of frame on the left, as is the long counter. Here you can see that there’s now a stone countertop where there was once rotting butcher block, and you can see there’s an undermount sink, as well as a faucet that doesn’t leak. (There’s also no garbage disposal, because it turns out the sink is too deep and there was no room; I don’t really care.) You can also see the floor, and the new storm door.

Celebrating Jackals: Narya – Kitchen Reveal (finally . . .)Post + Comments (98)

Let’s Give It Up for DougJ

by WaterGirl|  November 3, 202010:32 am| 116 Comments

This post is in: Celebrating Jackals, Political Action

Most of us won’t get a normal Thanksgiving this year, but today I am thankful for DougJ.

We all know that every little bit helps, and we know that it all adds up, but holy shit – I never dreamed that our collective giving at BJ could add up to what it has.

The Four Directions people wondered what the heck Balloon Juice was and how we came to be giving to them, boosting their fundraising to “advance equality at the ballot box across Indian Country.”  How did we get there?   A series of tiny little acts.

MazeDancer talked about Four Directions in the comments during the primary.  A couple of weeks ago, Kattails mentioned 4 groups banding together to try to raise 10,000 to set up a shuttle service to get Navajo voters to the polls, many of whom live 50 miles from a polling station, hoping to mobilize 38,000 voters.  I forwarded the information to DougJ in case he had missed it.  That group wasn’t set up in ActBlue, but Four Directions was one of the 4 groups, and they were in ActBlue, so DougJ put up the BJ thermometer.

I would like to think that a whole lot of people are getting to vote today who might not have been able to vote otherwise.

And that’s just one example.  Every person who wrote a comment that said “my congressperson could use some help” or “this state senate candidate is really great, can we help her” – every person who did that made a difference.

From a series of small actions here at BJ, we created a wave.  Maybe even our own  tsunami.

Every person here who donated, or wrote a comment, or did some research, or worked for a campaign, or worked to get out the vote, or is working at the polls today, every bit of that time and money made a difference, and got us where we are today.  We don’t know the outcome yet, but I like our prospects.  I like our team, and I’m proud of who we are and what we’ve done.

It was DougJ who gave us this particular outlet for our desire to do something.  Our money helped some people vote who couldn’t have otherwise.  It gave candidates options.  It put ads on the air, it put flyers in our mailboxes, and yes, sent annoying text messages to our phones.  It gave people hope, including us.

For all of that, and more, thank you, Doug!

Let’s Give It Up for DougJPost + Comments (116)

Celebrating Jackals: LAMH Has Some News!

by WaterGirl|  August 24, 20205:00 pm| 181 Comments

This post is in: Balloon Juice, Celebrating Jackals

This barely needs any introduction – we have followed along with LAMH on her years of classes, while working full-time, her graduation in May, her quest for the job in Houston, and her on-site interview last week. Well…

I just heard from lamh!

Celebrating Jackals: LAMH Has Some News!

“Just got a call from Houston!

They selected me!”

I couldn’t be happier for lamh.   Just one question – how many excited GIFs will be posted in the comments?

Celebrating Jackals: LAMH Has Some News!Post + Comments (181)

Celebrating Jackals: Major Major Major Major – 5 Stories Just Published!

by WaterGirl|  August 5, 20207:30 pm| 38 Comments

This post is in: Books, Celebrating Jackals

On Sunday afternoon, Major Major Major Major mentioned that he had a story coming out that is part of an anthology.  So I dropped him a note, and it turns out that he does have a personal story in the anthology, but he also has four co-authored stories in the book, as well!

That seems like kind of a big Joe Biden deal to me, so I wrote to Major Major and asked if he could be talked into either Medium Cool or a Celebrating Jackals post.  He graciously agreed, so I’ll let him take it from here – telling us about the stories,  about how he came to be a part of this, and how he came to start writing in the first place.

*****

Adventures in Writing: Five Authors and 15 Stories, by Major Major Major Major

Hello jackals!

As some of you know, I’ve taken creative writing fairly seriously for the last few years. Like so many people I’d always loved the idea of “being a writer”; also like many people, it wasn’t until my fourth decade that I had something worth saying, and the diligence to learn how to say it. I understand this isn’t easy for anybody, but I must be doing something right – I’m excited to say that I have five short stories in an anthology that was just released, under my real name of J. Tynan Burke.

Celebrating Jackals: Major Major

Last year, the editor, B. Morris Allen, reached out to some writers he’d worked well with in the past. He had an intriguing idea: five authors writing five stories each, with one being a solo work, and four coming from round-robin pairings with the other authors. The result is fifteen stories about love and longing, ghosts and robots, growing trees in space, and much more. It was a great experience, even if some collaborations went more smoothly than others. If you’d like, I’d be happy to get into the nuts and bolts of this in the comments. Each pairing was unique.

Being a depressive artist type, I did a quick re-read before writing this, and can happily confirm that the stories are good. It is also interesting as an artifact; you can see how each author’s style and preferences manifest with different co-authors and across genres.

To pique your interest, here is a brief note about each of my contributions:

  • My solo story, Sudden Oak Death, is probably my best work to date. It tells of an arborist who works in a space station orbiting Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It explores what it’s like when your vocation is not your passion–and never will be, since you are ill-suited for your passion. For this story I consulted with an arborist, as well as an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which was super fun.
  • Its spiritual companion piece is Project Blackbook, written by myself and David Gallay. In the near future, an Internet Of Things project for a ‘smart’ daytimer goes awry. A corporate tendency to promote ‘rockstar’ developers, while ignoring stodgy engineering standards, dooms the project–and possibly all of mankind. This story is told via a collection of recovered documents, including software version control logs, which was–you guessed it–super fun.
  • Boro Boro, written with Evan Marcroft, follows Brad, an artist living in a small town on California’s central coast. It’s a tale of the spiritual, and ghostly, issues raised by cultural appropriation and gentrification.
  • Infernal® Policies and Procedures Have Changed, written with Douglas Anstruther, is a fun take on literal corporate Hell, and the determination of those who dream.
  • In The Relic, written with L’Erin J. Ogle, we meet Yishma, who is rescued by an alien starship after a horrible accident that took the life of his wife. But where are the aliens? And how can he get home before radiation poisoning claims his life too?

I’ll be around in the comments, if you have any questions or… comments.

~Major Major Major Major

*****

The anthology is titled Reading 5X5 x2: Duets

If you’re a fan of sci-fi and/or fantasy, you should check out M4’s book. (Yeah, okay, there might be some other people involved, too, but still…)

I love the cover.

Celebrating Jackals: Major Major

Amazon link

If you get the book, and like it, I’ll bet Major Major would greatly appreciate some Amazon reviews!

One final note: the distributor for the hardcover edition is screwed up due to COVID; if you would like your book in a determinable amount of time, please get the paperback or Kindle edition.

Celebrating Jackals: Major Major Major Major – 5 Stories Just Published!Post + Comments (38)

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