With Liberal Abandon
Several updates in one:
I got a rejection this week for a story that I thought was a sure-fire match for the market. Ah well, apparently I do not actually possess the editor's brain.
A comment in the rejection letter, ostensibly not related to the reason for rejection has gotten me thinking about culture and expectations and how things familiar to the writer can seem quite foreign to the reader even when they (writer and reader) are from the same general culture. When you write about things you expect to be unfamiliar you write about them somewhat differently, I think, than when you write about things you think are covered by common culture. But, despite the common complaint about the McDonaldization of American culture, there are things that many people have rarely seen and seldom accurately. It's good writing fodder, but you have to know how to portray the strange so it's familiar and the familiar so it's strange and it helps to know at any given moment which is which.
John Henry continues to do well. I took him out to the training building with me Sunday morning and we renumbered the agility yards. He gets around great and doesn't seem to get any more tired than he did when he had four legs to carry him around. He has totally re-learned how to spin in circles, pounce on non-existent things and chase shadows. I'm taking him in on Wednesday to see how his infection's coming and to see if chemo is still a possibility for him.
We had a big storm tonight--75 mile an hour winds--which the weather service assured us would come after midnight and not go south of Route 30 (Route 30 being a nearly impenetrable barrier for storms). It hit at 7 and definitely crossed Route 30 because I was in a building just a few hundred yards from 30 at the time. The building I was in was a steel building and the wind made the walls flex. Kind of impressive. But, as we say in the midwest, big winds mean they go through quick. And no hail, which when your car's sitting in a parking lot instead of a garage is always a good thing, though I'm pretty sure half the dirt in northern Iowa went by our window.