“nation of me”

kris ex sends this story on giving up. fuck.
RIP Kirby Puckett. I may not know shit about baseball, but Kirby was all my friends’ idol growing up from third grade on.

and I’m WAY late on this, but extra-special RIP to Octavia Butler. I am a huge science fiction fan, but Ms. Butler, MacArthur Genius, is one of my favorite authors, period–I first started reading her in high school (her and Philip K Dick, nerdlife) and I’m sure her writing influenced me a great deal. She was a fellow Cascadian, dwelling among the crests and peaks and Boeing-shadowed architecture of Seattle, and while her work was about about reframing history with a hopeful eye, her talent was bigger than allegory or even reimagination. It was the art of writing with a wide, open heart, and being completely engaged with the world, even when it’s at its most destitute. I aspire to be so generous. Or, as this piece puts it, “Her work was more what her friend and mentor Harlan Ellison called his writing — speculative fiction. It was about ideas, what ifs that explored who we are and whom we might become.”
According to the above linked story, she said, “The time it takes to write a book is as long as you’ve been alive, and then some.” I love her.
Click here to order her books through the Powell’s union (what’s up in the stacks, Longshorepeople! Local 5 for LIFE!). Kindred’s where most people start, and should, but I also recommend Parable of the Sower and Bloodchild, her short stories.
Here’s a story she wrote for O. And here’s an interesting essay: Sower of Seeds: Octavia Butler’s Utopian Feminism.