ceelove

In August, I return to WA to assemble a yurt. One of the many glories it will provide is a mosquito-free space where one is sorely needed, for the mosquitos are many and I am delectable to them, and sometimes nothing deters them other than bathing in DEET.

I now have a goal. Before then, I wish to build a device, of which I have seen several DIY versions on YouTube: something that lures mosquitoes with CO2-producing bait (yeast often seems to be involved), a fan that traps mosquitoes against a screen with its velocity, and solar/battery power. Ideally, I could use it in my backyard for gardening, then transport it to WA, so it’s also got to be small enough to bring the components with me (or easy enough to reproduce there).

This is waaaaay out of my wheelhouse. Who do I know locally with the skills, time, and patience to do this with me? Apart from the pleasure of my company, I can offer massage or money as motivating factors.

Hey, remember before the heat wave...I mean, "spring"...when it was really chilly? Me neither. But I have proof that it exists, in that I was doing about the only thing I could then: create characters and drag them through funny hell.

The end product is Venn Diagram, a six-character version of the idea that I tried last year with Twelve Nights: longtime monogamously-coupled friends suddenly fall in love with each other and messily figure out the new polyamorous terrain. It's kind of like I was taking a photo at too great a distance, and now I've focused in on the details in one section. I've had beta readers whom I trust telling me it's good (and much easier to follow than before). Now I'd like more opinions, before I spend my summer querying theaters about this & Pyglation and Gamalea.

I'm thinking I'd like to do a read-through sooner rather than later of this. I'll need three male-presenting and three female-presenting people (plus one for reading stage directions). Would you be up for reading or attending in a few weeks? Would you like to have a PDF script to read?

And now it's time for the next project, Pyglatian and Gamalea! For this, I need data. See, it's all about tattooing, and my own experience is not very representative: I haaaaate needles, I needed a two-person support crew to get through it and tried to faint, twice. So I'm asking you: tell me about your tattoos. Tell me about deciding to get them, designing them, having them inked, how they've impacted you since. Send your friends to tell me about theirs. Share freely.

Yes yes, I'll be asking to talk to the artists at tattoo studios and hitting up the library and such too. But this is going to be a deeply personal play, and verisimilitude will be my watchword. So I want to hear from individual people, the why and how and ouch and yay and change of it all.

It's occurred to me, in the midst of reading a shelf full of chapter books to S this past year, that there are more Strong Female Leads (tm) in kidlit than I would have guessed. Like, everybody knows it's next to impossible to find good role models for young girls, the best we can do is screen out the worst of the BarbieDisneyprincessy idiocy, right?

But with S being all about Oz and Ramona Quimby, it's made me stop and think. What enduring kidlit can you think of that features a strong girl? And what do I mean by "strong"? Well, I'd say, self-aware (or at least growing in self-awareness), curious and inventive in figuring out her world, able to balance kindness and assertiveness. And by "enduring," I'd say, still resonates with a generation other than the one it was written for.

examples:
Dorothy, Ozma, and others in the Oz books
Pippi Longstocking
Laura and others in the "Little House" series
Beezus and Ramona
"Anne of Green Gables" etc
Heidi
Mary from "A Secret Garden"
Fern in "Charlotte's Web"
Aerin in "The Hero and the Crown"

What kidlit can you name that features a strong girl? a strong boy? a strong ensemble? Which doesn't just mean, whatever kids in classic kidlit. For example, the kids in Mary Poppins don't really do things so much as experience stuff - the stories are kind of picaresque, but with the adventures coming to them instead. The kids in the Narnia books (or the Half-Magic books), on the other hand, take their fates into their own hands in their pursuit of magic.