Archive for March, 2008

Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 14

Article Series - Four Shards of Heaven

  1. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Preliminaries
  2. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Prologue
  3. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 1
  4. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 2
  5. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 3
  6. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 4
  7. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 5
  8. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 6
  9. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 7
  10. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 8
  11. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 9
  12. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 10
  13. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 11
  14. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 12
  15. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 13
  16. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 14
  17. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 15
  18. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 16
  19. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 17
  20. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 18
  21. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 19
  22. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 20
  23. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 21
  24. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 22
  25. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 23
  26. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 24
  27. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 25
  28. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 26
  29. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 27
  30. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 28
  31. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 29
  32. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 30
  33. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Epilogue
  34. Revising and Revising
  35. 512 Pages
  36. Four Shards of Heaven: Synopsis

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:


No Comments


Onion Videos

I’m sure everyone knew about this, and I’m just late to the party, but … The Onion, a fine source of satire, has videos on YouTube!

I had no idea until this afternoon, when an esteemed fellow medievalist (we’re all fun folk), John K. Bollard, sent me this link to a “news” piece on the queen’s waving. As a bonus, it makes a reference to events in AD 939.

These videos are typically brilliant Onion stuff. They’re all hilarious. Check out this piece on the number one issue for voters in this year’s presidential cycle, or, even better, this video on the Outsourcing of Child Care:

Little Kimberly Nattings … damn, my eyes are watering.

Oh, and for an extra bonus, read the “news-blurbs” scrolling along the screen. A sample:

“National Medical Association study finds owning a cobra significantly increases risk of cobra attack.”

No Comments


Squirrel Killing

There was a reason I YouTubed (is that a verb now? Like “to Google”?) Squirrel Nut Zippers the other day: we’ve had a significant squirrel-in-attic problem here for a few weeks.

Gray SquirrelNow, since I technically live on Citadel property, I don’t have to pay for pest control to deal with this sort of thing. I just call up the powers that be, and they make the arrangements. So for these past weeks a pest control fellow has stopped by twice a week and trudged up into the attic to set traps. Live traps at first. Then, as the rodent’s destruction increased — gnawing on rafters, shredding boxes, digging through the insulation — a few ol’ fashioned rat traps mixed in, loaded up with creamy (not chunky) peanut butter.

Which brings us to yesterday. I was here in my office when I found out something had happened up there. I heard a scratching of claws on wood: scritch-sritch-scritch! This would go on for a few seconds, then it would stop for a few. Then it came back. Damn squirrel, I thought, imagining the rodent tearing things up. I grabbed my trusty D-cell MagLite, lowered the attic ladder, and climbed up to investigate.

To my surprise, the scritching didn’t stop. There was no shuffle in the dark as a fluffy-tailed little beastie shot out into the dark corners of the rafters. So I crept up on the noise, torchbeam searching until I found it.

Rat TrapThe squirrel had finally been hit. Rat trap. Only it wasn’t dead. The spring-loaded bar had come down just as it was supposed to: right behind the rodent’s skull, on the back of the neck. It had pinned the creature’s neck down, but it somehow hadn’t killed it. The scratching I was hearing was the sound of the squirrel’s hindlegs instinctively kicking against the wooden trap. Scritch-scritch-scritch!

The animal’s wide, luminously dark brown eyes were dilated by the light of my flashlight. It’s tongue was pushed out into its still-open mouth. There was little chance, I imagined, that it could survive even if it got out of the trap. And even if I released it outside, it would no doubt just return.

I picked it up, put it in a small box, and carried it outside. I stood over it a minute or so, thinking. There was a gentle breeze in the yard, stirring the squirrel’s fur like a caress. Her chest — it was a female, I now could tell — heaved in panting exhaustion, and her legs twitched.

I reached down and gripped the trap. I yanked it back hard. The squirrel’s neck snapped. Her panting stopped. Her legs froze. The breeze continued to move her gray-to-white fur in small waves.

I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday. Not so much about whether or not I did the right thing given the circumstances, but about why I took that minute to look at the squirrel, about why I hesitated before snapping its neck and what — if anything — that says about me as a human being.

I have come to no conclusions, and the squirrel remains dead.

9 Comments


Squirrel Nut Zippers

There are many reasons to love YouTube. This is one of them:

No Comments


Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 13

Article Series - Four Shards of Heaven

  1. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Preliminaries
  2. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Prologue
  3. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 1
  4. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 2
  5. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 3
  6. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 4
  7. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 5
  8. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 6
  9. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 7
  10. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 8
  11. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 9
  12. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 10
  13. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 11
  14. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 12
  15. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 13
  16. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 14
  17. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 15
  18. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 16
  19. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 17
  20. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 18
  21. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 19
  22. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 20
  23. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 21
  24. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 22
  25. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 23
  26. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 24
  27. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 25
  28. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 26
  29. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 27
  30. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 28
  31. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 29
  32. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 30
  33. Protected: Four Shards of Heaven: Epilogue
  34. Revising and Revising
  35. 512 Pages
  36. Four Shards of Heaven: Synopsis

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:


No Comments


Review of “A Very Young Boy with Largely Clipped Wings”

J. C. Runolfson over at The Fix reviews the latest issue of Shimmer: the “art issue” wherein writers were asked to write to the inspiration of artwork rather than the usual story-inspiring-art scenario. It’s a very thorough, very insightful review of the issue, with some rather kind things to say about my own contribution to the magazine:

The next story in the issue is “A Very Young Boy with Largely Clipped Wings” by Michael Livingston, inspired by the art piece “Cherub” by Sandro Castelli and riffing off of Gabriel García Márquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” In fact, the story starts with a quote from the García Márquez, setting up an expectation of magic realism that is not disappointed. Walking home one day, Pelayo encounters a child laying in the mud, a child with the stumps of wings protruding from his back. Pelayo takes the child home to his wife, Elisenda. There, they bathe the child and reveal yet more strangeness, namely his too-wide mouth and too-round head. At first, they keep him in the house, but when his attempts to fly shake the floor and threaten to send an oil lamp spilling, they move him to their shed, where they’re already keeping an old man they’d found years earlier, an old man with wings of his own.

“A Very Young Boy With Largely Clipped Wings” is a story rich with detail, taking the evocative central image of “Cherub” and spinning it into a tale of the rediscovery of hope. The titular boy is determined to fly, and his attempts re-awaken the dreams of those who live with him. Lyrically understated, Livingston’s writing nonetheless conjures fully realized characters and a strong sense of place. Crab nets and chickens, mud and brooms, are elements that ground the story even as they are each imbued with magical possibilities by the events of the plot.

What a good way to start the day!

1 Comment


780 Gallons of Leaves

That’s what we raked up from the yard this afternoon. That’s not a typo, and it’s not a big yard. Indeed, I believe it constitutes a small to average yard in America. And much of it was raked a couple months ago.

Twenty (20) 39-gallon trash bags filled to bursting. That’s approximately 780 gallons of leaves, which is at least 700 too many, I think.

Don’t get me wrong. Charleston is beautiful. The huge live oaks overhanging the yard are beautiful. But I just cannot get my head around this bizarre year-round leaf fall business.

Leaves fall in the Fall. It’s definitional!

2 Comments


Jordan Induction Recalled

A recollection of the South Carolina Academy of Authors induction ceremony for James O. Rigney, Jr. (Robert Jordan) that I attended two weeks ago has been posted on “Robert Jordan’s Official Blog” over at the esteemed dragonmount.com. The touching write-up is by Wilson, Jim’s brother/cousin, whom I may have met that night without realizing it.

At any rate, Wilson’s posting is interesting not only for revealing his personal experience of the night (click here to read my own), but also for including a number of photos of the event (the first I’ve seen) and a few videos that have been posted on YouTube. (I’d seen that a young gentleman in the front row was holding a video camera; I didn’t imagine that would translate to world-wide access, though!)

The videos only go up through the end of my speech, which is unfortunate since Marjory Wentworth, the state’s poet laureate, gave a lovely speech after mine that I would have liked to hear once more.

Though I’m directly posting the videos of my speech here, don’t let that stop you from heading over to reading Wilson’s words and watch the rest of the videos.

(Don’t worry, the second video is only the last minute or two of my speech — I’m not sure why it is split thus, but I’m not complaining.)

3 Comments


SetPageWidth